In order to reach every user group on your website or mobile app, it is crucial to offer an inclusive experience for everyone. Digital accessibility and customer satisfaction is an important issue that comes up when we say "inclusive". At first, your startup's website or mobile app may seem like a place where everyone can use it and get things done easily. But is it really like that?
Imagine you are an e-commerce platform. You think you have all the technical and user interface infrastructure in place for people to come to you and shop. But a customer has a technical problem when they want to pay by credit card. What do you do? Of course, you investigate the problem, find the source and solve it. But do you do the same for digital accessibility?
Just as you need to take the problems faced by ordinary customers as feedback and solve them, you should also pay attention to accessibility efforts on your platform. Because both of these will make a significant contribution to increasing your customer target audience. A customer who sees that their payment issue is resolved quickly will recommend you to others, in the same way that providing an accessible experience for everyone on your website will ensure that your visitors with disabilities will recommend you to others.
In this article, we will discuss digital accessibility and customer satisfaction. This will give you an idea of why you should pay more attention to this issue.
Digital transformation has become inevitable, especially since the internet became more widespread around the world in the 2000s. For example, people would normally have to go to a store to buy a product, but as companies have realized how important it is to offer a digital experience, this is no longer necessary and customers can quickly order the products they are looking for from wherever they are sitting.
Fewer and fewer people around the world are going to physical outlets to buy a product, but more and more people are turning to online shopping platforms. This includes both grocery shopping and shopping for necessities such as clothing and technology.
On the other hand, digital transformation allows people to buy products even from outside the country they live in. For example, a product that cannot be found in Turkey can be easily found and purchased abroad, whether in Germany or China, under favorable conditions.
Making life easier, removing borders and many other factors make digital transformation important. Companies and government institutions that successfully realize digital transformation can provide practical services to people.
For example, banks significantly reduce physical branch costs by moving transactions to digital. Or the transfer of transactions in government institutions to the electronic environment allows both individuals to get their work done quickly and people working in government institutions to have more flexible conditions.
As can be seen, the importance and effects of digital transformation for both Turkey and the world are quite great. But this is not all.
Companies should always care about every cluster of society in order to get more customers or reach higher visitor The increase in digital transformation has of course led to the emergence of a concept such as digital accessibility. So what is digital accessibility? In short, we can say that digital platforms (websites, mobile applications, etc.) allow people with disabilities to freely benefit from the services offered. For this, digital networks should be designed correctly for visual, hearing or other disability groups and appropriate criteria should be provided for accessibility needs.
In the digital transformation process, it is very important for brands to focus on customer experience for their possible future success. Nowadays, the way to reach millions of people is through the internet and even through mobile applications, and companies should not hesitate to make expenses to improve the user experience in this process. Here again, the concept of digital accessibility and customer satisfaction comes to the fore.
If you want to win new customers and focus on continuous growth, you should not leave out any user group and design an end-to-end accessible digital experience for everyone. If you want to reach people with disabilities and enable them to buy your services or read your blog posts, it is important to recognize digital accessibility and work to improve this experience for your platform.
As with everything, businesses that want to work on digital accessibility will naturally wonder about the importance of this issue. This is because businesses allocate budgets for various things according to their needs and requirements. Now we will recognize the importance of digital accessibility in articles, and we are sure that what we will tell you about it will convince you.
As computer and internet technology has become more widespread, software has been developed to make them accessible to everyone. Screen reader software developed for the visually impaired enabled them to use computers with audio feedback and keyboard shortcuts, while magnification and high contrast software/add-ons developed for people with low vision enabled them to use computers comfortably. Later on, the widespread adoption of cell phones and the emergence of Android and iOS operating systems contributed greatly to the increase in accessibility solutions.
All this has led to more and more people with disabilities being introduced to the internet and benefiting from it. As a result, there is more discussion about what needs to be done to provide an accessible experience for them.
As more and more disabled people from different groups are introduced to the internet every day, and as internet-based services continue to develop day by day, the issue of digital accessibility and customer experience becomes more important.
More disabled internet users naturally increase the number of people who want an accessible experience, and more and more complaints and feedback from people with visual, hearing or other disabilities are being sent to developers about inaccessible websites or mobile apps. If your startup offers an accessible experience for people with disabilities, you can get ahead of the curve and see an increase in your audience. Remember, recommendations are also an important factor in the growth of platforms.
In conclusion, the increasing number of people with disabilities accessing the internet and smart devices is a good reason to pay attention to digital accessibility. If you can't provide an accessible experience for everyone, you could lose potential customers and will need to work harder to win them back in the future.
If you have a global business or plan to expand globally in the future, there may be accessibility requirements in the markets you enter. Some countries/communities, such as the European Union, the United States and Canada, have enacted legislation to ensure that citizens with disabilities are able to use the internet as freely as any other individual.
