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Getting to the Bottom Line: Conversations to help business owners maximize revenue, profit, and cash flow
Whether you're looking to boost your profits or simply gain a clearer understanding what drives business success, "Getting to the Bottom Line" is your ultimate guide to unlocking the strategies and secrets behind sustainable growth and the financial freedom you deserve. Tune in and discover how to turn your business goals into tangible results, one insightful conversation at a time.
Getting to the Bottom Line: Conversations to help business owners maximize revenue, profit, and cash flow
Grow Your Customer Base With Digital Accessibility with Nicole Nault
Discover how embracing digital accessibility can transform your business landscape with insights from web designer and certified digital accessibility specialist, Nicole Nault. Driven by her personal journey with visual impairment, Nicole transitioned from event management to crafting inclusive digital spaces, and she’s here to share her expertise. Learn why making your website accessible isn’t just a legal obligation but a strategic advantage. By implementing features like alternative text for images and closed captions for videos, businesses can not only enhance user experience but also tap into a wider audience, considering that one in five people have a disability.
The discussion doesn't stop at compliance; it’s about creating genuine connections with your audience. We delve into the legal frameworks such as the ADA and EAA and the necessity of adhering to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Nicole offers practical advice on leveraging tools like the Wave extension for auditing web pages, while cautioning against over-reliance on accessibility widgets. This episode is packed with actionable strategies to broaden your customer base and boost engagement by fostering a truly inclusive digital presence.
To learn more about my guest, Nicole Nault, visit her online at https://www.accessdesigns.net/accessibility-services
You can also connect with her on social media:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AccessDesignsLLC
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolenault/
We want to hear from you! Send us a message.
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My name is Stephanie Smith, owner of New Light Financial Solutions, and we help business owners walk the one clear path to generating more cash in their business. To learn more, visit us online at https://newlightfs.com/
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Need help generating more cash in your business? Book a right fit call with us today: https://newlightfs.com/rightfit
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Getting to the Bottom Line, where my goal is to put into perspective the different things that impact your revenue, profit and cash flow in your business. My name is Stephanie Smith. I am the owner of New Light Financial Solutions, where we offer outsourced CFO services to business owners to help them walk the one clear path to generating more cash in their business. And we do this by looking at 16 financial drivers of revenue, profit and cash flow and we see those drivers, find out which ones are working and not working, so we can see what levers we can pull to generate more cash in a business. But, of course, there aren't just financial drivers that impact the bottom line right, there's a lot of things in business that can impact your financial. So, which is really why I'm excited to have here with me today Nicole.
Speaker 1:Nicole is a web designer and a certified digital accessibility specialist. With her expertise, she eliminates the crucial impact of accessibility on a business's bottom line. Drawing from her personal experience living with a visual impairment, nicole offers unique insights into creating inclusive digital spaces that cater to all users. Thank you so much for coming and talking with me today, nicole. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I am too, and I think this is a really important topic that I don't think gets discussed enough. That should be discussed more. So I'm excited to hear where our conversation goes, but why don't we just start by what you can tell us who you are and what you do?
Speaker 2:Sure, so, as you mentioned, I'm a web designer and digital accessibility specialist. It's something I kind of accidentally fell into. I had a 20 plus year career in event management and hospitality but always kind of tinkered with websites designing on the side and like starting little blogs here and there, and always had a had an interest in that world. So ended up going back to school for web design and front end development and kicked off my own business about a year and a half ago. But again, I was kind of always playing with it for, uh, you know, I've been in it for about 13 years, um, and it was natural for me because, as you mentioned, I have a vision impairment, um, so it was natural for me to build websites accessible.
Speaker 2:Like, it was never a question for me, um, but just being in different Facebook groups and getting to know different designers, but just being in different Facebook groups and getting to know different designers, I was finding out that people just don't they don't know about digital accessibility or they're starting to have clients ask questions. So questions were popping up in different groups and you know I was able to help answer those. So I kind of fell into this little hole of being the go-to person for those answers. Um. So I just uh came to realize like there's there is this gap um of knowledge for small business owners of digital accessibility, what it means, how they can become compliant um ramifications good and bad on their business, and kind of decided to turn my business a bit and offer digital accessibility services as well and different educational opportunities to help teach people about it.
