The State of Digital Accessibility

In collaboration with:
G3ict and IAAP
This page intentionally left blank.
When our team set out to survey, research, and write this year’s State of Digital Accessibility Report,
we could not have predicted how different the world would be when it came time to publish it.
Six months later, we find ourselves in the most challenging business environment of the last 100
years. Organizations are picking and choosing expenditures with exceptional care. Funds for digital
accessibility might seem a “want” rather than a “need.” My ask to all of you is to fight that view: in
this time, more than ever before, digital accessibility is critical to the health and safety of people
with disabilities.

Based on the welcome and rapid response by the global scientific community we know a lot
about COVID-19 and its impacts. Based on the data, one inescapable conclusion is clear: the
disease will have a disproportionate, negative impact on vulnerable populations – chief among
those, people with disabilities. If the community we support, people with disabilities, cannot
safely shop for food, access state and local government communications, get health services,
and connect to distance learning and working opportunities safely, via the medium of the
Internet, that community will be endangered.

We can deflect a portion of that danger by working with redoubled energy toward inclusion. In
all times, we have refused to accept a world where people with disabilities are treated as second-
class citizens. Now the stakes are higher. Now we are called to a greater mission and great
impact. Heed the call.

Years from now, when COVID-19 is behind us, the dust has settled, and we’re back to some sort of
normal, you will have to ask yourself if you have done all you could to protect your customers and
constituents. Digital accessibility is a key part of that. Help your organization see that. In doing that,
you’ll help protect a community and do some good.

This report can play a part in that. Our belief is that accessibility practitioners do something good
that is also defensible as an investment. Work in this field must be able to stand up to the robust
scrutiny all technology investments face. This report is contribution to standing up to that scrutiny.
It can help justify immediate investments in accessibility and guide the long-term maturation of
your program. Our hope is that it provides a set of tools you can use to benchmark your program
and understand where and how investments in digital accessibility can have their largest impact for
people with disabilities.

I look forward to journeying with all of you as we grow and mature together over the coming years
and decades. As a group of practitioners, we can help achieve the goal of enabling all people to
live their best lives through access to technology.

Stay safe out there.

Timothy Stephen Springer,

CEO of Level Access

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Foreword by Axel Leblois, President, G3ict
For accessibility professionals and all stakeholders involved in digital inclusion, the results of
the 2020 State of Digital Accessibility survey will mark a turning point: the more than doubling
of respondents year over year reveals a considerably heightened interest in digital accessibility
while key data points of the enclosed report show progress among organizations of all sizes
over 2019.

We are grateful to our colleagues at Level Access for having taken the initiative of this survey
and to the over 1,100 respondents who took the time to respond to its questionnaire. Its
results constitute a unique resource for organizations to benchmark their own practices and
degree of advancement in implementing digital accessibility with their peers, either by industry
or organization size. The report also offers specific gap analysis which often represent “low
hanging fruits” for organizations to improve their performance and competitiveness in matters
of digital inclusion.

Most importantly, those results provide evidence that in today’s environment, leading
companies, universities, and public sector organizations are committing to making their
digital channels accessible to persons of all abilities, an even more pressing priority with the
COVID-19 pandemic.

From the perspective of IAAP, the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, those
results show the heightened level of expertise of its members and the positive impact of its
professional certifications in accessibility. This is good news and a well-deserved reward for the
many volunteers, experts and staff who have worked relentlessly at promoting the accessibility
profession, including colleagues from Level Access.

We encourage all stakeholders involved in accessibility to go through the detailed results of

this survey, and to use those to further promote digital inclusion among their organizations,
fulfilling our ultimate objective of making our world digitally accessible to all.