For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) includes significant sanctions for companies that fail to provide an accessible experience on their websites or mobile apps. When disabled citizens apply to the relevant institution or organization to resolve their digital accessibility problems and do not get a positive result, they can apply to the Federal Judiciary. If the disabled user is found to be right as a result of the examinations, the company that is the addressee of the issue is subject to criminal liabilities.
The EU also has a legal regulation that includes digital accessibility. Within the scope of this regulation, all EU countries are committed to making public services accessible to everyone.
To meet the legal requirements and avoid any difficulties in the future, make sure that you meet the accessibility criteria for your website and, if applicable, your mobile app.
In addition, it is crucial that you see digital accessibility as a responsibility. Everyone has the right to unconditional access to information, and failing to provide an accessible experience will prevent users with disabilities from enjoying this right. Seeing accessibility as an ethical obligation in this way is valuable both to increase your audience and to get other people's attention.
Remember, above all else, you should pay attention to digital accessibility and customer satisfaction not just to meet legal requirements, but also to recognize how important it really is.
Digital accessibility can have many benefits for your business. For example, if you publicly announce on your website or mobile app that you meet the necessary criteria for accessibility, you can attract the attention of many people who care about this issue.
People who learn that you offer a good user experience for people with disabilities will tell others who are sensitive to this issue. People who are curious about you and visit your website or mobile app will increase your web traffic, and in addition, every visitor is a potential lead for you.
Users with disabilities also tell each other about their accessible experiences through the various communities they have created. If you provide an accessible experience for everyone on your digital networks, more people will recommend you, which will allow you to reach more people with disabilities.
There are many local and international organizations that reward accessible platforms. You can participate in these organizations and increase your brand prestige by doing the necessary work for an inclusive experience on your mobile app or website. Awards also increase your motivation, and more people will recognize you thanks to the publicity.
With the prestige it will bring to your brand, the new customers it will bring you and much more, digital accessibility is definitely an important issue.
The basic condition for customer satisfaction is that all applications and websites are designed with the customer in mind. At this stage, there are of course some things you should pay attention to. These will pave the way for a really reasonable experience for the end user.
We're getting to the heart of the matter, to reach more people we need to provide an accessible experience, but how? Of course, there are some things that need to be done for this, whether it's a website or a mobile app. These can be divided into technical improvements and content creation considerations.
Technical improvements are the design of the website or mobile applications in a way that is suitable for users with low vision or visual impairment. For this purpose, accessibility deficiencies in the website or mobile application are identified and design or coding deficiencies are resolved by the relevant teams.
The issues to be considered when creating content include studies that will make it easier for a disabled user to understand a content. Let's talk about these briefly.
The services you offer may be truly excellent, but what's the point of your unique services if you can't present them to your potential customers in the right way? This is where user-friendly interface design comes in.
Apps or websites should be designed in such a way that users can easily find what they're looking for, include shortcuts for easier access to important areas, and of course have accessibility features for users with disabilities. A website should definitely have a mobile-friendly design due to the increasing use of mobile devices.
Websites or apps can also include visual or audio elements to attract users' attention, which are an important part of interface design. When designing a platform, businesses should definitely act in accordance with the criteria in user experience design and test the application or website before it is launched. These tests can be done with company employees and a limited number of external users.
To find out what people like most about an app or website interface, you can look at your competitors and their feedback.
If your goal is to reach many customers, it is very important that you offer quick and easy access to the prospective customers who will visit you. Therefore, you should look for different ways to communicate with customers and work on different ways to communicate your services or products to people.
It is also useful to extend the reach of your products and services to consumers. For example, if you have an e-commerce website, you might consider reaching more people by setting up shop on other e-commerce platforms, not just your own website.
By promoting your products through your social media accounts, organizing campaigns and sweepstakes, you can make it easier for people to access the products you exhibit, and you can grow your brand with the positive feedback you receive as a result of these activities.
Nowadays, people prefer to access their favorite websites via their smartphones. Although it may seem sufficient to offer a mobile-friendly design on your website, you can also consider publishing a mobile application to make it more practical for people to reach you. With many such methods, you can attract potential leads and bring your existing customers closer to your brand.
Every person has different content consumption habits. Some people like to read, some people like to watch. Some people like to do a lot of research to get information about a topic, some people like to get detailed data, and some people like to get what they are looking for as quickly as possible... so creating your content strategy according to many different scenarios can provide you with significant benefits in terms of customer satisfaction.
To diversify your content, if you already have a blog, you can add a YouTube channel to it. With YouTube videos, you can attract the attention of more people by supporting your blog content with images and videos.
