Brian Lawrence – My site has enhanced accessibility to visitors with disabilities, does yours?
A while back I had someone on to talk about ADA compatibility for websites, and then… I didn’t do anything about it. Can you relate? So, I asked my friend and website expert, Brian Lawrence, to make my site more accessible. I couldn’t believe how easy it was (for me, since I didn’t have to do it), and how many different features there are, making my site more accessible to people not only with visual impairments but also those with ADHD, epilepsy, and more. So, I asked Brian to come back on to talk about what he did to my site to make it compatible, and how you can get yours checked, for free.
To get your site checked, for free, visit www.ADAWedding.com and run the free test.
And if you want to talk to Brian about getting your site more accessible (which can help reduce the chances of legal consequences for discrimination), contact him at [email protected]
Brian Lawrence is my recommended resource for web design and SEO for the last 10+ years. He has been in the industry owning one-stop-wedding stores, VP of a leading wholesale wedding brand, and an accomplished industry writer and speaker.
For more info visit brianlawrence.com, text him at 201-446-1038, or e-mail [email protected]
If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com
Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com
I made my site ADA compatible. Did you? Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast. I am so happy to have my friend Brian Lawrence back on again this time to talk about ADA compatibility for websites. Brian, how are you doing?
Doing great. Looking forward to talking about this new topic.
Yeah. Thank you. And for those of you that don’t know, Brian and I go back a long way in the wedding and event industry. He was my customer. I was his customer. We’ve been good friends for a long time. I’ve had Brian on talking about websites and SEO before is actually, I think the most listened to episode in 2023 was the one we did on websites together.
So if you guys haven’t heard that. or watch that one on YouTube, please go back and take a look at that. I take a listen to that, but we want to talk here about ADA compatibility. And I had somebody on a while back talking about this and it was more of the concept, but now you’ve actually done this to my website.
And and you said to me, is your site compatible? I said, gee, I don’t know. And you went and looked and said, no, it’s not. And said, Hey, let’s do it. I said, yes, because those of you watching on YouTube, we’ll see the closed captioning and know that we try to make our. Podcast as compatible to as many people as possible, whether you’re visually impaired or hearing impaired.
But there’s so much more to this. What you did to my website just blew me away. There’s so much more to this. So start first by talking about the ideology behind what you’re doing here with a DA For those of you that don’t know is the Americans with Disabilities Act a DA compatibility for websites.
What’s the, what’s the thought process, the ideology?
Well, the first thing is. I just try to be a good human being and care about my clients and care about the industry. I mean, I’ve been in the industry my entire career, and I think about all of the different seminars and webinars that have gone on about inclusivity, and I’ve tried to honor that with a passion in sharing that with my clients to, you know, be more inclusive of gender, of race, of culture.
And the way to do that is really by walking the walk, by not just saying we are, but by sharing real weddings that represent those different facets. And I have a, you know, personal, personal experience working with, you know, with the disabled. And it just went, it got on my radar screen a few months ago.
And I started researching it and then one of one of my clients, I think it was a client of yours also occasion at Laguna Beach in California, a venue, she contacts me in a panic, saying, Brian is my site, ADA compliant. And I said that, you know, we’ve been working on a solution. I said, what’s going on? She said, well, the chamber of commerce sent me this notice saying that all members should be compliant with all of the ADA American disability act requirements, or they can face lawsuits.
And in fact, some of the members were getting sued. So I. You know, I looked at the, I looked at the communication from Chamber of Commerce. There was a link to a website or a blog post and I figured, you know, maybe it was like another company that was, that was paying to get, you know, to promote their, their, their solution.
But it was a whole article about all of the different problems that were going on. And also in California, there’s a separate law that really protects. people with disability that they should have accessibility in all areas of life, including a website. And if not, it’s prosecutable. So it made me dig deeper and I really, I, you know, I came up with a solution that is really easy.
It’s quick, it’s affordable, and it really does make a difference. So that’s really kind of how it started. Yeah. And you know, those, those of us who were fortunate enough to not have any disabilities or different abilities we see the world our way. And I think Brian, you know, this story, my, my wife used to work with a gentleman who was a, in a gym and a gold’s gym, and he was a personal trainer and he was a physical therapy assistant and he had played a center in minor league football and he was blind and he did things that.