Axel Leblois,
President, G3ict
Table of Contents

Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 6

The State of Accessibility Programs ............................................................................................................. 8

About the Survey Participants ...................................................................................................................... 10

Relationships with Accessibility Vendors ....................................................................................................12

Drivers, Goals, and Challenges..................................................................................................................... 14

Top Accessibility Goals for 2020 ................................................................................................................ 16

Product Development .................................................................................................................................... 19

User Experience & Design Systems ............................................................................................................. 22

Testing Process ................................................................................................................................................ 24

Testing Tools..................................................................................................................................................... 26

Auditing the Accessibility Audit Report....................................................................................................... 28

Training & Certifications................................................................................................................................. 29

Buying & Selling Accessible Technology .....................................................................................................31

Accessible Content and Communications ................................................................................................ 32

Legal ................................................................................................................................................................... 34

Level Up Digital Accessibility Programs .................................................................................................... 36

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Introduction
Welcome to the State of Digital Accessibility Report, presented by Level Access, G3ict, and IAAP.
The 2020 Report draws on the data gathered in the State of Digital Accessibility Survey to provide
insights into overall trends in the industry and the digital accessibility programs of organizations
large and small..

The 2020 report will cover the following themes:

The State of Accessibility Programs

Among the 1,119 participants in the survey were representatives of nearly every industry group and
organization size. The report provides a set of tools to benchmark an accessibility program and
understand where and how investments in digital accessibility can have their largest impact—on both
the organization and people with disabilities.

Challenges, Risks, and Motivations

Every accessibility program has a story—a spark to get things started, goals to achieve, and obstacles
along the way. The report tells these stories through data so organizations maturing an accessibility
program will find they are in good company.

Product Development, Design, and Testing

The majority of people who took the 2020 survey identified themselves as responsible for the design,
development, and testing of websites, apps, and other digital assets. Insights about tools, training, user
testing by people with disabilities, and more will be presented.

Content Creation
Digital accessibility is not limited to code. All content published digitally should be accessible to
people with disabilities, including blog posts, documents, emails, webinars, videos, and social media.

To learn more about digital accessibility, visit the Resources hub at Level Access – levelaccess.com/
resources.

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 Who does the most testing by
people with disabilities?
It’s not organizations with the
biggest teams or the biggest
budgets. It’s those who have the
oldest accessibility programs.

7
The State of Accessibility Programs
The survey found that the majority of accessibility programs are young, small, and owned by the IT
or Product team. This was the case across all organization sizes and verticals. Older programs were
more prevalent in organizations with more than 5,000 employees.

Most accessibility
programs are between
2-3 years old.
This is an interesting question of
correlation vs. causation. Are the
new accessibility programs tied to
the exponential growth in ADA
lawsuits over the last few years?
Or are they a result of growing How long has your organization
awareness around inclusion? been actively working toward
accessibility compliance?

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Accessibility teams are small.
The majority of accessibility programs have fewer than 10 team members. This survey question was open-
ended, and many participants wrote in comments like, “I am the accessibility program” or “just me!”

How many
people work
primarily on
accessibility
in your
organization?

When accessibility is centrally owned, it is by IT or Product.

In 31% of organizations, accessibility is a distributed responsibility. Over 60% of organizations report
that the program’s budget is owned by the same department.

What business unit is responsible for digital accessibility?

Diversity & Inclusion departments are on the rise.

While just 12% of accessibility programs are managed by Diversity & Inclusion, that number
has jumped from a mere 3% in 2019.

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About the Survey
Participants
The 2020 State of Digital Accessibility survey
had 1,119 respondents. The majority (76%) were
based in the United States.

The principal industries represented in the survey were:

Education Technology Public Sector Financial Consumer

Services Products & Services

Organization Size (Employees)

Roles of Survey Participants

*Consumer Products & Services includes retail, restaurants, travel, hospitality, business services, etc.

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The 2020 State of Digital
Accessibility survey had
1,119 respondents.
The majority (76%) were
based in the United States.

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Relationships with Accessibility Vendors
Partnering with a vendor provides expertise in a very specific technical skillset and access to
people with experience building and maturing accessibility programs. Only 24% of survey
participants reported a stable relationship with a digital accessibility vendor, with the 22% using a
vendor on a case-by-case basis.

Do you have a relationship with a digital accessibility vendor?

