We’ve seen a lot of agencies jump head first into the ADA compliance and website accessibility pool. And we get it – offering accessibility services means you can bring in more clients and sell additional services to existing ones.
The problem is most agencies have no idea what they’re doing and they end up ripping off their clients because they only researched for 30 minutes before they decided they had everything figured out and were ready to become ADA website compliance experts.
We’ve seen this from SEO companies, marketing influencers, web design agencies, and others.
Overlays
Some agency owners stopped at the first sponsored result in Google and either white labeled overlay widgets or became an affiliate for them. But, of course, accessibility overlays don’t actually make a website accessible and actually increase the chances that a website owner is targeted a plaintiffs’ lawyer.
Yes, you read that correctly: overlays are actually a negative value.
Some people think of them as a “temporary solution,” but they’re literally worse than doing nothing – and many agencies were pitching them to their clients as how to make their websites ADA compliant.
What many people re-selling these accessibility “solutions” do not realize is there’s a concept in the law called detrimental reliance, which means if someone makes representations during a business transaction and another party relies on those representations to their detriment, legal liability may arise for resulting damages. This could apply whether you’re the overlay vendor or the agency promoting them. And this isn’t the only path for liability to arise for those portraying themselves as accessibility and compliance experts.
Services
In other cases, agencies had the idea to haphazardly offer services which they themselves didn’t understand.
We saw some marketers selling scans as audits.
We saw others claiming that you can combine a widget with manual remediation.
And, of course, there were and still are a host of other offerings that were purported to provide exactly what clients needed and absolutely did not.
Sometimes this was because the agency simply didn’t know any better. Other times it was because they went for the fast money route, neglecting the client’s best interest. And we’re sure there was a combination of both on many occasions.
Legitimately Selling Accessibility Services
There are no shortcuts with accessibility. To truly meet client needs you have to actually understand what you’re doing and have technical accessibility experts fulfilling audit and remediation services.
As we saw over the last several years, many agencies have sought to capitalize on the demand for digital accessibility services, but didn’t invest the requisite time and attention to understand what they were selling and what clients needed.
The true path forward is to spend 8-12 months becoming an expert in accessibility and/or hiring accessibility experts to develop and execute on accessibility service offerings.
Another option is to white label or refer service providers who offer genuine accessibility services.
Either way, we recommend not rushing into accessibility.
It’s not that it’s so technically complicated that it will take you forever to figure out, it’s just that it’s not something you can shove into your agency’s offerings overnight
And keep in mind that it’s one thing to understand WCAG, audits, and remediation, but it’s another to sell these services to clients.
