Website accessibility: Still essential for business success
​february 2025
by Don Torrez, Certified Accessibility Coordinator, Director of Partnerships with CivicPlus

Last April, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would begin enforcing web accessibility laws for state and local governments. There is speculation that retail business websites would be next. This move is viewed as the first step in enforcing policies regarding website accessibility, which have evolved since the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.

With the recent shift away from DEI initiatives, there is considerable speculation about how the federal government will respond to its focus on web accessibility. Will the DOJ decide not to enforce its announced policy, as it has done in the past1?

Website managers should not be deterred by shifts in government policy. The benefits of making the web accessible extend far beyond compliance and can help us stay focused on being inclusive. While we cannot control external noise, we can take advantage of the opportunities that full accessibility offers.
  1. The Centers for Disease Control reports that by 2025, more than one in four U.S. adults have a disability2.  The significance of accessible technology is crucial as we learn more about health, and technology continues to make the world easier to navigate. Your website may miss a large segment of your intended audience if it is not designed to be accessible. Recognizing that the population of disabled individuals is not a monolith, an inaccessible website excludes a significant demographic. Businesses lose nearly $7 billion per year due to inaccessible websites3.
  2. Making your website accessible can also improve technical Search Engine Optimization (SEO)4. For instance, properly tagged content enhances accuracy and provides search engines with the correct information to index your content effectively. Additionally, a well-crafted title tag is essential for basic SEO; it describes the page's content and is visible in search engine results, though not on the page itself.
  3. Overall user experience improves with accessibility. Fully accessible websites have much higher UX scores than inaccessible sites. As we learned from the introduction of wheelchair ramps and curb cuts5, making environments accessible for assistive transportation benefits everyone. Similarly, creating accessible technology results in a more usable website that features strong color contrast, the ability to magnify fonts and images, and well-captioned videos.
Where to begin6?
  1. Train – familiarize yourself and your staff on the guidelines and requirements of accessibility7.
  2. Plan – Adopt a policy for web accessibility and post it where your website users can easily obtain it8.
  3. Reach out – The most important initial step is to have a way for a user to reach you if they have an accessibility obstacle on your website9.

These first steps are not technical but can build a foundation to help you make your website accessible. The lack of government attention to accessibility should not deter our efforts to create a more robust internet. There are benefits far beyond legal compliance.  Let’s purpose to intentionally break down communication barriers across all demographics and strive for the ultimate goal of technology: to make the world smaller and more connected.
 
Notes:
1 DOJ Nixes All Pending ADA Rulemakings, Including Website Access Rules | ADA Title III
2 Disability Impacts All of Us Infographic | Disability and Health | CDC
3 The Cost of Inaccessibility: Businesses Lose More Than $6.9 Billion Annually - Retail TouchPoints5 Measuring Accessibility In The User Experience (UX) And The Searcher Experience
4 Cracking the Code: How Website Accessibility Affects SEO | by Anjum Siddiqui | Globant | Medium
5 The Curb-Cut Effect | PolicyLink
6ADA Update: A Primer for State and Local Governments | ADA.gov
7Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
8Plan | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C
9How to write an accessibility statement | Make Things Accessible
 
Don Torrez has collaborated with over 400 local governments to enhance their understanding of web accessibility and ensure compliance with relevant laws and guidelines. He has successfully addressed accessibility challenges alongside the Department of Justice, the Office of Civil Rights, and the Department of Homeland Security. As a Certified Accessibility Coordinator, Don has developed comprehensive training curricula on web accessibility and is an outspoken advocate for greater awareness of related issues. His mission is to eliminate the fear and confusion surrounding accessibility, making it more approachable and actionable for all.
Ethics in Disability Inclusion - an intentional focus
​January 2025
by Isleen Gimenez Morales, Partner Support Consultant with Center for Disability Inclusion

While corporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives have been making strides nationally and internationally, recent executive orders targeting DEI programs in the U.S. federal government could pose a major challenge to these efforts. Even more concerning is a long-standing gap within the workplace that represents an ethical dilemma about the true commitment to workplace inclusion.

Ethics is a strong word referring to a collection of moral principles that govern behavior or conduct. In the workplace, ethics of practices, processes and programs build or corrupt workplace culture.

Despite the fact that over 90% of companies consider themselves as prioritizing diversity and inclusion in their workforce, fewer than 5% of inclusion initiatives within companies consist of policies and programs that promote the full participation of employees with disabilities. The disparity between the degree to which companies regard themselves as prioritizing diversity in their workforce and the absence of policies and programs that focus on employees with disabilities presents an ethical dilemma that should not go unaddressed.