Speaker 1:Well, that makes sense that you would fit into very well into that area, right? And you know what to look for, because you are the end user of that. So I think that's very unique. But tell me, what exactly is digital accessibility? What does that mean?
Speaker 2:So digital accessibility really kind of covers three entities your website, web applications on any device and digital content. So e-books, course downloads, pdfs, anything that you would download to read, invoices, billing, any of that type of things all digital content. So today we're going to talk mostly about the web. You know websites and how business owners can make sure they're compliant, but really there's the three different entities of digital accessibility and it's making sure that people of all abilities can access your content and your products and services despite their abilities. So who are we talking about when it comes to this? Really, it is all of your users. If you're making your content accessible, it's going to improve your overall user experience. But specifically people with disabilities you're helping people who are blind or visually impaired, anyone who has a hearing impairment, mobility issues, cognitive issues. So there's a multitude of people who need to have access to your content.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. And if I may ask the follow-up question, what does that mean? Have access, right? So I know, like if you're visually impaired you probably have a screen reader. But what other kinds of things fall into that bucket of accessibility? Sure?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so if you're blind or visually impaired, you're not going to be seeing all the content on the screen, so you may use a screen reader which would read out what is on the screen. And then it includes images. So if you have images on your website, they need to have alternative text or descriptions. If they are an important image, we'll say we'll. We'll kind of break that down a little bit later. But someone who can't see that image, that may be an important image. It might be an infographic talking about a sale. It might be just an image that you want to invoke, an emotion of. We can relate to you, to feeling this way about this problem, so that needs to be described somehow to someone who can't see it. If you are putting videos up a lot you know YouTube is great, but there's all kinds of other services people making courses and stuff you need to make sure that you have closed caption so that someone who can't hear you can get your contact through closed caption. People with mobility issues there's a whole variety of them, but there are people who may not be able to use a mouse and they're strictly using their keyboard, so they have to be able to access every element of your website with the keyboard, which means they need to be able to tab through and like, get to any link you might have, fill out any form or contact information, make a purchase, putting the banking information. They need to be able to access that with the keyboard because maybe clicking around with the mouse is hard. If they're, you know, if they're paralyzed. There are actually devices that some people can use to move their mouse around and navigate a website, or there's devices they can put in their mouth and they can kind of click through with that. So there's a whole slew of accessibility issues to address to make sure that people have all of these abilities, can access your, your services, because if they can't, you know, typically if someone lands on a website and they can't fill out the form to contact you to talk about your services, they're going to leave your site, they're just going to go to another site. You will never likely hear about it. So you just lost that customer and you didn't even know it.
Speaker 2:Same thing if you're selling products. If they can't increase in, increase image to see a product better, or there is no image, description or um, the fields in the form you know, aren't, they can't access it or they get trapped. There's what there's what's called keyboard traps. So you might hit an element accessing it with your keyboard and then you're stuck. And you're stuck in that box. Pop ups are a huge, a huge entity of that. If you have a pop up on your website, you know, saying sign up for our newsletter or get 15% off if you give us your email, those can often be keyboard traps. So if that pops open, if you can't exit it with just a keyboard, then that, then that person trying to do that is stuck, so they're literally going to have to turn their computer off to be able to move on to something else.
Speaker 1:That is terrible and man, how many websites you go to that has pop-ups. It's like, yeah, I mean, that's all very good information. I think part of it is just starting with the awareness, right, that this is a thing. And when you're looking at your own website, trying to look at it from the point of view of, like what would someone who is blind, I think it's hard, I don't like where, so where do you begin? Right, if I'm the business owner, I'm like okay, I know I need now I have this awareness for having this conversation, but like that's a good question.