Or producing special content for platforms such as Instagram and TikTok can bring you to much more people. Social media usage has reached very high levels today, so producing content specific to these platforms will be really positive for your brand.
Customers may trust a shopping website more if it informs them about a product it sells. Again, it is very important for a website to emphasize social media marketing and diversify its content to keep existing customers happy and reach new people.
If you want to gain new customers from more countries, you can offer different language options in addition to various content formats. For example, if you offer multiple language options on your website, but when it comes to the content you share in your blog section or on your social media accounts, if you only include content in your native language, this will be a significant shortcoming for your brand's global success and customer satisfaction. When people see that your content is not available in their language, they will react to it. If you want to get more positive feedback, you need to publish your content in languages that are widely spoken in the countries and regions you serve.
When it comes to delighting your customers, you really need to work on a lot of things. With both technical and business plan-based work, you can attract the attention of people who prefer to buy from you or love your content and strengthen their bond with your brand. For example, how does your website offer an experience for visually or hearing impaired individuals? Does your website or mobile application meet digital accessibility criteria?
Before offering an accessible experience on your website, you may also wonder, what is the impact of digital accessibility solutions on customer experience? Let's answer this question together.
Accessibility should not be considered only for disabled users. Basically, accessibility is the ability of everyone to use a platform comfortably. Undoubtedly, a mobile-friendly website design also plays an important role here.
If a person using a smartphone does not encounter a mobile-friendly design when they visit your website, it will be very difficult for them to navigate your website even if they are an ordinary user. When it comes to the use of screen readers, magnification software and other accessibility features, the situation gets even more complicated because it is difficult for anyone to navigate a website designed for desktop devices from a smartphone.
For example, someone navigating a website with TalkBack screen reader software may have trouble finding what they are looking for or click on the wrong item because of the non-mobile-friendly design. Someone using the magnification features will have trouble reading the text, no matter how high they set the magnification level.
For all these reasons, if your website does not offer a mobile-friendly design, it is worthwhile to work on this as quickly as possible.
As you can see, mobile-friendly design also has a big impact on an accessible experience.
In your digital networks, you cannot ignore the growing number of people with disabilities accessing the internet every day. Users with disabilities are also potential prospects for you, and you can utilize digital accessibility solutions for the visually and hearing impaired to ensure an inclusive experience on your website. Caring about people with disabilities will attract the attention of other groups in society, making it easier for you to reach people from every consumer group down the line. So which solutions can you use in this regard?
Here, WeAccess.Ai would like to tell you about the artificial intelligence-based services we have developed. Our WeAnalyse tool will make a significant contribution to identifying accessibility issues on your website. Moreover, your first page analysis is completely free for you to try. Your website may have unlabeled buttons, slider areas and menus that are not designed to be accessible, pages that are not designed correctly for users with disabilities. WeAnalyse analyzes all this for you.
You've identified accessibility issues on your website, but how do you fix them? WeAccess.Ai comes to your aid here too. By integrating our AI-powered WeTool tool into your website, you can ensure that accessibility issues on your site are resolved quickly and automatically. You can configure WeTool to automatically resolve accessibility issues for later modifications, or if you're worried about other potential issues, you can leave the control to yourself.
If you want to add alt text to the images on your website for your visually impaired visitors who use screen readers, our WePhoto tool is ready for your use, making this process easier. By adding WePhoto to your site, you can automatically add alt text to the images on your site.
Finally, it would be impossible not to mention our WeSign service developed for the hearing impaired. You can use our WeSign tool and create sign language for texts or videos with artificial intelligence support so that hearing impaired individuals can access your content in sign language.
It is also important to make appropriate improvements to your website for users with low vision. For this, you can add high contrast options or a dark mode feature to your website. You should also avoid including unnecessary elements on your site to avoid distracting readers.
Basically, conducting separate accessibility studies for each type and degree of disability and consulting the feedback of these users in this process is an element that will significantly improve the customer experience. The most basic element of solving accessibility problems is to consult the experience and feedback of real disabled users.
Digital accessibility plays an important role in strengthening brand reputation. If you genuinely care about people with disabilities and communicate this to the public in an accurate and transparent way, you will attract a lot of attention from sensitive people in society. In local and international organizations, if you explain what kind of experience you offer to visually or hearing impaired individuals in addition to the various services you offer, you can find new investors and ensure that your brand reaches more people. You can also increase your recognition by participating in programs that give awards for accessibility work or indirectly make accessibility part of the award evaluation process. Let's take a closer look at these now.
Considering digital accessibility efforts as part of your social responsibility efforts not only helps you provide a truly accessible experience, but also contributes significantly to increasing your brand reputation. Thanks to your accessibility efforts, you will gain a strong image in the eyes of both the public and investors. You can suddenly get ahead of companies that do not care about accessible experience in their services and make people have a positive opinion about your startup.
