FXBG Neighbors Podcast
Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast
FXBG Neighbors Podcast
EP #171 How To Make Your Website Usable For Everyone
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Your website might look great and still be impossible for someone to use. On Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we sit down with Renee Dunn from Elevage Digital to unpack what website accessibility actually means for real people and real local businesses. Renee helps small businesses, nonprofits, and local governments reduce legal liability and grow their customer base by making websites more usable for everyone, including visitors who rely on screen readers, keyboard navigation, or higher color contrast to read and act on content.
We get practical fast. Renee explains the day-to-day realities of browsing with a screen reader, why mouse-only design can shut users out, and how choices like flashing motion effects can create serious problems. We also talk about the “accessibility widget” trend and why overlays often fail to deliver on their promises. If you’ve ever wondered whether a quick tool can make your site “compliant,” Renee shares what automated scanners can catch, what they miss, and why manual testing is still essential.
Then we zoom into the process: what a real accessibility audit looks like, how to prioritize the biggest blockers first, and why e-commerce sites can be especially tricky from product page through checkout. Renee also makes the case for building accessibility into a new website from the beginning by aligning code, design, and content structure, especially on WordPress.
If you want a website that more people can use and trust, this conversation will give you a clear starting point. Subscribe, share this with a business owner friend, and leave a review so more neighbors can find the show.
Renee Dunn
Elevage Digital
renee@elevagedigital.com
Welcome To FXBG Neighbors
SpeakerThis is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.
Speaker 2Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I'm excited to introduce you to my guest today. We've got Renee Dunn joining us, and she is with Elevage Digital. Renee, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1Yeah, thank you for having me, and uh especially on Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
Speaker 2What a great day for this interview. So I'm looking forward to learning all about you and your business and why this day is so important to you. So let's start there.
What Website Accessibility Means
Speaker 2Share with us what is Elevage Digital?
Speaker 1Yeah, thank you. So Elevage Digital, we help small businesses, nonprofits, and local governments uh reduce their legal liability and increase their customer and user base by improving their website accessibility. Uh so we build websites, we do website accessibility audits, and uh remediate existing uh websites to make them more accessible.
Speaker 2Amazing. So I just learned what that meant. And uh a lot of that is thanks to you. I was doing my research in in reading up. And I for the listeners who don't understand um what accessibility in websites means, give us uh uh just an overview of what that means.
Speaker 1Sure. Yeah, so um a lot of people will will refer to it as um like ADA compliance Americans with Disabilities Act. That's um I I tend to stay away from that for a number of reasons, but that's kind of the shorthand. So basically making sure that you know as many people as possible can use your website, you know, regardless of their ability. And um, you know, so if people have um vision issues or motor um issues, or you know, if someone has um, you know, epilepsy or something like that, right? You don't have a lot of flashing and and um strobe motion effects on your site that um that could be problematic for them, right? So it's trying to um code and design your site in a way um, like I said, that that really just makes it usable for um as many people as possible.
Speaker 2Amazing. So I think that it's it's so um wonderful that we're able to do that. And um so on the user side, um tell me about how that works. If you are someone who has a disability, um, what does that look like? I I always see this button in the corner of a website screen.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Screen Readers And Keyboard Navigation
Speaker 1So um, you know, depending on um depending on people's ability, right? You may use a website in a different way, right? So people who are um who are blind, they will use a screen reader, right? So it's a sop piece of software that will read out um the content of the website. Um, and you know, depending on how the website is coded, it'll um tell them like this is an image or you know, this is a link or this is a button or something like that. Um certain um for certain users, um, you know, we're all used to kind of using a mouse, right, to interact with a website, but not everybody does that. Sometimes people only use their keyboard. And so, you know, a website needs to be coded a specific way um to provide that level of support. Um, having colors, using colors on your site that have a high enough contrast so that if someone is colorblind or if they have low vision, right, they can still perceive the content. So it's it's a lot of different things that go into it.
Speaker 2So interesting. It's so interesting.
Renee’s Path Into Accessibility
Speaker 2So I want to learn more about you. Tell me about your background and how did you get into this?
