A common path to choosing an accessibility provider is that someone is sued. They research three to five providers and then they book sales calls or sales demos with each of those providers. And then they learn about accessibility and how it relates to their specific situation as they are going through these sales demos. And that is a bad approach because the sellers are going to paint a picture that is favorable to their offering. And with accessibility, you can waste a tremendous amount of time and money going with the wrong product or service.
So you have to understand website accessibility, you have to understand the marketplace, you have to understand the limitations of some services and products before you start. And if you don’t know this ahead of time, you won’t be asking the right questions and the sellers will be supplying the information and many times the information will be inflated wrong or slanted to sell you more than you need. A great example is with scans. They’re extremely helpful tools and some are for sale in some form or fashion and the sale price can be in the thousands of dollars and it can be an annual subscription. You don’t need an annual subscription to a website accessibility scan. And so this is an example where you may end up paying thousands of dollars for something where you could have accomplished the same thing for free.
And you might be upsold on something, or you may even get a great service. It might be a service that in and of itself the service is great, but it’s not one that you need. So for example, you might buy accessibility, user testing, great service, you may get a fantastic report that unveils all sorts of accessibility issues, but it may not be what you need, especially within your budget. So if you use up all of your budget on user testing, that could be the wrong approach. So it’s important to know all of the different dynamics in play and as they are specific to your custom situation.
So I recommend that you learn about accessibility, website accessibility, before you get started with these sales demos. I know it takes more time, but that time might save you not only thousands of dollars, but a lot of time later down the road and a lot of energy in going down the right path. I know of many companies who have started with website accessibility and it’s been a long endeavor and then really nothing material ends up coming out of it. Maybe they fix a few accessibility issues, but because they approached it the wrong way and because they were not aware of what they needed to do on their end, they wasted a lot of time, money and energy and really got nothing out of it.
So I know it sounds, it might sound unnecessary, it might sound like an additional cost that doesn’t help. But if you get consultation just to understand your situation and to better understand the market. That can go a long way in helping you identify what you need and only what you need, and not purchasing any bad products or services or extras or any upsells that really don’t serve what you’re trying to accomplish.
So of course, accessible.org offers training and services, but with consultation, my consultation is not there designed to sell products and services, it’s there to help people understand what they need for their situation. But even if you’re not interested in a consultation, even spending an hour to read on accessibility, read on the marketplace can really help. So I’m going to link to a few of my videos below, where I talk more about the marketplace. You can better understand it. I will also link to the Ada book. In the Ada book I do talk about the legal landscape, but the second part of the book is dedicated to understanding practically what is involved, all of the different things that are involved in the accessibility marketplace. And so once you’re better aware of that in these practical considerations, then it will help you make an informed decision, one where you are asking the questions and they’re the right questions to ask and better understanding what you need so that you’re not sold any more than you need, and you’re not buying something that you might need. But what you’re getting in return is a bad product and or service. So I will provide those links below.
But the point of this video is before you go into these sales demos or these sales calls, make sure that you have a better understanding of what you need.
