I released a new section full of accessibility resources a few days ago. Accessibility is a huge part of the Siteimp mission and is a big part of why I built the application in the first place. There simply weren't many good tools for testing accessibiliy across full websites that users could buy once and run on their own machines. So, I built one.
But here's the thing. I don't really care if you use Siteimp or not, as long as you make your website more accessible. Do you know why? In 2024, WebAIM released a survey on screen reader usage. The results showed that 85.9% of respondents believed that more accessible websites would have a greater impact on web accessibility than better assistive technology. In other words, the users have voted - screen readers are good enough but the websites need to be better.
And here's the other thing. I started my own accessibility journey about 18 years ago after a chance encounter with a visually impaired customer. And accessibility is the most difficult thing I have ever learned. Just to sit at the table, you need to learn to use a screen reader. And not just use it, but you need to use it well enough to make a screen reader your daily driver. And then you have to learn how to tame that screen reader with the right markup in the front ends you build. And after you do that, you have to learn how to test your work with the screen reader; it's not the red light/green light style of testing that you can automate. Instead, you have to learn to use your screen reader to test your work across different assistive technologies and different platforms. It's a lot to learn. And it is all very hard.
But strangely, learning wasn't even the hardest part. Oh no, convincing executives to invest in accessibility was (and remains) a real challenge.
And so after all those years, I wanted to put some resources together to help others on their accessibility journey. I currently only have three articles published under accessibility but I've been working on the application so, I think that's forgivable. But I have ten more articles in the works and I hope to have them published over the next few weeks.
For now, check out our accessibility resources :