11% Yes, we are in a multi-year contract

13% Yes, we are in a year-to-year contract
1% Yes, we are in a month-to-month contract
22% Yes, we do things on a case-by-case basis
35% No
9% I don’t know

The Survey Says…

Top Five Drivers for Choosing an Accessibility Vendor

1 Best support and high quality of service

2 Best experts with the most experience in accessibility

3 Solutions integrate best with our systems and practices

4 Lowest cost for their solution

5 Most complete solution (best assurance of long-term success)

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Larger organizations are more likely to have a vendor.
The larger the organization, the more likely they were to be partnered with a digital accessibility
vendor and the more likely they were to be in a year-to-year or multi-year contract.

Percentage of organizations with a vendor relationship

Vendor contract by organization

<250 251-1k 1k-5k 5k-50k Over 50k
size (employees)

multi-year 5% 12% 13% 16% 13%

year-to-year 9% 9% 12% 20% 22%

case-by-case basis 24% 26% 16% 18% 26%

Highly regulated and/or highly competitive industries use

accessibility vendors.
When the stakes are high, organizations often choose to partner with digital accessibility experts.

Vendor contract by organization size

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Nearly 68% of participants said that
their organization feels compelled to be
inclusive of people with disabilities.

Drivers, Goals, and Challenges

All 1,119 survey participants were asked about the reasons why their organization has committed to
digital accessibility, the goals they had for their programs, and the challenges those programs face.

Inclusion tops the list of drivers in 2020.

The business drivers for accessibility continue to be a mix of legal risk reduction and the desire to do the
right thing. Nearly 68% of participants said that their organization feels compelled to be inclusive of people
with disabilities, showing that these drivers can work hand-in-hand.

The Survey Says…

Top Five Drivers for Digital Accessibility

Be inclusive of
1 people with disabilities 68%

Anticipate legislative and

2 regulatory evolution
40%

3 Protect brand image 35%

Worry about litigation

4 trends
33%

Seeing companies from

5 other industries getting sued 23%

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While US & international organizations differ in many ways, they agree
that inclusion is important.
Drivers were roughly the same top five across verticals, industry groups, and accessibility program
age. The most interesting data here is the comparison between US-based organizations and
international ones.

Given the litigation trends in the United States, it is unsurprising that American companies are much
more concerned with legal risk. International organizations, on the other hand, can be proactive and
anticipate future laws and standards.

Legal Risk Drivers US International

Anticipate likely legislative and regulatory evolution 38% 51%
Worry about the litigation trends 36% 20%
Seeing companies from other industries getting sued 26% 11%
Received a demand letter (or an official complaint) 24% 9%
Competitors have been sued 24% 10%
We have been sued 15% 8%

Other Risk Drivers US International

We felt compelled to implement inclusion to be truly inclusive

67% 69%
of persons with disabilities

Protect brand image 34% 40%

Protect market share 13% 21%

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Top Accessibility Goals for 2020

1. Implementing a standard, organization-wide approach to accessibility, 45%

2. Maturing an accessibility program, 44%

3. Conforming to current or future digital accessibility standards, 42%

Maturing an Accessibility Program

The most interesting data came from digging into
the topic of program maturity. The survey asked
participants to identify markers of maturity and rate their
organization’s implementation of mature practices.

The top five markers of a mature accessibility program and the percentage of
organizations meeting that goal.

46% 47%
37% 39%
26%

Training is Established Dedicated Written A plan or strategy

required annually accessibility funding for organization- for monitoring
like any other design and accessibility wide policy/ and measuring
compliance topic authoring gates commitment to accessibility
or practices accessibility compliance

Other maturity markers that scored low in actual implementation:

engagement with the disability community (34%) and a documented
and audited process to resolve complaints (34%).

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Factors that influence accessibility
program maturity
Distributed vs. centralized responsibility
31% of organizations reported that accessibility is
a shared responsibility among multiple business
units. Centralized programs are more likely to have
dedicated funding for accessibility.
Distributed

Many mature accessibility programs

have an ongoing relationship with an
accessibility vendor.

