Usablenet has launched a major initiative to encourage brands to make their digital properties, including websites and mobile apps, accessible.

Much of our lives take place in the digital domain. Still, many brands inadvertently put up barriers preventing people with impairments that affect vision or hearing from accessing their digital content. Apart from being unfair to these people, it’s also bad business to exclude a consumer group, made up of millions of people, from engaging with you online.

Although the laws on accessibility to digital properties are far more vague than those relating to the physical world, things are changing quickly. In fact, an increasing number of private lawsuits are being brought against companies whose digital properties fail the accessibility and inclusivity test.

It may seem like a daunting task to take a large, sprawling website that has not been built with accessibility in mind and make it accessible. However, there is a method and a process that helps webmasters make the most urgent quick fixes to the key pages and flows rapidly, while also enabling them to address the wider issues across their digital properties in the longer term.

Usablenet has put together a whitepaper explaining the issues around accessibility in more detail, and explaining how to tackle the problem. You can download the whitepaper here.