Acquia Enhances Website Accessibility with Monsido, Now Supports WCAG 2.2 Guidelines

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is an annual event that focuses on access and inclusion. Each year, it draws attention to the vital role of digital accessibility, encouraging communities to think and discuss its impact on the one billion people worldwide with disabilities and impairments. 

GAAD will take place on May 16th, enshrining this as “Digital Accessibility Month.” Many organizations use this opportunity to promote and reinforce their efforts to support accessibility, so the channels are aflutter with messaging. 

Heightened awareness is a good thing. It's also a stark reminder that we're still struggling with digital equality. 

Case in point: In 2020, WebAIM – a not-for-profit practice within the Institute for Disability Research, Policy & Practice at Utah State University – analyzed one million website homepages for accessibility issues. According to its report, over 98% of the scanned sites had at least one failure based on the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) internationally recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

The causes of the compliance errors were broad, but the biggest offenders were low-contrast text and missing ALT tags for images. Very basic issues that could be addressed in a matter of seconds without complex coding or refactoring. 

And therein lies the problem: developers and content creators still don't fully prioritize the importance of ensuring digital equality – nor are they incentivized to do so. Further, the momentary nature of “compliance” remains a challenge, as web content isn't always persistent. As such, a site can lose its error-free status with the addition of a single blog post. 

It would be easy to blame the tools, but we have a plethora to choose from and several are exceedingly good. Spotting most (if not all) of the critical errors can be fully automated and reports produced with a predictable cadence. And while humans are required to remediate many of the issues, we wouldn't have as many to correct if we simply took the right steps from the beginning. 

No, the problem lies with us. The builders. The creators. The practitioners. 

For too long, we've stoked a culture of disregard for embracing accessibility at a foundational level and de-prioritized education and awareness. We shouldn't be thinking about it on just one day every year; accessibility must be elemental to how we create and care for every experience in our digital ecosystem. 

The good news is that we're making progress, and not just as a result of class-action lawsuits. We have better systems and structural processes than ever before. More institutional guidance is emerging, and the WCAG standards are continuing to evolve and expand. The GAAD Foundation (part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day) has also been on a mission to disrupt the culture of technology and digital product development to include accessibility as a core requirement. 

The policy landscape is shifting, too, as more governance enters the equation. Europe's Web Accessibility Directive has been in force since 2016 but was reviewed in 2022 following the pandemic's unprecedented acceleration of digital commerce. It complements the broader European Accessibility Act, which is similar to the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act, but provides deeper monitoring and reporting of websites and digital properties. 

Of course, there's still confusion. And while some litigation has been “settled” (see: Robles v. Domino's Pizza), private businesses still aren't hitting the mark. There's also the emergence of AI tools, which promise to streamline scanning and automatically generate ALT tags. That's cool – but even in light of these advances, there's still a major gap to backfill.

Here's the bottom line: we have an ethical and moral obligation to reinforce accessibility. It's the right thing to do, and will ultimately impact everyone (it's true that with age, a great deal of us will likely develop one or more disabilities or impairments). 

But as I heard from many attendees at Acquia Engage last fall – just after the DXP announced its acquisition of Monsido, a best-of-breed web accessibility and optimization platform – there's a business imperative as well: people with disabilities are customers, and experiences that aren't accessible will almost certainly drive them to another brand.

Acquia made accessibility a core theme of its annual conference in 2023, and it's continuing to provide users with the knowledge and resources to be successful. In fact, they just announced that Monsido now offers support for WCAG 2.2, the latest set of web content accessibility guidelines recommended by the W3C. 

By using its signature Accessibility Module in Monsido, Acquia customers can automatically scan their websites, obtain an accessibility score, and receive actionable recommendations to help ensure the accessibility of their digital content for individuals with disabilities. By reducing the friction and making it part of the flow, Monsido is helping to ensure accessibility. 

“WCAG 2.2 stands as the globally recognized benchmark for digital accessibility, and marks a pivotal step toward a more accessible and inclusive digital world,” said Jennifer Griffin Smith, Chief Market Officer at Acquia. “Keeping pace with the latest guidelines as they emerge is a major challenge but a necessary one."

Necessary indeed. As Jennifer cited, 51% of consumers are willing to pay more to companies committed to digital accessibility while 41% are willing to pay up to 10% more. 

“Monsido simplifies this process,” she said, "making it easy to identify and proactively fix accessibility issues, avoid penalties for non-compliance, and most importantly maximize the return on marketing investments by improving the digital experience for all users to ensure wider reach and more audience engagement.” 

Evolving with the WCAG standards

If you're not familiar with the WCAG, it's worth noting that the guidelines have been developed through the W3C process in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world. The goal is simple: provide a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.

The WCAG documents explain how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities, ensuring they are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (the guidelines get more granular from here). Web “content” generally refers to the information in a web page or web application, including natural information – such as text, images, and sounds – as well as code or markup that defines structure, presentation, and other variables.

WCAG 2.1 addressed key accessibility issues for individuals with blindness, deafness, and mobility requirements, improving upon its previous benchmarks. WCAG 2.2 builds on these efforts, adding new criteria to make the web more productive for those with low vision and cognitive disabilities, as well as those using tablets and other mobile devices. New device form factors present challenges for the WCAG; as mobile and IoT continue to evolve, the guidelines must also adapt to how users interface with new kinds of hardware. 