Organizations in a multi-year commitment

with an accessibility vendor are more likely to
report having a strategy for monitoring and
measuring accessibility compliance. They are
also more likely to have tools with built-in
accessibility checking.

Length of vendor relationship affects some maturity markers

A plan or strategy for monitoring and Tools with built-in accessibility

measuring accessibility compliance checking

70% 74%
47% 53%
34% 40%
No Year-to-Year Multi-Year No Year-to-Year Multi-Year

End-user accessibility plugins and widgets

Over 66% of the organizations responding to the survey did not use plug-ins as solutions. Plug-in
solutions offer insufficient coverage, often fixing minor cosmetic issues without addressing functional
access barriers.

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Top Five Challenges for Accessibility Programs
A thriving accessibility program does not appear fully formed and perfected; every program has its
challenges. Survey respondents were asked to identify the challenges faced by their accessibility
programs and five common threads were found.

1. Incorporating accessibility earlier in the development lifecycle (56%)

For those involved in the creation of digital properties—product, UX, engineering, etc.—
this challenge ranked high. When digital accessibility is only considered after a product
is developed, remediation takes more time and energy. It is much more cost-effective to
be thinking about inclusive design at the first stages of planning a new product or a new
feature for an existing product.

2. Training (55%)

Every role listed training in their top three challenges. When the clock is ticking—see
#3—it can be hard to make time for professional development.

3. Time (51%)

Time to develop an accessible product — or remediate an inaccessible one — is a

common challenge. Developing accessible digital properties can be done on a tight
schedule, but only with the proper planning, training, and tools.

4. Access to usability testers who have disabilities. (45%)

While the majority of organizations agree that testing by people with disabilities is
important, the majority don’t do it. Many participants commented that budget prevented
them from expanding usability testing to include people with disabilities.

5. Too many content creators – can’t monitor everything (44%)

Whether content creators are writing code or sharing documents, the never-ending
stream of new content can be hard to manage from an accessibility standpoint. This
especially rang true for those in higher education who have professors and teaching
assistants uploading documents and videos for classes daily.

#1 Challenge by Role

The top challenge for the top three roles represented

in the survey:

- UX & Design: Training

- Developers: Lack of time

- Testing / QA: Incorporating accessibility earlier in the

development lifecycle

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Product Development
The longer an organization waits to incorporate accessibility, the greater the chance that the product
will be inaccessible (or expensive and time-consuming to retrofit). When the product team considers
accessibility from the start, they can iterate, test, learn, and end up with a stronger product.

Accessibility teams scale alongside their development team.

While the best situation would be that every developer is trained on and charged with accessibility, the
reality is quite different. In fact, 44% of organizations have between one and three people who work
primarily on accessibility.

As product development teams grow, so do their accessibility teams. The 2020 survey numbers
reported below can be used to justify increased budget for accessibility team members.

Organizations with fewer than 250 developers were most likely to have 1 to 3 people
working primarily on accessibility.

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 Nearly 70% of
organizations
outsource at
least one
accessibility task.

Accessibility is moving upstream.

90% of development teams think about accessibility before building begins.

What is the earliest time in the systems development life cycle that you start thinking
about accessibility?

Got Standards?
WCAG 2.1 was released in June of 2018. In the 2019 State of
Digital Accessibility survey, 28% of organizations said they had
adopted the 2.1 guidelines. In 2020, the number rose to 56%.

Section 508 was listed as the preferred standard for 42% of

organizations (Section 508 includes WCAG 2.0 A and A.)

Finally, 14% of organizations reported using their own

accessibility standard. The majority of those respondents also
checked off WCAG 2.0 or 2.1, so it is unclear if they truly have
their own standard or if they are using a mix of WCAG 2.0 and 2.1.

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The most common project to outsource is an accessibility audit or other formal testing of systems
once built. (See page 28 for more on audits.) This was followed by captioning and training.

