This post is sponsored by the five WP Accessibility Day Bronze sponsors: Rocket Validator, CodeGeek, Accessible Web Design, Bet Hannon Business Websites, and nerdpress.
As we approach our first WordPress Accessibility Day this week, we are grateful to our many sponsors who helped make this possible. We trust you will visit their blogs to learn more about each one. Continuing reading to learn about these fabulous five Bronze sponsors:
- Rocket Validator – Simplifying Large Site Accessibility Validations
- Code Geek – How Much Does It Cost To Make My Website Accessible?
- Accessible Web Design – Accessibility Plug-Ins
- Bet Hannon Business Websites – Accessibility Challenge Accepted and Won!
- nerdpress – Taking the Stress out of Technical Issues
Simplifying Large Site Accessibility Validations
How much time and effort are you investing for A11Y & HTML compliance?
Do you need to validate a large site with hundreds or thousands of pages? Now there is a faster and more efficient Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool to improve your development process with Rocket Validator!
Rocket Validator makes site-wide accessibility validation easy and fast. The days of validating HTML 5 one page at a time are over! Rocket Validator automates scraping large sites, making it as simple as submitting a starting URL and clicking a button. Their web spider will find internal web pages, check each one using Deque Axe Core and W3C HTML Validator, producing a detailed report in seconds.
Convenient Features
Convenient features allow you to create a better product to impress your clients. They also improve your development process by finding accessibility and HTML issues in your large sites, in seconds:
- Error Reporting
- Scheduled reports
- Muting Option
- API Integrations
Rocket Validator is beneficial for increasing your workflow for
- Large site validations
- Scheduled validations
- Accessibility checking
- Deploy hooks
- HTML validation
- API integration
Rocket Validator takes accessibility and HTML markup validation just as seriously as you do by adhering to WCAG accessibility guidelines, including Section 508 – issues are detected using the latest versions of Deque Axe Core and W3C Validator. To date, they have validated over 4,000,000 web pages and caught over 95,000,000 accessibility and HTML issues.
Special Offer
To get started, learn more about Rocket Validator’s special offer for a 50% lifetime discount on the Pro monthly subscription on their accessibility site-wide checker. This offer is valid for those subscribing to Pro Monthly before October 5th. The reduced price is valid for as long as the subscription is active.
Follow Rocket Validator on their social media channels and visit their website:
Visit the Rocket Validator website
Follow Rocket Validator on Twitter
Follow Rocket Validator on Facebook
Check their documentation site to learn about all their features.
How Much Does It Cost To Make My Website Accessible?
Hi! We’re CodeGeek, and we’re a team of Geeks in Fort Collins, Colorado, specializing in custom website design and development.
We often get asked: How much will it cost to make my website accessible?
That’s a super complex question, and our answer is based on some key factors.
#1: How conformant do you want your website to be?
One of the most commonly followed guidelines for website accessibility are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). There are three levels of conformance: Level A (easiest), Level AA and Level AAA.
#2: How much work is involved?
The most-commonly desired conformance level is Level AA, and there are 38 guidelines that must be met.
Some guidelines are simpler to implement than others:
- alt text for images
- proper HTML structure and labels for form elements
- logical page markup
Some guidelines are more complex:
- all site functionality available via keyboard
- captions for audio content
- keyboard controls to pause, stop or hide sliders
#3: Who will make sure your site remains accessible?
The ultimate goal is to make your website usable for the largest number of people possible—and keep it that way over time.
- Many guidelines are content related, so your content editors need to receive quality conformance training.
- Performing regular usability testing is also a must.
(By the by, the Geeks can help with both!)
So, how much will it cost me to make my website accessible?
To make a simple-to-moderately-sized website Level AA conformant, we often estimate 30% of the total cost for the design and build process.
This can vary depending on the complexity of your site, but it’s a good starting point for a meaningful discussion.
We love to learn, and if you’d like to keep geeking out with us, join us via Facebook, LinkedIn and our newsletter The Geek Beat.
Accessibility Plug-Ins
Joe Dolson is one of the authoritative voices in Accessibility. In addition to being the Lead Organizer for WordPress Accessibility Day 2020, he is a WordPress Plug-In developer, a web accessibility consultant, speaks on web accessibility and is a WordPress Accessibility Community member who is dedicated to improving accessibility in the WordPress ecosystem.
When not making the world more accessible, Joe develops WordPress Plug-ins, which he started building in 2008, from web development and consulting from 2004, with more focus on Accessibility.
WordPress Plugins & Accessibility
Joe saw a need for software that could serve key web site needs in a manner accessible for users (both on the admin and public side) who had disabilities. Identifying, assessing the Accessibility, and trusting that a plug-in would remain accessible was surprisingly challenging – so writing his own seemed to be the most efficient task.