Speaker 2:It's not, you know, digital accessibility. I kind of compare it to like a financial advisor. Like I'm great with personal budget, I can manage my business finances, but when it comes to investing, that's not my forte. Like I have a low capacity to learn that I know it's important, we need to do it, but I'm going to hire somebody who knows all the special terminology and knows how to do it right and someone that I can trust to to handle that for me. So when it comes to digital accessibility, that does kind of fall into that same category, because you certainly can Google you know digital accessibility or how to make my website accessible, and you're going to come across a lot of different opinions on certain entities. It's very technical language usually, so that it is something where you should you can learn a couple you know first steps that you could certainly do yourself, but if you're serious about it, it is. It is something that you'd want to hire a professional, whether you just want them to audit your website and then give you you know kind of a task to do list if you're savvy enough and like to do that kind of stuff on your own. But then you know specifically what you need to manage um or to hire them to actually remediate your content, um. So those options are out there.
Speaker 2:There's lots of companies out there that do that. I do that myself. I specifically focus on small businesses because it is an expense, um and I. It's important to me that small businesses have access to this service, um, because the the big dogs. You know. They have teams behind them, they have development teams that should have this knowledge and ability to do Um. But if they're paying a company, it's going to cost them. And you go to um I mean, you go to Walmartcom. There are hundreds of thousands of pages on a website like that that would need to be audited and checked. We're a small business. Some only have five pages, some may have 100 or 200. But they should have access to remediation services and audit services as well as the big ones, without it breaking the bank.
Speaker 1:I think everyone appreciates that who's in the small business world. And I want to ask okay, because you mentioned the word compliance before. So the question of like why do I need to do this Right? Like, why would I want to hire someone to fix my website or fix these things on what I'm doing? Why does it matter?
Speaker 2:Right. So it is the law. The digital content falls under the ADA in the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the EAA, the European Accessibility Act, in Europe. So it is the law. Just like if you have a small boutique, you need to have accessible entrance, or a restaurant needs to have accessible restrooms. People tend to know about those things. They've been around forever. You may not even notice them, but they've been around for a long time.
Speaker 2:Web content is still pretty new, so we need to just make sure that we're following the law, the guidelines for digital accessibility. It's called WCAG or WCAG, which is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and those are actually worldwide guidelines, which is great, because if you're working in America or Europe or Australia, these guidelines are, you know, over every web content, so there's over 50 different requirements with it. So, again, you certainly could take the time to learn them. It's in a technical language again, but it's you know. It's not something that you're just going to learn in a weekend and with the law. So the DOJ just put through earlier this year for Title II, new guidelines and rules that any state and local government business needs to be compliant. So that means any of their vendors also have to become compliant become compliant.
Speaker 2:So when you're looking at at those businesses, you're looking at schools, healthcare facilities, you know, police departments, fire departments, those local and state governments. Now that just got pushed through for title two. Title three is over any small business, so that will be coming next Um. So you will need to become compliant within the next couple of years that the title to act that they have, depending on the size of their business. They'll have till 2025 or 2026 to become compliant Um, and within those two years they will be pushing through Title III laws. So basically, everybody online will need to make sure that their content is accessible. It's better to, of course, plan ahead, start it now, because lawsuits are kind of becoming more common. Just last year, there was over 4,000 lawsuits for digital accessibility Wow.
Speaker 1:Which is.
Speaker 2:it's been a huge increase because, quite frankly, 2020 and everything thereafter everything is much more online than it used to be. Right. After, everything is much more online than it used to be Right. You know, the disabled community tended to be online prior to that more than others, because if you especially get mobility issues of any kind or vision impairments, it's easier to buy your groceries online and have them delivered. Or, you know, shop on Amazon and get it delivered to your house. It's a lot easier than possibly being able to get out of your house and do those things. But with 2020 and basically everything having an online entity, now it's just come to the come, more to the forefront, where the gaps are and where they need to be fixed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that makes perfect sense Right. Where they need to be fixed. Yeah, I mean that makes perfect sense, right? So reasons to address this in your business that we've talked about so far, obviously compliance, but also it would open up to a whole new community if you're not potentially to have people come and not just drop off your website, like you said. Are there any other reasons that, like this, is really important for a business owner? Or those the two main ones you think?