Top Five Outsourced Accessibility Tasks

Audits or other formal testing of systems once built

33%
Production of video & audio captioning
28%
Training for our development team on accessibility requirements and techniques
19%
Testing by users with disabilities as we are developing systems
17%
Certification of production systems for accessibility
17%

… for Accessibility Teams with fewer than 10 people

Audits or other formal testing of systems once built

30%
Production of video & audio captioning
24%
Training for our development team on accessibility requirements and techniques
18%
Training for our a11y experts on advanced a11y topics
16%
Testing by users with disabilities as we are developing systems
15%

… for Accessibility Teams with more than 10 people

Production of video & audio captioning
45%
Audits or other formal testing of systems once built
34%
Creation of accessible document formats (PDF, Word, etc.)
34%
Certification of production systems for accessibility
23%
Training for our development team on accessibility requirements and techniques
21%

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User Experience & Design Systems
Design systems help organizations drive better products to market faster. They can also streamline
accessibility—integrating accessible components in a standardized framework to consistently create
inclusive user experiences.

The survey showed that organizations that partnered with an accessibility vendor—even short term!—
leveraged that relationship to develop a more accessible component library.

Organizations that
have customized their
UI framework to make
components more
accessible

Organizations with the most accessible UI components

Financial Services 56.3%

Those with IAAP-certified personnel 70.8%

Accessibility programs 7-10 years old 66.7%

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Most organizations are including accessibility in requirements and
acceptance criteria.
Whether or not an organization uses agile methods, weaving accessibility into daily processes provides
more value for the product:
• Increases product usability and speeds up task flow completion.
• Opens the product up to a new market (people with disabilities).
• Increases organizational efficiency and decreases operational costs.
• Builds loyalty in customers.
• Future proofs work so it can provide more value later.

Organizations that include accessibility when writing product and feature requirements

Organizations that include accessibility in acceptance criteria

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 While 94% agree
that testing by
people with
disabilities is
important, 56%
of organizations
are not doing it.

Testing Process
The survey asked those in technical roles about user testing by people with disabilities, accessibility
testing in continuous integration, and code-level unit tests.

Most organizations are not testing their product with people with
disabilities.
While 94% agree that testing by people with disabilities is important, 56% of organizations are not doing
it. While automated and manual testing can identify many accessibility barriers, the best way to ensure
an inclusive experience is to involve people with disabilities. Their experience is an invaluable part of the
development process.

More established programs are more inclusive.

A clear trend appeared in the relationship between age of accessibility program and inclusion of
people with disabilities. The older the program, the more likely it was to be inclusive. In fact, the age of
accessibility program was more of a predictor than the size of the program or its budget.

Usability testing by
people with disabilities,
by accessibility
program age

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Continuous Integration &
Accessibility Testing
Continuous integration is the practice of
merging all developers’ working copies
to the shared mainline several times a
day. The survey revealed that 28% of
organizations tested for accessibility
during the CI process. Organizations
with IAAP-certified personnel were most
likely (40%), followed by organizations
where responsibility for accessibility
compliance was centralized (33%).

Organizations where accessibility testing happens as part of the Continuous

Integration process

With IAAP certified employees 40%

No IAAP certified employees 24%

With an accessibility vendor 31%

No relationship with an accessibility vendor 23%

Centralized accessibility program 33%

Distributed responsibility 27%

Validating accessibility in unit testing

The earlier accessibility issues can be found, the more cost-effective they are to fix. Running accessibility
tests alongside standard unit tests is being adopted slowly. The survey revealed that only 21% of
organizations are validating accessibility requirements in unit testing. The number jumped to 33% for
those in a multi-year relationship with an accessibility vendor.

Organizations that write code-level unit tests to validate accessibility requirements

No relationship with an accessibility vendor 20%

Any relationship with an accessibility vendor 22%

Multi-year contract with an accessibility vendor 33%

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Testing Tools
Preferences for testing tools change as an accessibility program matures and acquires the knowledge
and funding to operate efficiently and effectively.