I was like, wow, Bob’s blind and he’s doing these things. And it was his different ability. It wasn’t disability for him, it was a different ability because it’s the only thing he’s known. And I remember going to his apartment one time and he would always talk about how he watched the last TV show or he goes to the movies and watches the movie.
So I expected to see a TV in his apartment and he had this big TV in his living room and I was like, Hey Bob, I know you watch the shows, but why do you have such a big TV? And he goes, yeah I have friends, I was like, stupid me, right? It’s just stupid me for this. So you know, when I think about the closed captioning on the podcast, right?
That making it for people who are visual, visually impaired, and obviously people can listen to it if they’re audible, but there’s other things that I never thought about until I saw what you did to my website and all the options that come up there. So what are some of the other. types of different abilities or people that have problems with normal the way our websites are presented now, that could be a problem.
Well, the real challange
for the wedding industry, and this is not a brand new topic, especially for venues and bridal shops that have a physical location and have to deal with physical requirements to honor their, you know, the handicap, like a wheelchair ramp. Is that if, if you really, truly try to design a website that complies that is access totally accessible to someone, you know, that has dis all disabilities, it can compromise the user experience for the greater majority.
And people spend a lot of money and a lot of effort into doing their websites, listening to your advice that is priceless as far as functionality and user experience. And some of, some of the aesthetics kind of can go out the window as far as the ideology. But my, you know, my, my feeling in honoring, you know, people with disabilities is you can’t show photographs of people with disabilities on a, on a, as a, as a, as a couple on a website and that, and you’re, and you’re done with, with that caring about activity.
The only thing that you can do is make your site accessible. But the challange is. That not at the expense of my normal experience. So that’s where this comes in. This is more of like a web site overlay that on demand, when a person is, is disabled, they get into this control panel. They make different types of adjustments.
Whether naturally the, the, the most glaring thought of a disability when it comes to a website is when somebody is site impaired, that they just can’t see things as well. So person that’s site impaired could go in and make adjustments as far as easier fonts to look at, to enlarge the text. But then there are people with ADHD that just would be overwhelmed by all of the elements of a website that could now, there are focus tools, there’s like a, there’s like a spotlight that you can just shine on, on one little piece of text at a time.
And then there are people with cognitive disabilities that just need to, that see things differently, that need to have little frames of every little piece of text. So, and then there’s all these other color adjustments. Like, say for someone that has a, that has epilepsy, people that are colorblind, there’s all these different things that one that doesn’t have disabilities takes for granted that, and, and, and businesses take for granted that, you know, people that are, that are disabled have money too.
They have feelings, they have desires, they have dreams. So they get married. Yeah. And it’s, and it’s really, you know, it’s really a kind of like a passion move for me and it, it started like, you know, you and I, you know, go back such a long way, you know, you, when you were with the, with the VP of the NADA, I was the VP of, of, of this wholesale invitation brand.
And I, there started to be, you know, more talk about at that time, as far as honoring gender, it wasn’t, there wasn’t marriage equality, but there was called, it was called like commitment ceremonies, at least some sort of . Well, we were the first company to actually start wording invitations to honor other gender combinations.
I was really proud of that. You know, I kind of spearheaded it. And I also, a few years back, just, I happened to just notice that this young lady wrote a book called Planning a Wedding for Spoonies, which is another term for the disabled, and I just, I bought the book, I read it. I got in touch with her. I said, look, this is, this is a good message.
I really, how can I help? And I kind of introduced it to some bloggers and got us some exposure. I mean, I didn’t ask for anything. I just wanted to help her. So this was just another reflection of that desire to kind of make a difference.
And, and again, when we talk about inclusivity, we have this narrow view of what that means and this widens that view.
Again, I, I thought about my website. Okay. So it is, is the font clear and like you said, is it, is it, is it readable? Because people that are blind have readers that actually read the text on your site. So it has to be readable and stuff, but this goes so much past that in terms of ADHD, in terms of highlighting.