To further enhance your image in the public and corporate sphere, it is important to accurately describe how you offer an end-to-end digital experience on your website or mobile app
An accessible platform not only allows you to reach users with disabilities, but also allows you to reach many different groups of people through their recommendations to others. For example, a person who has a positive experience on your website will recommend you to others, no matter who they are, which allows you to reach a wider audience. Of course, the importance of reaching users with disabilities should not be forgotten.
Increasing the number of customers or visitors from each group contributes to the strengthening of your brand over time thanks to positive feedback. For a more valuable brand, give importance to your customers regardless of which group they belong to.
As important as it is to get new customers, it is also important to engage people who buy from you or visit the content you produce. In this way, you will get a qualified group of customers who prefer you over and over again.
The most important formula for gaining loyal customers is to provide a seamless customer experience. If a person who visits your website doesn't leave with good thoughts, they will think twice before visiting your website again.
Digital accessibility also has a big impact on customer loyalty. If you succeed in providing a seamless digital experience for disabled users on your platforms and make it permanent with a sustainable accessibility policy, you can gain a lot of disabled loyal customers. Moreover, a user who sees that the work done is permanent and encounters continuous improvements in accessibility is always more likely to prefer you compared to your competitors. Remember that you need to care about every customer group to achieve high commercial success.
If you have read this far and realized the importance of digital accessibility and customer experience, we are sure you are curious about the process of implementing digital accessibility for businesses. As with any business, there are some things you need to pay attention to. Let's take a look at them now.
Without identifying the problems, you can never reach the right solution. For this reason, in order to implement digital accessibility correctly, it will be useful to first identify the digital accessibility deficiencies in your company's websites and correct the problems that arise.
You can use our WeAnalyse tool developed by WeAccess.Ai to solve digital accessibility problems on your site, and you can use our WeTool tool to solve all these problems. We have shared some information about our services with you in the headings above.
It is very important that you meet the WCAG 2.1 and WIEK 2.0 standards for digital accessibility. Countries that have legal regulations on accessibility mostly determine the laws on digital accessibility according to the criteria in WCAG and WIEK documents. If you are a company that provides services on a global scale, it will be useful to work in accordance with these standards to avoid legal obligations.
Employee training and awareness raising is the most important step in the digital accessibility process. If a customer with a disability has a problem with accessibility and cannot get a proper response when they contact your company, this will seriously damage the "seamless experience" claim you offer to your customer. For this reason, it is very important to train your support staff on what digital accessibility is.
Transferring these problems to the right departments and ensuring that the department analyzing the problem is also knowledgeable about digital accessibility will speed up the solution process. Therefore, it will be in the best interest of your brand to provide training on digital accessibility in a way that covers all stakeholders of your company. Thanks to these efforts, the customer will be sure that they are communicating the problem to the right person, the support team employee who understands the problem will transfer the problem to the right unit, and another unit that knows how to solve the problem will take action on the issue.
Whatever your business, you need a work plan that is sustainable in the long term. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to achieve the goals you dream of. The same is true for accessibility. If you can't come up with a sustainable plan, your accessibility efforts will only save the day, which will take you away from inclusivity. We cannot talk about a sustainable accessibility policy if your website has accessibility problems even with the slightest interface change.
This is why it is so important to include accessibility processes in your strategic plans and workflow.
Sustainable accessibility policies can differentiate you from many of your competitors who do not. It also opens the door to a truly inclusive experience for everyone.
Businesses can set many goals in the short, medium and long term, both on a financial scale and in R&D and other areas. But if you own a company, first and foremost you expect to get a financial return on your investments.
The more you invest in user experience, the more people will love you. Search engine optimization or marketing, social media strategy and other elements can bring you new customers. But with a flawed user experience, you lose trust, and as a result, the investments you've made in marketing your brand can end up costing you money. To reach more customers, get better financial reports and much more, you need to care about every audience, including people with disabilities, and get the user experience design process right.
Drawing attention to the issue of accessibility and applying the digital accessibility criteria and conveying them to your target audience in the right way will make a significant contribution to raising awareness in society on this issue. In addition, as a requirement of everyone's right to access information, disabled individuals in society will have the right to access what they want in the way they want.
Your competitors, who follow you by seeing your successes, will also contribute to raising awareness in the society and play an important role in defending the right of access to information for people with disabilities. The social benefit of digital accessibility can be explained in this way.
In this article, we took a closer look at digital accessibility and customer experience and examined many factors that you may be curious about. As WeAccess.Ai, we will continue to produce content that will raise your awareness about accessibility in the future. Stay tuned!
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