Browser extensions and page testers

The majority of development teams (84%) reported using browser extensions and page testers. This
number rose to 90% for organizations with more than 5,000 employees. The number drops to 74% for
organizations where accessibility testing is part of the continuous integration process.

Free tools
The majority of organizations—across all sizes, verticals, and maturity—use free tools. There are many
free tools available and, despite their limitations, they can prove useful.

The Survey Says…

Top 5 Reasons Why Free Tools are Insufficient

1 Limited coverage

2 Limited reporting options

3 Limited results and information

4 Limited number of tests

5 Limited testing options

Overlay-based remediation tools

These solutions apply fixes over a website or web app using JavaScript and without altering the code
and are typically provided by a blend of automation and manual services. They require extensive
maintenance to account for new content and because any changes to the underlying code can break
existing fixes. These tools were used by only 7% of development teams.

Plug-ins or widgets for users to alter UI

These tools generally provide assistive options (like text enlargement) that already available via browser
or operating system settings and fail to ensure an accessible experience. The survey found these were
used by 32% of development teams and more frequently (44%) in those with short-term relationships
with accessibility vendors.

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Script-based web monitoring
While only used by 10% of all development teams surveyed, script-based web monitoring was more
frequently used by teams with mature accessibility programs (17%), those who rated their accessibility
knowledge as advanced (19%) and those who test for accessibility as part of CI practices (19%).

SDKs or automated testing integrations for development

While only 14% of development teams reported using SDKs or automated testing integrations, this
number doubled to 28% for those with advanced accessibility knowledge. Other groups with high
adoption include those in long-term contracts with an accessibility vendor (23%), those who include
accessibility testing as part of CI practices (23%), and organizations with 50k+ employees (35%).

Site scan or web crawl software

Site scans and web crawlers were used by 41% of all development teams. This grew to 58% for
accessibility programs between 7-10 years old and 57% for those over 10 years old. Those organizations
in a long-term contract with an accessibility vendor were also much more likely (57%) to use site scan
or web crawl services than those who had no vendor relationship (32%).

Mobile testing is most

often done with the
native screen reader.
When testing mobile apps for
accessibility, most organizations
use the native screen reader
apps—VoiceOver for iOS (55%)
and TalkBack for Android (46%).
Just over 30% admitted they
do not test their mobile app for
accessibility.

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Auditing the Accessibility Audit Report
Many organizations complete digital accessibility audits on key properties. The survey asked those
who have had an audit to share their experience, rating each aspect of the audit report as Absolutely
Necessary, Very Important, Important, Not Very Important, or Not Necessary.

Absolutely Necessary, Very Important, and Important have been combined here as “Total Positive.”

Most important parts of an audit report

Least important parts of an audit report

The bottom three are important, but not necessarily to implementation roles.
“Least important” is in the eye of the beholder. The question about audit reports was asked to those in
technical roles (developers, testers, and UX). Each of the audit report features that rated in the bottom
three are those that are, in fact, not necessary for those with that level of expertise in product development.

These report features are valuable in another way. They make it easier to create a concise and
user-friendly answer to the question: “What were the results of the audit?”

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Training & Certifications
Training was listed in the top five challenges faced by accessibility programs. While 94% agreed
that a mature accessibility program should have required annual training, only 26% of organizations
achieved that goal.

Overall accessibility expertise has improved year over year.

In 2019, the majority of organizations rated their team’s expertise as elementary (45%). This year,
overall expertise leveled up to intermediate (43%) and the number of advanced teams nearly doubled.

Overall accessibility
expertise of product
team

Advanced teams shared some common features.

