DETROIT – Running an online business is certainly not the most straightforward occupation imaginable, despite the relative ease with which one can be set up nowadays.
Modern tech, hyper-connectivity, and SaaS (among other elements) have, in many ways, made starting a business easier than ever before, but a lower barrier to entry often means a longer road toward success.
In order to stand out from the like-minded entrepreneurs who provide your brand with some stiff competition, you need to make sure your online presence is distinctive, discoverable, and highly accessible.
If you feel like you could be doing more to make your online business more inclusive, here are some top-quality accessibility tools you should be on the lookout for.
Captioning Services
The best live captioning services are a joy to use. They tend to make any virtual meetings run more smoothly, which will likely be a huge benefit for anyone trying to communicate with a remote workforce.
They not only make your live streaming content more accessible to everyone involved, but they can allow you to stay in line with the various accessibility regulations put forward by organizations like the ADA and GDPR.
For anyone wishing to improve their in-house communication and generally make their business meetings easier to access, this is a great way to go.
The Right CMS
There are plenty of CMS options to choose from aside from the big names, and many of them come with their own unique set of advantages (and occasionally setbacks). Choosing the right CMS is essential, as some of them will likely be more fine-tuned for helping create a more accessible online business.
This is partly down to the choice of themes on offer and the built-in accessibility tools that you might need to utilize to assess your website and present your visitor with alternatives.
Webflow and Craft could be good options for this, but if you are already content with the current design of your website and it would be too much hassle to move to another system, you could always think about running an accessibility assessment and manually addressing any gaps you find.
You may need a coder to help you with this, in which case you could check out places like Fiverr and Upwork. Alternatively, you could contact your CMS provider directly and ask them if they could write you some custom code.
Audio Description Tools
It is worth ensuring that all of your visual content is accessible, and those who are blind or live with sight impairment are still able to benefit from any images or videos you might have on your company website.
This might help save you from a lawsuit, and, more importantly, it makes your brand more inclusive, enabling you to extend your reach and cater to the needs of your entire audience.
Audio description tools are ideal for this, and they even help you enrich your product pages across the board.
Whatever you end up going for, designing an online business with accessibility in mind can be a surefire way to keep your brand in good stead with the public.
Author: James Daniels is a freelance writer, business enthusiast, a bit of a tech buff, and an overall geek. He is also an avid reader, who can while away hours reading and knowing about the latest gadgets and tech, whilst offering views and opinions on these topics.