Speaker 1Yeah. So um, so I uh graduated from Mary Washington and uh started working up in DC doing um IT support for a government relations uh firm. And during the slow months, like in, you know, if you're doing government relations in August, Congress is out of session, and so there's not really a whole lot going on. Um, so I started teaching myself how to build websites. And, you know, this was long before you had these like drag and drop website builders or vibe coding, like none of that stuff existed. So I was just creating websites from scratch, handwriting code. Um and so then started working as a web developer um for an agency that was focused on like large national nonprofits, right? So I was building these like very large, complex websites, um, but you still had to make them, you know, easy for the user, um, for the front-end user and also easy for non-technical staff to be able to update them. Um and then switch to a different agency that was more focused on smaller nonprofits who, you know, they don't have the big budgets, but you know, they still need a good quality website. And um, I really enjoyed that, the more kind of you know, mission-driven, um, small organizations. Um, but that you know, the whole time, like no one's talking about accessibility. This was not, these weren't, you know, this wasn't showing up in the requirements. This this wasn't showing up in, you know, web developer best practices. Like it just, it wasn't a thing. And um, so I I got out of web development for a little bit, had a brief kind of second career in a completely unrelated field. Um, but then in 2022, came back, started, started Elevage Digital, and um participated in something called WordPress Accessibility Day. And, you know, that's really when my eyes sort of got open to just the extent of, you know, the these accessibility problems that exist like almost ubiquitously across the internet, um, really kind of saw like how many people are being excluded from, you know, web-based services because of these problems. And um, you know, and the number of businesses that are being sued because their websites are not accessible. And, you know, so that that was really sort of like the the pivotal point for me. And I um I have always sort of been drawn to the like bringing structure in order to chaos kind of thing. Um, and so, you know, and and creating a an accessible website, it's very complex, it's very detail-oriented, it's very nuanced. And so this just sort of felt like a really natural fit for me. Um, and you know, kind of my my skill set. And so, yeah, so that's really kind of how I got started into, you know, focusing much more on the website accessibility, doing the audits, um, you know, fixing existing sites. And then, like I said, when I build sites now, um, all of this stuff is is just baked into the process. Uh, and then I just recently got my um certified professional of website accessibility certification from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. So I was really happy about that.
Speaker 2Um amazing.
Lawsuits And The Overlay Myth
Speaker 2You are such a you're a very important part of a a business's team um building their website and keeping them out of trouble. So tell me more about that. So are small businesses really being sued?
Speaker 1Yeah. Um yeah, there was so last year alone, um, there was about five, a little over 5,000 um lawsuits. And that was a that was a pretty significant increase from the year before. And what we've already seen this year is, you know, 2026 looks like it's on par to break last year's number. Um so yeah, so there's um unfortunately, you know, a lot of sites that do get sued. Um you mentioned the little, you know, the little icon down in the corner. Um, unfortunately, those tools, they have some very slick marketing, um, but uh they often cannot do all of the things that they claim to do. And so about 25% of the sites that are being sued have those tools on them. And um so it's really unfortunate that you know people are sort of learning the hard way that you know that these tools aren't doing kind of everything that they claim that they do.
Speaker 2Wow. I bet you are just dying to shout it from the rooftop, like, hey, like how do you keep yourself from not visiting every website and contacting the owner, like, hey, you don't want to get food.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's um, I know. I, you know, I it's it's hard. Um, and because you know, I mean, most of the time it's like people, you know, they're doing this because they think like, oh, I'm you know, I I'm doing a good thing, right? And not realizing, um, you know, like I said, these they these tools have some very slick marketing and and and um you know, and it's like, yeah, you're you're a small business owner, you don't want to spend a whole bunch of time thinking about you know, these this really like I said, it's it's complex and it's it's there's a lot to it, and right, so you've got other things that you want to try to worry about. So if someone is is promising you that they're gonna, you know, fix everything for you with a couple lines of code, I mean, I I get it. I I understand why, you know, why people do it.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Quick Scans Versus Manual Testing
Speaker 2Okay. So if you're a small business owner and you're listening to this and you think you you think you're doing the right thing, what are what are some steps that business owners can take to define or or to find out if they are compliant?
