It’s been 32 years since the passage of the American Disabilities Act (ADA), yet today only 2% of all websites meet best practice accessibility guidelines.
“Despite our digitally-dependent world, people with disabilities are having a hard time accessing information and services online,“ said Ben LeDonni, CEO and Founder of Creative MMS. “Not only is that unfair, it’s bad marketing and bad business.”
And since compliance is required of all businesses by law, the consequences for neglecting web accessibility can be severe, as shown by high-profile cases such as Dominos, Beyoncé, and Kylie Jenner.
To counter this, Creative MMS’s award-winning in-house web design team incorporates web accessibility into its user experience (UX) best practices in all of its client website builds.
“How our users journey throughout the website is very important to us,” said Jeff Aspenburg, Director of Production at Creative MMS. “And since 55 million Americans live with a disability, including web accessibility in our design is the only option.”
As of 2022, in order to support a level of comprehensive compliance, the design and development teams first build all client sites according to the WCAG 2.1 and strive for Level A as a base of accessibility (including font size and typography, colors, and contrast, image, and video accessibility, and mobile website design). To raise that level (WCAG 2.1 AA, ADA Title III, Section 508, EAA/EN 301549), Creative MMS partners with accessiBe, a web accessibility solution.
This allows Creative MMS to offer its clients a third-party plug-in widget that scans a site for updates every 24 hours and automatically adjusts for compliance.
“It’s a great tool because it gives so many options for the user,“ explained Megan Manning, Senior Design Lead. “It’s almost impossible to catch everything — you would need an entire team to do that. So it’s great for the added cost.”
But websites shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. In addition to providing their clients with website accessibility and a new look, Creative MMS’s strategic approach integrates websites with optimized business processes and workflows and streamlined digital sales and marketing.
Companies such as Manhattan Bagel and Michael Smerconish of CNN and XM’s POTUS channel “Smerconish” have sought out Creative MMS for their strategic website relaunches and their award-winning development and design team.
“We source 20 curated articles per day and bring in more than 20,000 people to our website for the Daily Poll. We owe it to our community to make the experience enjoyable and easy for all,” said Michael Smerconish. “And we are really pleased with the results!”