The the links on the website, I highlighting certain areas, changing the colors, muting the colors for people that have a problem with the changing the colors for the colorblind. There’s so many choices. And it’s funny, cause I remember asking you, you know, have you done it to my site yet? And you’re like, yeah, it’s been done for two weeks now.
And I didn’t notice the little icon in the bottom left corner of my site. It looks like a little person, a little circle there. And I clicked on it and this. These options popped up as like, whoa, I did not realize it was as comprehensive as that is. So anybody who’s listening to this, if you just go to Alanberg.com, you’ll see in the bottom left corner, there’s a little person click on it and all these options come up and I think you’ll be blown away as I was as to all the different things that were, that were done to make it inclusive and accessible. to everyone. And, and that was the whole point of doing this there.
So you already touched on lawsuits. What, I know that was California, probably every state probably has something different here. People listening from around the world. And I’ve, I’ve one of the things that I’ve tried to do is be a student of this. And I subscribed to Google Alerts where you could, and this is a great tool for all of the listeners.
Yeah. Get information on a competitor or industry trends. You just type in the different, you give Google these different keywords and they’ll deliver articles and websites that are on topic with these keywords. So I’ve been getting all of these articles reading from different attorneys that, that talk about lawsuits that are being filed.
One interesting group of people that are actually filing lawsuits are actually people that are disabled. that are labeling themselves as civil rights, civil rights testers. And they’re going around, and one of the biggest targets are hotels. They’re going to websites to see if the sites are accessible to them, and if they’re not, they’re filing a lawsuit.
And depending on what state they’re in, the circuit court has a different view of The viability of them being able to file that lawsuit. So it’s very interesting. On my, I actually have on my blog, BrianLawrence. com, I have a, I have a blog post that talks about what states have the most lawsuits, what states are favorable.
No matter what, everybody has a right to file a lawsuit. And once a lawsuit is filed, the defendant loses. Because The Court of Public Opinion, exactly. And this isn’t a public opinion piece that you want to get called out for. You don’t want to be called out for discriminating against the disabled. I mean, there’s no, there’s no political, yeah, but particularly the disabled.
I mean, you know, spiritual, religious grounds for not wanting to honor people that are disabled, people that are all different reasons, whether it was birth, whether it was over time, whether it was. from fighting for our country, whatever the case is. So I think that it’s just It’s, it’s kind of like the right thing to do and I, well, it is, it is the right thing to do.
And again, if you haven’t already noticed this, when Brian goes down a rabbit hole, he goes down to rabbit hole. So I love that he does all of this research and then just imparts it to us. So you’re giving that to us. And this is again, one of these cursive knowledge things, you know, if you’ve never had physical ability.
problems. You wouldn’t notice that there was no handicapped ramp. You wouldn’t notice that there were stairs. You wouldn’t notice that the doorway wasn’t wide enough for a wheelchair to go through. You wouldn’t notice there was no elevator in that particular building or whatever. You would just. Do right.
And then for people that go from not having any kind of a problem with that to then having it. So like, Oh, I said, Oh, wait a minute. Why? I can’t get into that building. Or I had that the other day when we’re closing on my dad’s condo and it was second floor, no elevator, you know, you’d have to walk up. I’m like, well, I don’t have a problem, but gosh, if, if, if this were my dad, you know, he’d have trouble walking up those stairs.
There’s a problem over there. So yes, it’s absolutely the right thing to do. It’s kind of reminds me of the episode I did what would you pay to make it go away, which was about bad reviews. You know, if you get a bad review, what would you pay to make it go away? Well, beforehand, you’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then afterwards you’re like, wow, I would pay a lot of money to make all those bad reviews go away. So, how about being proactive, right? I think that’s what we’re talking about here. Not only doing the right thing, but being proactive and saying, okay, well, if I could spend whatever it is, you know, a few hundreds of dollars a year, whatever, whatever the number is, you know, to not only not have a problem, not get sued, but to do the right thing so that, think about this.
If one person comes to your website and has the budget for what you do. But can’t access your site, but can’t access the content they want because your site is not adapting to their disability or their abilities that are different, right? How much money does that cost you? It’s got to cost so much more than being proactive to do this.