Speaker 1So there's um there's a handful of tools, like free tools out there that you can um you can like just put in your your website address and it'll do a quick scan. Um, and you know, it'll look for things like do your images have alt text? Do you're you know, are you using colors that have a high enough contrast? Um, so it'll find some of the big kind of easy things. Um, you know, none of the automated tools, unfortunately, can really test um for the they test for about maybe 30-ish percent of the various requirements um for accessibility. And so the problem is, you know, you really do need to do manual testing um to really, you know, look for those other things that just automated testing can't find. Um but like so there are some tools out there that can get you started. Um and um, you know, and then once you get past a certain point, yeah, you really do need to um, you know, kind of have a manual audit.
Speaker 2Gotcha. And so you are certified in all of this. And so if someone, you know, doesn't want to risk it and use one of those free tools and they want to make sure and they want to work with you, what does it look like if someone comes to you and wants to work with you and they need their website fixed? What is that process
What An Accessibility Audit Looks Like
Speaker 2like?
Speaker 1Yeah, so um usually we'll start with uh an audit, right? So um doing the um so a little bit of the automated testing, but like I said, really kind of diving in with screen readers, um, with you know, just doing straight, kind of trying to use the website with keyboard. And um so typically what I'll do is review the home page, obviously, because that's one of the main things that um someone's gonna come to. And um if it's an e-commerce site, then we test, you know, the whole user flow in terms of you know, the from the from the from the product page all the way through to the checkout. Um e-commerce sites can tend to be um a little problematic. Um if it's not an e-commerce site, then we you know pick a handful of kind of key pages, um uh key templates that they have throughout the site, and um, you know, just do a really thorough testing uh just to kind of see, you know, where where the problems are, and then from there um create you know a prioritized list of things that need to be uh need to be fixed, you know, what's gonna have the most impact. Um, so you know, those types of things, you know, what are the biggest blockers? What are the things that really prevent um someone from from fully using the site, trying to address those first, uh, you know, and and then kind of just work through the the issue list as as there is time and and budget to do so.
Why Starting Fresh Is Easier
Speaker 2Is it easier to just start from scratch?
Speaker 1Oh, absolutely. Yes. It's always um it's always easier to build the site with accessibility baked in from the beginning, right? Don't wait to do it as like, oh, we're just gonna do it as part of the the QA phase at the end of the building of the site. Like you really have to start from the very beginning, um, thinking about the design, the color choices, the font choices, um, how your content is structured, like all of that. It really has to be thought um incorporated from the beginning.
Speaker 2Interesting. And so if someone has a website that maybe is problematic and isn't too complicated, meaning there's not, it's not e-commerce, there's not, you know, a whole lot of things, then probably starting from scratch and just completely redesigning it, and then you just transfer over the domain.
Speaker 1Yeah. So um, yeah, we can, you know, basically, like I said, we would kind of rethink through the whole design, like I said, color choices, font choices, um, how the pages are are built. Um, because it really is, it is a combination of the underlying code, the content, and the design. It's it's all of those three things together. Um certain, you know, I I build um my websites on WordPress. Um, certain tools produce better underlying code from the beginning um than you know than other um than other tools. So it's really about, you know, like I said, literally starting from the bones of the the site and and working working out.
Speaker 2A lot of local small business owners need you, Renee. Oh my goodness. So what is something that you wish the listeners knew about Elevage Digital?
Speaker 1Um, yeah, I mean, I think I've kind of touched on it. I mean, we we really do focus on um listen, fixing the underlying code, fixing the design, fixing the content, um, you know, not trying to find, you know, these sort of shortcut, quick fix, gimmicky type solutions. I mean, it's really about um, you know, fixing the underlying um, like listen, literally fixing the underlying structure, um, doing it right, and um, you know, as opposed to like I said, trying to use an overlay or anything like that.
Speaker 2Yeah.
How To Reach Renee And Nominate
Speaker 2Well, if the listeners want to fix their website, if they need a new website, or if they just want to ask you a question, how can they find you?
Speaker 1Yeah, so uh, you know, the best place is the website. So it's elevagedigital.com. Um, or you can just email me directly at Renee, um, R-E-N-E-E at elevage digital.com.
Speaker 2Amazing. Renee, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast and teaching us about accessibility and websites. I know I learned so much, and I appreciate you sharing with us.
SpeakerThank you. Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to FXBG NeighborsPodcast.com.