Though Joe hasn’t published every plug-in he’s developed, many are now publically available. As Plug-in usage grew, he realized that plug-ins’ maintenance had become an overwhelming part of his daily work. Therefore Joe chose to develop premium add-ons to his plug-ins, which are available on his website. Plug-In purchases help him continue to work on his plug-ins; donations go to support core work on WordPress and free accessibility plug-ins:
In addition to his Plug-Ins, Joe provides the following Accessibility services:
- Web Accessibility Services
- Custom Software Development
- Accessibility Seminars & Lectures
- Accessibility Strategy & Planning
- Accessibility Testing and Compliance Analysis
Beyond Plug-Ins
In addition to his contributions to the Accessibility world, Joe is a classically trained violinist, playing with (and on the board of) the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra. He also practices Shotokan Karate, English & Scottish Country Dancing.
You can learn more about Joe and sign up for updates on his website. Follow Joe on Facebook and Twitter. See Joe’s WordPress Accessibility projects at Access Monitor and WP Accessibility.
Accessibility Challenge Accepted and Won!
Bet Hannon Business Websites is a woman-owned agency with over five decades of combined experience in web development. Over the past ten years, the team has overseen websites and engaging campaigns for small to mid-sized non-profits, educational institutions, blogs (recipe blogs and others), e-commerce sites and faith-based organizations.
An Accessibility Challenge
This team initially had a basic awareness of web accessibility through attending WordCamps and Meetups. When an existing government client who used their administrative services, became aware of new California Accessibility legislation that impacted their WordPress website, the team was tasked with and inspired to dive deeper into their Accessibility journey.
They worked together with their client Westlands Water District, to redevelop the site to bring it into ADA/Section 508 compliance. That project ignited their passion for web accessibility. Since then, the entire team has taken extra training to hone their accessibility skill sets to build accessibility into every project.
Sampling Accessibility Audit
Bet Hannon offers a more affordable option than a full audit to help businesses begin their accessibility journey. Their “Sampling Accessibility Audit” reviews overall basic accessibility issues in the theme, along with a site-owner selected list of pages/posts, which is typically a good representation of all the templates and layouts involved.
This Sample Audit does not identify every single issue in a site, but rather provides a fairly good idea of the issues that need to be addressed. It’s often important to have a real human being testing the accessibility of sites and their content, rather than just relying on an automated check of your site utilizing online tools. A one-hour consultation is included which explains the audit and issues.
Bet Hannon Business Websites is offering a $50 discount on sampling audits for businesses through WP A11y Day. Learn more on how to redeem this special offer.
The Bet Hannon Accessibility Commitment
Designing with accessibility in mind for all clients is the agency’s top priority. Those with visual, cognitive, and motor skill challenges deserve a functioning website and their goal is to make that possible with websites that meet or exceed WACG 2.1 AA standards upon delivery.
Taking the Stress out of Technical Issues
Running a website can be a tricky, complicated business. Many things can go wrong, especially on the technical side. In addition to supporting WordPress Accessibility Day, NerdPress provides support and maintenance for WordPress site owners, including entrepreneurs, small businesses, and publishers.
Freedom from Website Anxiety
NerdPress clients no longer stress about their website because the NerdPress team takes over the boring, tedious (and sometimes terifying) tasks of managing their WordPress sites. They carefully developed their WordPress Support, and Maintenance Plans to save time to eliminate the frustration of running a WordPress site. These plans reduce website anxiety to focus on what you do best – running your business!
NerdPress provides peace of mind by setting up:
- Multiple backups
- Regular updates
- Uptime monitoring
- Firewall protection
- Speed optimization
- Accessibility corrections
- …and more!
Accessibility Plug-In for Alt Tags
Their support plans include support requests, which can also be used to correct minor accessibility issues — such as fixing font contrast, underlining links, or removing animated sliders.
NerdPress is very proud of creating their new plugin, Alt Text tools, to rave reviews, a free plugin available in the repository. It provides a CSV (comma separated values) file that lists all of the content’s images on a site and their corresponding Alt attribute. The plugin makes it easy to identify all the images that are missing (or have incorrect) Alt Text.
Values and Experience
NerdPress maintains long-term relationships with its clients using “real people” language, not confusing jargon and tech-speak. Their core values of support and proactivity are at the heart of everything they do, which speaks to having clients for as long as eighteen years. Their wide range of experience supporting hundreds of sites proves that they are a trusted partner to help you succeed.
Founder Andrew Wilder is a noted expert in both the culinary and technical fields, having spoken on various topics for conferences such as WordCamp LAX, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Tastemaker, Food & Wine, Techmunch, and BlogHer. When not geeking out on technology and growing his team, you can read his popular food blog Eating Rules.