Protect your organization and Avoid Litigation
Get Your Website or Software
Compliant and Certified for Digital Accessibility
Digital accessibility is a real thing and lawsuits are swiftly on the rise.
On the upside, getting your website accessible could open it up to the more than 51 million people living with disabilities. And that’s just in the U.S. alone.
We help you get your website or software compliant then certify it when it meets accessibility guidelines.
- Multi-Audit Human Led Process
- 100% Code Level Conformance
- Litigation Support
- Ongoing Compliance Management
- Details Reports & Unlimited Support
The international standards in digital accessibility for business websites are set by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and is known as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).
Section 508 compliance is the requirement for government agencies, non-profits, and federal contractors within the United States.
The AODA is a law specific to the Canadian province of Ontario. Its purpose is to lay out a process for the development and enforcement of accessibility standards for organizations operating in Ontario.
Across the globe there are many laws and requirements but most of them including Section 508, the AODA, the Accessible Canada Act (ACA), and EN 301 549 in Europe, all mostly rely on the WCAG standard.
WCAG is the
Standard
to Meet
- WCAG
- AODA
- Section 508
- EAA / EN 301 548
- ACA
Why Certification?
Software-only solutions can never ensure 100% conformance.
You need ACTUAL code-level human led auditing.
Getting certified as Section 508, ACA, AODA, EN 301 549, and WCAG Compliant isn’t just about hanging a hand signed certificate on the wall or a badge on your website.
It’s about the process of getting it compliant.
Most websites and apps have millions of lines of code. It’s important to have a combination of software automation to detect compliance issues deep within a website and skilled human auditors doing a manual review because not all compliance issues can be detected or resolved through software alone.
After compliance issues are resolved, then you’re ready to let the world know your digital functionality is just as accessible to those with disabilities as those without.
Does this protect against litigation?
Making your digital content accessible is the only defense from litigation and it’s important to have a trusted third-party certification that can validate your compliance.
But websites and apps are always changing…
Don’t they fall out of compliance?
When a website is first updated and brought into compliance, for example, the page layout and menus are updated to work with screen readers and other accessibility tools.
Those aspects of a website rarely change without a major update.
Most often it’s the regular content updates, new landing pages, blogs, and page updates that make a website fall out of compliance.
For this reason, your certificate is time stamped with the last date of confirmed compliance.
It’s also why we offer ongoing compliance management. Our software platform can monitor and report regularly on your current state of compliance, pinpointing content and other issues that need maintenance.
With our ongoing compliance management service you get monthly reports and you also get manual human audits including re-certification every 3 or 6 months.
Ongoing Compliance Management Available
Free Litigation Support
As part of Ongoing Compliance Management, we offer litigation support in the event that you receive a demand letter or are sued for lack of WCAG compliance.
We will review all claims made against your site for validity and provide supporting evidence to refute or defend against those claims. For all valid claims, we can quickly help you to remediate those issues.
Please note: this is not legal advice and is no substitute to proper legal counsel.
What Clients Are Saying
“As a leading provider of a SaaS platform in the highly-regulated world of rental housing, ADA compliance is critical for our clients to not only reduce online risk, but reach a wider audience.
We optimized our platform to the latest accessibility standards and scored at 100% utilizing the most popular online tools. Looking to certify our platform, we engaged ABILITY after an exhaustive search of compliance firms, to review our work. We quickly learned that what is perceived as best practices from go-to resources for web developers, does not meet WCAG standards.
ABILITY not only helped us navigate our way to a fully certified platform, but are keeping us compliant with ongoing audits. Their team is professional, responsive, and the most knowledgeable firm we encountered in our pursuit for ADA digital compliance.“
Kerry W. Kirby, CEO
365 Connect
“Receiving our compliance certification from ABILITY was a very positive experience. The team is amazing, and showed a high level of professionalism–they are definitely customer service oriented. We had great rapport and communication throughout the entire experience. The ABILITY team was always quick to respond and worked with our staff to get the job done. They were very flexible and worked with us on how to address and solve our compliance issues, and saved us money in the process. Our certification process had a quick turnaround, and the level of detail in the audits themselves was impressive.”