With so many factors at play – and so much content across channels – brands and organizations are seeking solutions like Monsido to address the scope and scale of managing an accessibility strategy. Having best-of-breed technology that's integrated with their DXP makes the entire process easier and faster, but also more trustworthy. 

“Customers who see accessibility as a foundation for digital experience want a solution that’s a core part of their DXP provider’s portfolio, not a tool off to the side as an ad-hoc consideration,” Jennifer said, “We’re seeing increased adoption because we’re putting our customers in a position to address digital accessibility proactively as part of a broader effort to create digital experiences that are also frictionless, relevant, and safe – or, as we often say, productive.”

The Monsido platform addresses common accessibility issues against these latest WCAG guidelines and enables errors to be filtered by the desired level of compliance (e.g. A, AA, or AAA) for easy prioritization. Comprehensive reports explain how to resolve issues, and the Accessibility Fast Track feature empowers teams to instantly fix repetitive errors across multiple pages. This includes elements such as links, images, and text. It also addresses accessibility issues in bulk – all with the touch of a button.

For additional support, teams will also have access to Acquia's Accessibility Help Center, which breaks down the more technical WCAG 2.2 checks in plain language. This is key, as accessibility still requires human support to help unpack and remediate certain issues like keyboard tabbing for focusable elements. 

Spotlighting the importance of digital accessibility

Acquia’s stated mission is to help customers build a better digital future – one that's more inclusive, accessible, and sets new benchmarks for performance and innovation. With GAAD just a few days away, Acquia is using this month to spotlight digital accessibility as a critical element of every organization’s digital practices.  

“We’re seeing a real shift in organizations who acknowledge that digital accessibility is a priority, which is wonderful because it never should have been seen as a nice-to-have," Jennifer shared. “Of course, there are varying states of maturity here. For some, increased regulatory pressure is still the forcing function. But more often, we’re seeing more business leaders who want to embed digital accessibility into their marketing programs because they recognize that’s the clearest pathway to maximizing the business benefits. And that’s ultimately what differentiates Monsido.” 

Throughout May, Acquia will offer opportunities for technology and marketing professionals to learn about the state of digital accessibility and get inspired to make meaningful improvements. This includes a host of webinars on subjects like “The Hidden Cost of Ignoring Digital Accessibility,” “The Digital Accessibility Dilemma,” and "Achieving Near Perfect Web Accessibility, which features a use case with the Salvation Army. 

Collaborative workshops at Acquia Engage London and Paris – as well as DrupalCon Portland – will give attendees the opportunity to learn accessibility fundamentals and how to apply them in website design and development. Acquia is also promoting daily accessibility facts across its social channels and even offering downloadable animated American Sign Language emojis for Slack and social media. 

Why it matters

Simply put: because people matter. Every one of us. We all deserve dignity and respect, and accessing digitally equitable experiences should be a basic, fundamental expectation. 

By all accounts, brands and organizations are waking up to this, albeit slowly. Governments have been exerting pressure, but not evenly or in all places. There's also the persistent lack of understanding around digital accessibility, and whether customers have choices or options to utilize other channels (vis-à-vis making a call versus using an app). At these moments, we should remind ourselves of the impact that ramps and accessible bathrooms have had on our culture, allowing people with disabilities to know a level of freedom and independence they are entitled to. 

Should we not demand the same from digital experiences?

There are great tools out there, and Monsido is certainly among the top of the list. At the same time, it would be shortsighted to pin all hope and responsibility on the tool. Companies need to instill a culture of accessibility at the foundational level – and for those vendors building websites, we need to think about accessibility first and not treat it like an afterthought. Not only will it deliver better results all around, but it will save money in the long run by avoiding labor-intensive remediation or costly fines.

A quick side note: We spend a lot of time talking about website accessibility, but native mobile apps should also meet the same benchmarks as places of public accommodation. Not all tools are capable of crawling and identifying issues within mobile apps, but several options, like Deque, offer a blend of AI-powered technologies and professional services for mobile app accessibility testing. 

What's clear is that Acquia is making good on its own commitment to accessibility. The Monsido acquisition was a sage investment, but the company has influenced its optimization strategy by infusing it with accessibility, which brings a cadre of structural standards that can improve a website's SEO health and performance. Keeping in lockstep with the WCAG's evolving standards is another example of how they are delivering greater confidence for customers. 

And of course, good accessibility is good business – and making Monsido an easy add-on within its DXP ecosystem helps solve problems faster and more efficiently. Jennifer gave us a clue that more of this interoperability and ease of integration is driving Acquia's future roadmap. 

“Looking ahead, we’ll soon have other announcements that make Monsido even more connected and easy to use in Drupal implementations," she said, "as well as integrations that provide customers with more flexibility and extend our compliance with global accessibility guidelines.”

Finally, I'll leave you with this: at Acquia Engage Boston, I had the opportunity to see Haben Girma give a presentation called The Univeral Benefits of Inclusive Design. As the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, Haben has long been a champion for digital accessibility. 

During her session, she stood in front of a crowded room and delivered a powerful talk – all without seeing or hearing the audience. This would have been impossible without the physical cache of accessible resources, but equally so without digital assistive capabilities.

Using her braille keyboard, she shared how technology has unlocked so much for her, even though most tech is developed with non-disabled users in mind. 

“Disability sparks innovation,” she said. “It spurs creativity that ends up helping everyone.” 

So the next time you need to add an ALT description to an image, remember that you're not just doing your part to help one person – you're helping one billion. 

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