For professionals looking to join a team with advanced knowledge in accessibility, these were
the common features:

1. Organization Size
• Fewer than 50 employees
• More than 50,000 employees

2. Industry
• Education
• Financial Services
• Accessibility Services

3. Certification
• IAAP-certified employees or contractors

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Professional certifications
communicate commitment
to accessibility.
The survey results also highlighted the
importance of professional certification. Have you considered asking your
Accessibility knowledge, skill building, and employees or consultants to be IAAP
transfer of expertise result in enhanced (International Association of Accessibility
accessibility for products and services. Professionals) certified?
More than 35% of surveyed professionals
stated that it was challenging to hire
22% Yes
people with experience in digital
accessibility. Commitment to digital
accessibility at an individual level can be
expressed by achieving certification with 36% No
International Association of Accessibility
Professionals (IAAP). When employees
or contractors have a professional We already have IAAP certified
16%
level credential (CPACC) or technical employees or contractors
credential (WAS and CPWA), employers
have a way of benchmarking accessibility I’ve never heard of IAAP
26%
knowledge. certification

IAAP membership is correlated with advanced expertise.

It is clear that there is a relationship between certification and accessibility expertise.

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 55% of organizations have prioritized buying a
product or solution because of its accessibility.

Buying & Selling Accessible Technology

The best way to find out if a piece of technology works for people with disabilities is to ask people
with disabilities to test it. The next best thing is to look for documentation: a VPAT (or other
accessibility conformance report), and the answers provided in a Request for Proposal (RFP).

The majority of buyers want accessible technology.

The survey found that 55% of organizations have prioritized buying a product or solution because
of its accessibility. Only 25% do not ask vendors for any sort of proof of accessibility before
purchasing a product or solution.

Do you hold your vendors accountable for digital accessibility?

Yes, 70%

No, 25%

N/A, 5%

The RFP process often doesn’t include questions about accessibility.

For those selling technology, the data skews toward RFPs not asking about product accessibility.
But when those questions are asked, survey participants say they are confident answering them.

How often do RFPs ask about your How confident do you feel responding
product’s accessibility compliance? to RFP questions about your product’s
accessibility?

Not confident 9%
Slightly confident 20%

Moderately confident 33%

Highly confident 37%

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Accessible Content and Communications
Every organization creates content – whether it’s educational materials, marketing collateral, product
pages, or digital documents. The survey asked those in content creation roles about the accessibility
of the content they produce.

Content velocity makes accessibility challenging.

Static websites are a thing of the past. 45% of respondents reported that they update content daily or
even several times a day. With content being published at this rate, accessibility is not a given unless
best practices are baked into the content creation process.

How often do you update content on your website(s)?

Webinars are still lacking in accessibility.

Of the organizations who host webinars, 23% stated that their webinars were not accessible.
Adoption of accessibility best practices like live closed-captioning, accessible slides, and a transcript
were also adopted by fewer than a third of organizations.

Webinar Accessibility

• Accessible to screen reader users, 30.9%

• Live closed-captioning, 29.4%

• Transcript following the webinar, 29.4%

• Accessible to keyboard-only users, 27.9%

• Webinar slides in an accessible format, 26.5%

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 There are too many (content) cooks in
the kitchen.
Over 43% of organizations stated they had accessibility
challenges caused by “too many content creators.” This
was especially true for those in education (61%) and the
public sector (49%).

Without proper training—which 55% of participants also

identified as a challenge—it is difficult to ensure that all
published content is accessible.

Video captioning is widely adopted.

Everyone knows that captions are important for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, but they are also
helpful to those with cognitive disabilities or English language learners. (That’s not even mentioning
how many hearing people view videos with their device muted.) The survey found that 90% caption
their video content, with 30% of them choosing to outsource the task.

Document accessibility is improving (slowly).

Digital documents have their own set of best practices to ensure accessibility. For those using Microsoft
Office, the Accessibility Checker identifies errors and walks the user through remedying them.

PDFs are not as straightforward and can pose challenges, especially issues of reading order for screen
reader users. In the survey, 18% admitted that they do not tag their PDFs to make them accessible. This
number is down from 23% in 2019.

15% of organizations outsource the task of document accessibility.

Social media accessibility is rising.

In the 2019 survey, only 29% of organizations reported using alt text in social media posts. In 2020,
this increased to 45%. In today’s fast-paced world, accessible social media content is a must for any
organization that values inclusion.

45% of organizations
report using alt text in
social media posts.