Speaker 2:Well, um, your bottom line, it's going to improve your bottom line. Um, when we're talking about the disabled community, we're talking. One in five people have some type of disability.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:That in turn is for just the disabled community. We're talking $6 billion a year in lost revenues for businesses because of digital accessibility issues. When you expand that to their friends and family because the best businesses were remote business when you expand those numbers, you can easily double them to 12, $13 billion of lost revenues. So in average, a company who goes through the process of becoming digitally accessible they're going to get an 80% profit return compared to their competitors who are not accessible.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. They're big numbers and I, like my dad is a disabled veteran, um, and I can tell you from the opposite side of like, if if my mom comes across a place that isn't um compliant or is helpful for him, then everyone knows about it. Right, like this is what? Why you should not go to that place because of those things. So I imagine that if someone does come to your website and they would probably tell their family members and if they have any advocates in their family, they would tell other people not to, not to do business with you, which is sad, but it it is right. People tend to tell more negative things than positive things. So really important to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're a very loyal community If they find a product or service that they can easily access with no problems because it's going to be more difficult for them, no matter what, but if they can easily access it, they're going to be a loyal customer. If I can't access a website, if I can't fill out a form or I get stuck somewhere, I'm leaving, and that may not be the best thing to just leave and not make them aware, because most of it is just education. You know people need to be made aware of it and then understanding there's all kinds of resources out there to start, at least start, become compliant and, you know, moving in the right direction and work on it over time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that definitely makes sense. It's hard because you wouldn't know, as a business owner, that that's why someone left Right. So it would be nice if someone said, hey, this is why this is a problem that I see. But one way to do that is to do, like you said, an audit of your website. But are there other tools or things, people you mentioned resources that people can use to see if they're compliant or not?
Speaker 2:Yes, there's all kinds of tools out there. Easy starter points, I would say. There's the color contrast analyzer, which is just an extension that you can add on your computer to check the contrast between your brand colors. That's in the top five problems of accessibility, is not having enough contrast, and it's super easy, it's kind of fun to play with. You can get in there and pick the little eye drop you know color dropper and you just test your, your website and it's not just testing your lightest color to your darkest color. You got to, you know, go across the board because you're likely, you know, to kind of mix the middle colors across and you want to make sure that there's enough compliance. And it's super easy. You just pick your foreground color, your background color and it's going to tell you your score with the WCAG. It's going to tell you if you're compliant or not and if you're not you can easily just slide your color hue a little bit until you get there and then that problem is checked off. That's a super easy, kind of fun tool to play with. Fun tool to play with.
Speaker 2:Another one is called Wave and that's another free extension that you can have on your computer and it will do just a page by page audit and kind of give you the high level issues if there are any. So if there's missing alt text, if you have a broken link, it will do color contrast, it'll do all kinds of things, things you'll get a whole list that you can kind of look through and they have icons, that kind of lay over that particular element on your web page. You can see on your web page this is where that problem is, so you can easily identify it. So I would suggest those two things to start. Any kind of auditor, like wave or any of them. They only catch about a third of accessibility problems. Just keep in mind. And also, you know, consider they can throw false positives. Um, because it is just an automated, you know tool, it might not, you know, you might have alt text that just says picture, which it's going to say, oh, there's alt text there, but that's not really good alt text, right, yeah, so you just have to be aware of those things. But those are two great things.
Speaker 2:To to tools to have in your pocket If you want to kind of start testing your website on your own. Tools to have in your pocket if you want to kind of start testing your website on your own. If you do get an audit done. One of the benefits of that is you will get an accessibility statement to link on the bottom of your website, just like you know, a privacy policy terms and conditions just linked at the bottom. But that gives a user an opportunity to look over what you're doing, to become accessible and inclusive. It will have a contact option in there, so if they are having trouble, they have a direct place to go.
Speaker 2:You know I'm stuck on this spot. Oh, this company has an accessibility statement. Let me look at that. It might be identified in there that they know it's a problem already and they're working on it, or it maybe it's a third party plugin that they don't have control over. But they're aware and they've made that company aware. But I still have an email or a phone number I can call and say hey, because if it's right, versus just bouncing off your page.
Speaker 1:I like that. I didn't know that was a thing, so good to know. Yeah, yeah, All sound like great places to start. Well, this is such a great conversation because I think it needs to be discussed more often and I we touched on a lot, of, a lot of different things, but I want to know what, if you, if you had one takeaway someone should should get from this conversation. What would that be for you?