Considering the incidence of disability worldwide, it’s surprising that expanding inclusion-based policies and programs to promote full participation and representation of employees with disabilities hasn’t already been a focal point.  There are 1.3 billion people, or 16% of the world’s population, who experience a significant disability.  386 million working age adults worldwide have a disability, and the average combined unemployment rate of employees with disabilities across both developing and industrialized countries is 73%. Yet, only 4% of companies worldwide include employees with disabilities as part of their inclusion-based policies and programs.

Not only does the population data support disability inclusion as being integral to workplace inclusion initiatives, but it has also been proven that including employees with disabilities in the workforce can:
  • increase a company’s customer base;
  • foster creativity, collaboration, and innovation;
  • improve overall morale;
  • increase productivity;
  • lower absenteeism;
  • and increase customer loyalty.  

Companies that factor considerations for employees with disabilities into their initiatives experience 1.6 times more revenue, 2.6 times more net income, and 2 times more economic profit. The economic impact of individuals with disabilities and their families is estimated at $13 trillion, representing a formidable market segment that corporations cannot afford to ignore.

Just as a photographer adjusts the aperture on the camera to optimize the resulting quality of a photo, the aperture of existing and newly formed policies and programs needs adjusting to better incorporate employees with disabilities to optimize full inclusion, participation, and representation in the workplace.  The Valuable 500 - a global business partnership of 500 companies working together to end disability exclusion – and the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the New Economy and Society, present a framework that coordinates three synchronized collective actions to address three main barriers to disability inclusion:
  1. Inclusive Leadership – leaders at all levels of the organization are committed to disability inclusion
  2. Inclusive Reporting – promotes corporate transparency about disability inclusion efforts around five key performance indicators (KPIs): workforce representation, disability inclusion-specific goals, disability inclusion training, existence of active disability-specific Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) with executive sponsor, digital accessibility of both digital platforms and corresponding content
  3. Inclusive Representation -ensures people with disabilities are accurately and positively portrayed in media and advertising

Let this year be impactful for your organization by adjusting the aperture of an existing program to ensure it is disability inclusive.  The Center for Disability Inclusion (CDI) is available to help your organization, wherever its focus may currently be regarding inclusion of employees with disabilities in your workplace. 

Learn more by registering for CDI’s upcoming webinar, “The Ethics of Data Collection”, scheduled for Tuesday, 2/4/25, 11am CST.  
Update on Section 503 of the Rehab Act – Totality Statements
​May 2024
Submitted by: ​Judy Julius
Owner/Primary Consultant                                                                                 
EEO Consulting, LLC
Board Member, Center for Disability Inclusion
[email protected]
http://www.eeo-consulting.net/

​While the Rehab Act of 1973 is 50 years old, it’s actually only been ten years since the OFCCP started requiring employers to measure their results. “What gets measured gets done!” was the mantra on 3/24/14.  They were right!  And employers are starting to move the needle and realize the value of a truly inclusive workforce. Then, from 2019 to 2020 the OFCCP conducted 250 Focused Reviews on Section 503 and they learned a lot.

So, in the fall of 2023 the OFCCP added a new requirements to the Itemized Listing that goes out with compliance review 30-day scheduling notices. The OFCCP now wants documentation which indicates “whether you believe the totality of your efforts were effective,” and if they weren’t effective, what “alternate efforts” have you identified. Basically, if your efforts are not working, what are you doing to fix it?

And you can’t wait to measure your results until you get a compliance review since some of the data metrics go back for three years.  So here are a few quick reminders:
  1. Use CC305 in your ATS and Onboarding to solicit disability status.
  2. Don’t forget you must resurvey your entire workforce every 5 years, and remind folks at least once in between. So if you did your first survey in 2014, and your resurvey in 2019, that means this is the year for your next resurvey.
  3. Track the sources of your applicants and hires in your ATS so you can see what’s working, (and don’t be surprised or discouraged when Indeed is on the top of that list).
  4. Keep an outreach log including names, phone numbers, how many people you talked to and if you hired anyone. The OFCCP wants details. The more the better. And they expect you to evaluate each event!
  5. Maintain your overall and disability data on applicants and hires for three years.
  6. Ensure your audit and reporting systems are in place so you know if you met your goals.
  7. Make a totality statement at the end of the year. If your outreach is not working, fix it, just like you would fix any other business practice that is not working.

​Remember, you can’t outsource your outreach! The success of your 503 AAP really depends on those partnerships you have built with your local community-based organizations and your culture of inclusion.

Here are some additional resources.