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Legal
2019 was an interesting time for digital accessibility. The Dominos case worked its way up to the Supreme
Court, where the justices declined to hear it. The uncertainty was reflected in a lull in new ADA Title III lawsuits
filed. All in all, 2019’s numbers were roughly even with 2018.

ADA Title III Website

Accessibility Lawsuits
in Federal Court
(2017-2019)
Source: Seyfarth Shaw LLP

60% of organizations reported that current

litigation trends have motivated them to move
faster to achieve accessibility compliance.

Legal risk is still a major driver for accessibility.

Nearly 60% 24% of organizations 10% of those came

21% have
reported litigation have received a demand under legal scrutiny
competitors that
trends have motivated letter or were sued over more than have been sued
them to move faster
to achieve accessibility
digital accessibility,
once
compliance

34
Legal counsel is key to a successful settlement.
If an organization receives a demand letter or is sued, the first step should be to secure counsel. If internal
counsel does not have experience with ADA settlements, there are attorneys and firms that specialize in it.

The survey revealed that 65% of organizations that came under legal scrutiny contacted their internal
legal counsel immediately. 22% chose to respond directly to the complaint.

What were the first actions you took upon receiving a notice of a lawsuit filed or a
demand letter?

Prepare for significant expenses for legal counsel.

The majority of organizations who used external counsel spent over 40 hours with their attorney(s).
Given the hourly rate of a quality attorney, this is no small line item!

$xxx – yyy x 40 = $zz,zzz

Hourly rate hours estimated cost

Internal expenses also add up quickly.

The majority of organizations also spent over 40 hours with internal teams, working to resolve the
complaint and bring their properties into compliance.

The bottom line: Accessibility now is the budget-friendly choice.

The risk of a lawsuit is still very real, especially for consumer-facing companies, educational institutions,
and public sector organizations. Putting accessibility as a must-have line item in the budget will mitigate
some of the financial risk posed by lawsuits and demand letters.

35
Level Up Digital Accessibility Programs
• Research new automated testing tools, especially those that can be used as part of
continuous integration.
• Include people with disabilities in your user testing.
• Invest in training opportunities like those offered by organizations like Level Access, G3ict,
and IAAP.
• Bring your marketing department and other content creators on board to create a fully
accessible digital experience.

For more information about making your digital properties accessible to people with disabilities,
please visit Level Access’s Resources at LevelAccess.com/resources.

About Level Access

Level Access provides industry-leading and award-winning digital accessibility solutions to over 1000
corporations, government agencies, and educational institutions. Our mission is to achieve digital
equality for all users by ensuring technology is accessible to people with disabilities and the growing
aging population.

Why partner with Level Access?

• Over 20 years in digital accessibility and only digital accessibility – an unparalleled history in
helping customers achieve and maintain compliance.
• A comprehensive suite of software, consulting services, and training solutions.
• Experienced testers, including many with disabilities who use assistive technologies.

Learn more about digital accessibility products and services at levelaccess.com or 800-889-9659.

36
About G3ict
G3ict’s objectives and global outreach are aligned with the dispositions of the Convention on
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on the accessibility of Information Communication
Technologies (ICTs) and Assistive Technologies.

What does G3ict do?

• Promote awareness of digital accessibility and of effective public policies, private sector
initiatives, and accessibility standards;
• Support advocates and policy makers with capacity building programs, policy development
tools and benchmarking;
• Facilitate and share good practices and innovation in accessible and assistive technologies;
• Foster harmonization and standardization to achieve lower costs and interoperability on a
global scale;
• Define and promote the accessibility profession through networking, education and
certification.
For more information, please visit www.g3ict.org.

About IAAP
The International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) is a not-for-profit association
focused on advancing the accessibility profession globally through networking, education and
certification in order to enable the creation of accessible products, content and services for persons
with disabilities. For more information, please visit www.accessibilityassociation.org.

37
“Accessibility is an outcome.
Inclusive design is a process.
If we don’t include people with
disabilities in the process, we
can’t call it inclusive design.”
– Derek Featherstone, CXO of Level Access

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