And again, not talking about a lawsuit, talk about lost business because somebody can’t Access your site. They can’t read it because it’s it won’t adapt to them because they have adhd and it’s it’s too Visually stimulating right or things like that. So the whole what would you pay to make it go away?
Well What, what money are you losing? Not just in a lawsuit, but in potential business. And the thing is, you’ll never know, right? You’ll never know that somebody came to your site, couldn’t access it and just left, went to somebody else’s site that is that, so let’s shift here a little bit. And now I want, I want you to get into how people can check their sites.
Is there an SEO advantage to having your site being compatible this
way? Yes. Yes. There, there, there, there’s definite, definite current SEO advantage that has been proven. One of the biggest factors that is, that is more and more a Google reason to rank you is trust. And when you have a site that is accessible, Google is trusting that no matter what person goes to their website, they can have a good experience.
And Google is now becoming so much more intelligent with their artificial intelli with their artificial intelligence. Like, for example, it was, it’s, it’s almost like mythical now about like, well, you have to have keywords all over the place in order for Google to understand how to rank you. I actually did it, did a study for a bridal, bridal store customer who made it made a mention.
Well, you know, you didn’t list this keyword on my website and that that’s not right. You know, you should, you should list the keywords. So I, I’m, I’m sharing with her, showing her that she’s ranking on top of Google for that exact keywords without it, because Google understands if you write for the client, you, if your user experience is to honor the client, just like accessibility is to honor the client.
Google really likes it, and Google is going to know, I guarantee you, within a period of a month or whatever, Google is going to know whether, because they’re going to have permissions and things that people with disabilities are going to be able to fill out, so that could be some sort of filter on what’s delivered, what they have preference.
So, this is kind of like ahead of the curve, it’s not been a conversation that has been going on that much in the wedding industry. Yes, there are people like Kirsten Palladino from Equally Wed that, you know, talks about equal, equality for all and she does include this as part of the conversation. But it just, I just wanted also for the greater good to be part of the conversation, that’s how this all started.
I wanted, I wanted to start something to talk about the conversation, but absolutely it definitely helps for SEO. One of the ways that I also want to make it help the business is we created a badge that or a banner that says that our website is inclusive to all. And I, and I think that that just like you would want to honor gender by having a rainbow.or showing a wedding wire or the not best of award. It’s showing your credibility that, that you, that you cared enough to do this. So we, we created this banner. I don’t know of any, any other company that’s doing that right now. And also something that we’ll share artwork with. So you could proudly share it on your social media as well.
I just think it speaks well for the brands.
Well, again, it takes inclusivity to the natural next step, which is inclusivity means more than just race and religion and gender and things like that. It also means accessibility. And that’s what we’re doing. All right. So a lot of people are thinking, is my site compatible?
And if you’re thinking that the answer is probably no, but if they want to, but you, but there’s no, it’s very, very black and white as far as according to the American Disabilities Act. You have to be fully compliant.
And again, people have done certain things intentionally, but these other things that I never would have thought of, right.
And that probably you never would have thought of until you went down that rabbit hole and started doing your researcher. So how would somebody check to see you have a tool for that, right? A free tool where they can just run this through and okay. Yes.
So if you type in a D a wedding. dot com. It will take you to a landing page on my website that will allow you to take a free test.
All you need to do is fill out your information and then you’ll be given a place to fill out your website and you’ll get an immediate report right on your screen that will show you your compliancy or not. So it’s really easy.
Yeah. I don’t think I want to see the before picture on my website before, before you ran it.
But after I’m, I’m proud of. So again, a D like David, a wedding. com. Correct. Just go there and put your site in. It’s totally free. It’ll give you a report. It’ll tell you what it is and what’s not. And then if somebody wants to then make it compliant, you really can’t do this yourself. Right.
It’s not something that you could do yourself.
I mean, I’m sure if you research. I mean, they’re I mean, I’m not the only game in town But I think that with the badge that we’re offering and also one of the other things that is in my plans is To also do some get involved with some blog blog posts on national blogs that just talk about inclusivity And include some of the vendors that came aboard with the A.D. A. Compliancy tool as a pioneer and inclusivity. So to try to get exposure for the different vendors that are jumping aboard.
