Digital accessibility platform AudioEye on Tuesday announced a strategic partnership with Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest, an SEO platform, to show digital marketers how accessibility impacts the performance of search engine optimization (SEO).
“Only two percent of websites are accessible to those with a disability, and one in four people in the United States live with a disability today,” said David Moradi, interim CEO at AudioEye. “We are at the dawn of accessibility. Very few sites are compliant with the laws.”
Moradi said a massive amount of people, based on their disabilities, cannot use websites. The technology is available for desktop and mobile web, with support for mobile apps in the near future.
President Donald Trump’s administration rolled back some of the laws, but Moradi expects many will be reversed under the administration of President-elect Joe Biden, he said.
Think of accessibility on a website similar to the way one might require a ramp to get into a building with stairs. Litigation based on online accessibility, since 2018, continues to drive adoption, he said.
Millions of websites run through Ubersuggest, which helps companies learn how to make their sites more compatible for people with disabilities.
Search engines like Google analyze accessibility when ranking the website. “If you rank two sites, one accessible and the other not, the search engine would pick the accessible site over the other,” said Neil Patel, entrepreneur and founder of NP Digital. “It’s not only to get more traffic to the website, but make the web a more friendly place, especially as more people use the internet because of COVID.”
Patel has helped digital marketers at tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Airbnb, and Google accelerate growth through performance marketing. He also supports the industry through an educational blog that generates more than ten million visitors per month.
The AudioEye software tells the website owner what they need to do to make their site more compatible.
The partnership focuses on those with impaired vision. JavaScript is injected into the site to make the content readable for a screen reader. The AudioEye technology uses artificial intelligence and human-assisted technology.
The partnership will combine AudioEye’s digital accessibility expertise with Patel’s marketing experience to eliminate barriers in digital content for people with disabilities while improving on the site’s optimization strategies.
The World Wide Web consortium (W3C) provides the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) that summarize digital accessibility as individuals who are blind rely on assistive technology, such as screen readers or players, to interact with digital information.
With AudioEye on a website, page and heading structures are clearly defined, images have alternative text, and alternative text is provided for a screen reader to communicate the intent of the image to the individual, controls are properly labeled, link text clearly identifies the purpose of the link, reading focus is clear so that pop-ups do not become a barrier, and more.
The technology also helps those with limited motor skills, as well as those who have challenges interpreting and interacting with digital content due to issues with colors or other factors.