I really like what Wix is doing with their accessibility.
They are doing what any website builder platform should do and improve the out-of-the-box accessibility of their website builder.
What I found problematic was after I made the video I kept looking at Wix’s website and I discovered that they offered accessibility certification.
And on this page it says, establish your credibility in planning and building accessible websites become an accessibility-certified site creator and help make the Internet a place for everyone.
And what I said in that video was, Wix is off to a good start but there is still more work to do on their end.
And so they’re ahead of themselves before they offer any type of certification.
So a few of the reasons this is problematic.
First, if you’re going to confer certification on anybody your website shouldn’t have any accessibility issues and while Wix’s accessibility is really good there are still a handful of accessibility issues that you can find throughout their website.
So, again, I’m not I’m not criticizing their level of accessibility they’ve done a good job but there are still accessibility issues and they really need to be fully conformant if they’re going to be certified people as accessibility certified site creators.
They don’t fully understand accessibility themselves and this is not to say they don’t have a handle on it but when I read through their own accessibility page I could tell that they don’t fully understand, everything’s not quite in focus for them.
So one of the lines that stood out to me was this says, our features comply with the highest global standards and then parentheses says WCAG 2.0.
Well the latest version has been 2.1 for four years so this wouldn’t be this wouldn’t be the latest version of those standards.
So I don’t know why they put 2.0 but again this is their own accessibility page and that wasn’t the only thing it was just one that stuck out to me.
But they need to improve their knowledge and awareness of accessibility before they start certifying people.
And I think that this leads to the next problem is the way that you get to their certification is you you answer a 30 question multiple choice exam, you have 50 minutes to do it, and then you score a 75% or higher and then you become certified.
So obviously that’s not a real certification.
Nobody that takes a quick exam is for 75% or higher is and what they term an accessibility certified site creator and the problem is this leads to more confusion in the marketplace because freelancers on Fiverr or Upwork or wherever are going to be telling people they are certified by Wix.
And Wix has a lot of credibility and is well known as a website as a website builder platform and if you have certification from Wix that’s going to make other people think that you are able to make accessible websites.
And maybe you can do so within the Wix platform but it introduces other confusion that isn’t necessary.
So Wix is ahead of itself with accessibility certification.