Emily Goldstein, Technical Project Manager
Intellum
“We’re very happy with the ongoing commitment that ABILITY provides to us as a Certification client–it goes beyond good customer service. ABILITY really wants to make it work, and works with us every step of the way.”
Nigel Evans, Director of Product Management
James Evans & Associates
TRUSTED BY SMALL BUSINESSES AND INDUSTRY LEADERS ALIKE
What's The Process?
Step 1: Audit and Report
First, we scan your website with our proprietary software to check for the most common, lower level issues normally found on websites.
Then our accessibility experts manually review your site looking for uncommon, complex, or nuanced issues for which an automated scan simply can’t account.
To fully understand how those with disabilities actually interact with your site, we also employ the use of screen readers and other accessibility tools.
All of this information is then compiled into a report that details all violations as well as our recommended steps to address each issue.
Step 2: Updating Your Assets
Once you’ve received your preliminary report, you have two options for remediation.
You can task your own internal development team with making the changes provided in your report.
Or we can put you in touch with our accredited agency partners who can handle the remediation work for you.
Step 3: Re-Audit and Certification
After remediation, we will re-audit your website or software to make sure that each and every issue has been addressed.
If no more accessibility issues are found, we’ll officially certify your site as section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA Compliant.
If issues are still present, we will provide you with a second report detailing the remaining violations and the remediation process begins anew.
If needed we’ll provide a third and final audit included with your certification.
Once your site is certified, you’ll receive a badge that can be added to the website. It will show the time-stamped date of compliance and will link to a digital Certificate of Compliance, unique to your organization.
You will also receive a high-quality, printed, uniquely numbered, and hand-signed Certificate of Compliance.
What Clients Are Saying
“Going through the accessibility certification process is so beneficial. Not only have I personally learned a lot, but being able to say that GBS is certified is a great selling point for our customers during demos. ABILITY’s recommendations are spot-on — their reports say exactly where the problem is and why it’s a problem in the first place. We’ve had a great experience overall!”
Brooke Berbari, Quality Assurance
GBS Corp
Choose the Right Package for Your Organization
One-Time Certification
- Three Full Audits by Our Accessibility Experts
- Full Reports Detailing all WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA Violations
- Accessibility Statement
- Certification Credentials
- Usability Testing with JAWS screen-reader (optional)
Ongoing Certification and Compliance Management
- Three Full Audits by Our Accessibility Experts
- Full Reports Detailing all WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA Violations
- Accessibility Statement
- Certification Credentials
- Usability Testing with JAWS screen-reader (optional)
- Re-Audit and Re-Certification Every 3 or 6 Months
- Monthly Compliance Audit Platform Reports
- Litigation Support
Get Started
Since accessibility compliance often requires a unique approach for each site, our certification process starts with a free strategy call with our accessibility experts. During that time we can also answer any question you might have.
Take the first step towards an accessibility compliant website by clicking the button and request a free consultation.
ABILITY™ | Advancing Digital Accessibility
Proud Member of
World Wide Web Consortium
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a One-Time or Ongoing Certification Package best for me?
That all depends on how much risk your organization is willing to take on. One of the challenges of accessibility compliance is that websites aren’t static. As updates and changes are made to your site, it may fall out of compliance.
An Ongoing Certification and Compliance Management provides a solution to make sure your site stays at the highest level compliance possible over the long-term.
What is included in an Accessibility Statement?
An Accessibility Statement is typically a 3-5 paragraph document that details the value you place on accessibility, an accounting of what you’ve done to ensure accessibility, a pledge of what you’ll do in the future to maintain accessibility, and a clear call to action for anyone who feels like part of your website isn’t accessible.
We provide an Accessibility Statement for every website we certify.
Do you offer AAA certification?
Yes. However, AAA compliance is not necessary for most organizations and requires more specific considerations.