Speaker 2:Oh, one takeaway I would say just um, be open to it, be open to knowing um. Go through your own website, you know, tab. Just use the tab key on your keyboard tab through your homepage. Are all the links being highlighted and read up? You know? Are the not read out loud if you don't have a screen reader? Are all the tabs being hit and highlighted? There should be a highlight box around it. How about the buttons? Is everything going in order? You know, if you have a picture, you know, maybe you have text on one side and a picture on the other, is it hitting the picture first and then the paragraph and then going back to the header? That wouldn't, you know, that would indicate there's a problem there. So I yeah, one tip is kind of hard just be open to it, be open to learning about it. Check it out, you know. Check out, you know, online options.
Speaker 2:I do have to say stay away from the accessibility widgets. Those, for anybody that doesn't know, they're little. You know, you'd see a little icon, usually on the bottom of a page, with the accessibility kind of icon, and you, you they're met. They were initially built to be kind of a temporary fix, like we're going to put this on our website. While it's being fixed on the back end, they're now being marketed and promoted as just a one and done tool, as this will make your website compliant. And they aren't they actually.
Speaker 2:When you look into it, they don't do anything that any device would do.
Speaker 2:They're looking at increasing font size, changing the contrast, getting dark mode or light mode just native things that any computer does. So one don't spend the money on that, because anybody who has a disability they're going to have the tools that they need or have their computer set up that the way that they need it to work. But they also interfere with assistive technology. So if I go on a website and I have my screen reader on and I click on this widget, it's going to start doing things that I don't want it to do because it's competing with my technology. So then I'm really not going to be able to access the website and I just put a video up on my Facebook page of someone demoing that if you want to see what that looks like. But I would say stay away from the widgets. They're not worth the money, they are not a fix and they do not save you from any litigation issues. It's better to just have the audit done, have remediations done. I feel really bad about how those are being sold right now.
Speaker 1:So I do have to give that disclaimer. Well, that's good to know. I don't think I've ever seen one, but now I know not to bother with that. Yeah, they're out there quite a bit right now.
Speaker 2:So don't do that, don't do that.
Speaker 1:Don't do that, don't do that. It right now. So don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. My takeaway I would say my takeaway from this conversation has been one in five people have some kind of disability. That's a big number. I didn't realize that and if, if you aren't compliant in a way that it makes sense, then you could be losing a lot of business, cause that is a large. Um, you said the number. I don't know what the number was, but a large number of people could not shop with you and I think that makes a big difference.
Speaker 1:So something simple as trying to correct your website could, would you say, boost your boost by 80% compared to competitors. That's, that's awesome. So to your point point, being open to it and and knowing that there is, you know, money out there potentially for you if you do make improvements, I think that's awesome to to know and realize for for every business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this was a great. Thank you for coming and chatting with me Of course.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:And I want to just say regard, like, regardless of what you're doing, I feel like I have to say, if you're not tracking what you're doing, we're talking about things that impact your revenue, profit and cashflow. Right, if you don't ever track it, you won't ever know if there is an impact. So, if this is something you want to do in your business, at least make sure you're looking at your numbers beforehand. Make this change, see if there is a difference, and that's true for everything, something I'm passionate about. So I recommend everyone start tracking their numbers and really watching what's happening in your business, because there are a lot of things that impact your revenue, profit, cashflow, your bottom line that you would never know if you don't ever follow. Follow the money in your business, but, um, if someone wants to find you online, maybe hire you for an audit or your services, where can they find you?
Speaker 2:Sure, so they can go to my website, accessdesignsnet. Um, and I'm on LinkedIn as Nicole Nault and I did just start a Facebook group just to kind of open the conversation, just to have a place for people to drop a question. You know, hey, I'm looking at this on my website. What do you think Any way that I can help? So I, I do have that as well. I'd love for people to join and just be part of the conversation.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I will put all that information in the show notes. So go join the community. Maybe I'll come join the community too, but if you're looking to find more about me and our business, you can find us online at wwwnewlightfscom. I'll have to go get my own audit done to make sure I'm compliant Cause I can't say that I've done that and you just never know. But that's it for this episode of getting to the bottom line. Thank you again for joining me and I hope to see you all on the next one. Bye everyone.
