Is your website at risk for lawsuits? Are your client’s websites at risk?
What about the business’s lost revenue risk from the website being unusable? I get these questions all the time. This is a quick scorecard to give you an idea of how at risk a site is.
You can apply this scorecard to your clients and determine who is at higher risk. And if you need help selling to those clients, I have an entire accessibility selling challenge.
- Score your clients & prospects.
- Set specific goals for each client.
- Write the outreach email & put together the quote.
- Deal with common objections.
- Bring it all together to sell accessibility to your clients.
Web Accessibility Risk Scorecard: Step-by-Step Guide
- Determine if your website is for public use (not a private employee portal).
- Check if your organization receives any government revenue.
- Identify if your organization is in the healthcare business.
- Determine if your website is used for e-commerce.
- Assess if your organization has $10M+ annual revenue OR spends $2,000+ monthly on advertising.
- Perform a Lightning Audit to determine the remediation level needed on your website. If your site scores 3 or lower on the Lightning Audit, the answer is “yes” to this question.
Interpreting Your Scorecard
Count your total “yes” answers and determine your risk level:
- 0-1 yes: Low risk.
- 2-3 yes: Cause for concern, should evaluate legal and financial risks.
- 4+ yes: Immediate action required, develop a plan immediately.
For higher risk scores, contact Easy A11y Guide for assistance.
Transcript
Is your website at risk for lawsuits? Is it at risk for loss of business due to being unusable? These are questions that I get all the time. And while I can’t give you a personal answer in this video, I can give you a general scorecard which should help to give you an idea of how at risk you are.
This is specifically for websites that are either based in the US or where a significant target market is in the US. This addresses a combination of legal risk and financial risk. For example, I was attempting to book an appointment on a platform. Well, I couldn’t do it on my phone. The website was just unusable.
I had the thought I wanted to engage in something, but I only had my phone with me at the moment, so I couldn’t book and therefore didn’t book. To get your score, we’re going to count the number of times you say yes to the following questions regarding your website and/or business.
The first question, is the website for the public? For example, let’s say you have a private employee portal that really falls under a completely different set of rules than a public website. The first question, is it for the public?
The second question is about the organization, which could be a for-profit a business or a non-for-profit. Does the organization receive revenue from the government? If your organization receives revenue from the government, it can put you under several different regulations.
Third question, is the organization in the business of healthcare? Again, this could be a for-profit business or a not-for-profit.
The fourth question is the website e-commerce?
The fifth question, does the organization Does the organization have $10 million per year in annual revenue or more? Or does the organization spend $2,000 a month in ad spend or more? If either of those is a yes, then you have answered yes to question five.
And finally, question six. You are going to go ahead and do a lightning audit. This is a really quick audit on your website. I can usually do in about a minute. Most other people can do it in about two or three. There’s a link in the video description, and you can go ahead and follow the instructions on how to actually run a lightning audit on the site.
So the question after you do that is, did it score a three or lower? Anywhere from a zero to three, and you’re going to answer yes to question six.
Now, you’re going to count up how many times you said yes. If you got zero or only one yes, your risk is pretty low. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s likely very low.
If you said yes to two or three of the questions, you should be concerned. You should be looking at whether or not you are at legal risk and whether or not you are at financial risk or lost revenue from poor user experiences.
If you have said yes to four questions or more, you need to get a plan together, preferably yesterday, but today is your next best option. Those are the six quick tests to score your web accessibility risk.
If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and hit subscribe for the Easy A11y Guide have concerns about your web accessibility risk, you need to get a plan together, take a look at the Easy A11y Guide website and reach out with your questions.