And again, piggybacking on what would you pay to make it go away? This is not something that costs thousands and thousands of dollars to do. Right. It was, it was a hundred. How much was it?
Oh, it’s 720 for the first year for new clients. Okay. And what you get, what you’re getting is the tool, we install it, we install the banner and give you the, we’ll give you the banner to install yourself anywhere you want. And what it also includes is compliance is an ongoing process that continually changes.
So immediately, once there’s a new aspect of compliance, it automatically gets updated. So the first share is that one price, and then it’s a reduced price going forward. Because it’s an ongoing process, it isn’t going to, compliancy will continue going forward. Where there’ll be changes that need to be made.
Right. So for most wedding and event professionals who charge more than 720 for a wedding, I guess a most, not all, but most again, it’s a no brainer because if you lost one wedding, because. Which again, you wouldn’t know it, but if you lost one wedding because your site wasn’t accessible for somebody, it cost you more than that already.
And that whole, just like the bad review, you know, if you get a lawsuit, how many, how many hours of legal time is $720? I don’t know. These days it’s, is that one or, or, or a half what? Whatever that is there. So nevermind, nevermind the stress, nevermind that mostly. Absolutely. Absolutely. When I was, when I was in the wedding bus, I had wedding stores.
I mean, I would pay anything to stay out of even small claims court. I mean, I didn’t have a lot of problems, but every business has their problems. And now with, with reviews, it’s just, it’s just, it just pays to do the right thing.
Right. And again, it’s being proactive, just like you’re proactive on so many other things in your business.
It’s another form of insurance, although it’s not specifically insurance, but it’s another form of insurance, which is the, which is a funny thing, right? Like we pay for insurance, hoping we never use it. You pay for your car insurance, hope you never use it. You pay for your, you know, fire insurance on your, on your home or your building.
You hope you never use it. Life insurance. Again, we hope, we hope we’re not going to use it. It’s the same thing. It’s you, you do this. Because you’re doing the right thing, but, and you also do this because it avoids a potential problem down the line, regardless of where you are in the world, because there are people listening in.
Last time I looked, by the way, people have tuned in from 113 different countries. So, so thank you for that. So check in your country as well. Is this right now, what you’re doing, is this only for U. S.?
It is. It is. It is. It is for us. And also there are options for Canada as well. Okay. And you said there are other parts of the world where I’m sure there are people that are doing what I’m doing.
And like you said, you’re not the only game in town. You’re my guy. So obviously I had you do it and it’s very easy. You have this. Tool there. So people can look into this. If you’re in Mexico or if you’re in Europe or if you’re in Australia or in India or wherever you’re listening in from check over there, because you want to make your site accessible for any customer that you could do business with.
You want to make sure that you’re accessible. I’m sure if you’ve been in the wedding business a long time, you’ve done weddings where either the couple. Or guests or parents or somebody has had some sort of a different ability where making your site accessible for them would be the right thing to do.
So again, adawedding. com go there run your site through for absolutely free. Get the report to see it. You can Brian and on that. Page, they can reach out to you as well once they’re there. Okay. So you can find out how to reach out to Brian. I’ll put it in the show notes as well. But I always love having you on because you always bring such great information.
You’re also such a mensch that you can, you do this from the heart that the first reason is doing it from the heart. It’s not for money. It’s doing it from the heart. So I would like it to succeed, but it definitely, the, the impetus definitely is, you know, well intended.
Well, it’s, again, it’s with anything you do and why do you do websites for people?
Because you do websites for people because then they present their business better, which means they get to do better. They get to do more weddings, which yes, will bring financial reward to them, but they want to make more people happy. Right? So that’s what you want to do. We want to make more people happy, accessible to your sites.
Look into the show notes. You’ll see all the links for these things there. You can reach out to Brian directly, brianlawrence. com as well. And Brian, thanks for joining me and talking about this.
Thank you so much
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
- Apple Podcast:
- YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv
- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8
- Stitcher:
- Google Podcast:
- iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic
- Pandora:
©2023 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com
