if a vendor does not offer any manual services for website accessibility, then they are only going to offer marginal benefit in making your website accessible.
And I’ve seen this happen too many times where people pay for these vendors and they think that they’re getting a service, a professional service but they’re not.
What they’re getting is an automated scan, what they’re getting is information about accessibility but they don’t actually get any services and yet they’re paying a premium for really what amounts to what you can get for free.
Because you can get information on accessibility for free and you can get a scan of your website for free.
So these services really offer very little value, but they charge a premium but they also give the illusion that they are doing more than they are.
So you want to make sure that any accessibility provider you hire with the objective of making your website accessible actually provides the manual services that you need to make your website accessible.
So what are the manual services?
Well you need an audit and you need remediation.
The audit is really the most important part because you need to find the issues that need to be remediated.
Of course, the remediation is also very important because you need to follow through on the audit because if you don’t then your website is still going to be inaccessible and there are still going to be accessibility issues.
So when you- when you get a provider understand exactly what they’re- what you are getting from them.
If you are getting no manual services then I would I would drop them.
If you are getting an audit understand you’re only getting an audit and what you pay in an audit, you’re likely going to have to pay around that much more for remediation – it really depends how much remediation work is involved.
But if you can get both even better because then everything can be done all at once.
And it’s there’s a real disconnect when it comes to the audit and remediation because if you- if you have a- one entity, one provider doing an audit and another doing the remediation, then that process takes a long, long time and most providers accessibly providers do not provide that service.
Most stop at an audit because of all of the difficulties and the obstacles when it comes to editing code directly on your website.
But if you will allow that and you can provide- find a provider that does both, that’s going to save you a lot of time and money because then you won’t have to hire a separate agency, you won’t have to occur in additional cost – it will save a lot of time.
And/or your in-house developers won’t have to figure out accessibility as they go and learn as they go so it really does make the process more efficient.
But the point of this video is to know who you are purchasing from and understand that if the service provider is not providing any manual services then you- they’re not going to do anything when it comes to website accessibility.
They’re not going to have that audit available, a scan is- again a scan is free so make sure that your service provider at least will provide you with an audit.
