Security, Privacy, And Compliance Undercurrents Of Web Accessibility

The internet is shaping up to be the new electricity in terms of importance for both individuals and a broad spectrum of economic sectors such as commerce, finance, manufacturing, education, entertainment, and communication. As the brick-and-mortar paradigm gradually fades away, it’s crucial to provide equal opportunities online to all, including people with disabilities.

But let’s face it, the current state of inclusive experiences across the internet is a far cry from being satisfactory. Today, millions of people with low vision, color blindness, hearing problems, dyslexia, cognitive disorders, and motor impairments remain on the sidelines of dynamic technological progress, having a hard time accessing information and web-based services.

The astonishing fact is that only 3.7% of websites are accessible to people with disabilities as of 2023, a statistic that demonstrates what a huge void is waiting to be filled. Aside from causing obvious inconveniences to large user audiences, the still-minuscule penetration of mature accessibility mechanisms into the web ecosystem also translates into privacy and cybersecurity risks.

Lax website accessibility is a catalyst for human error

It’s common knowledge that the human element is one of the weakest links in any digital environment, whether it’s an enterprise network, an e-commerce platform, or an online banking service. While any user might overlook the red flags in, say, a phishing or tech support scam scenario, a person with a physical or cognitive impairment is vulnerable, too, when interacting with a compromised or outright malicious website no matter how inherently vigilant they are.

Heightened susceptibility to social engineering is merely the tip of the iceberg, though. People with disabilities use assistive technologies to surf the web. These run the gamut from screen readers, screen magnifiers, and refreshable Braille displays – to font modifiers, contrast boosters, and voice assistant tools. As the sweeping majority of websites out there lack built-in support for these downstream technologies, there may be risks of misinterpreting content and making wrong selections.

Think of a web service’s privacy settings, some of which presuppose reading the fine print. With assistive tools often out of reach, buried deep in the operating system for example, a user who lives with poor eyesight may not be able to adjust their privacy preferences properly, which includes data sharing permissions and the scope of third-party access to sensitive details such as legal, financial, and health-related information.

Garden-variety multi-factor authentication is another barrier that may be challenging for many people with disabilities to overcome when they try to log into a service. The text message arrives and the screen reader announces it without saying which letters are uppercase or lowercase. Experienced blind users know how to force such a reader, but the effort spent doing that leads to the code being invalid by the time they manage to type it into the verification box.

Things are even worse when it comes to proving that you are human – the hunting for buses, motorcycles, or traffic lights that we all do to pass the annoying reverse Turing Test. If alternatives like audio or haptic (vibration) CAPTCHA are missing, users may navigate away and look for workarounds, only to potentially end up on a deceptive site. What is annoying to a sighted user is a dead end for a low vision user.

Assistive technology isn’t necessarily the panacea, especially if it’s crudely designed or falls short of compatibility with specific online services. Imagine the following situation: when checking out on an e-commerce website, someone with low vision uses a screen magnifier that stretches the form labels too far away from the input fields without providing advanced viewing options. As a result, the person may enter confidential information in the wrong field – for instance, by typing their credit card number in the delivery instructions area.

With 27% of adults in the U.S. alone having some type of disability, these issues are too big to ignore. In addition to causing user experience obstacles, rudimentary web accessibility undermines privacy and increases the chance of exploitation based on social engineering. The silver lining is that this landscape is changing.

Increased regulation propels accessibility evolution

The issue of inclusive digital experiences is moving into the territory of increasingly stringent regulation. Over the years, lawmakers around the world have been mandating website conformity to accessibility requirements. These endeavors have materialized in a harmony of notable international regulations and standards such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and the European Accessibility Act (EAA).

From a business perspective, not only is compliance with these regulations a hallmark of proper user engagement practices, but it’s also becoming a necessity. Companies around the United States have been receiving notices from many sources ranging from human rights advocacy groups to the everyday disabled user for their sites to meet Title III of the ADA, which requires businesses to make their products and services accessible to the people with disabilities.

Whereas the final say in each case is up to federal courts, it’s clear where this is going. Failure to comply can entail legal and financial repercussions down the road. The European Union’s EAA takes it a step further. From 28 June 2025 onwards, it will enforce compliance checks and coordinated accessibility guidelines for private sector services in areas like computers, smartphones, e-commerce, banking, and more.

As tighter regulation gathers momentum, digital solutions for inclusive online experiences are poised to thrive. Unsurprisingly, the web accessibility market size is estimated to have reached a whopping $27 billion, and the demand is growing.

Tackling the website accessibility dilemma

The reality is that more than 96% of the roughly 200 million active sites on the internet were designed without accessibility requirements in the web development life cycle. Post factum integration of such functionality at the level of source code is extremely daunting and resource-intensive, if not completely impossible.

Thankfully, a solution to this systemic problem isn’t a matter of reinventing the wheel. Automation bolstered by artificial intelligence is a game-changer, and it’s already here. UserWay, a leading provider of turnkey web accessibility services since 2016 with a market share of 43.4%, has proven how efficiently technology bridges the gap.

The Israeli company’s comprehensive suite of AI-powered tools allows websites to address digital inclusion obstacles and compliance issues through extensively customizable accessibility services, automated audits, remediations, legal support as well as scanning and real-time monitoring instruments. Its solutions are leveraged by more than 1 million sites, including big-name brands like UNICEF, Coca-Cola, Disney, Fujitsu, Toyota, and Nielsen.

Of particular note is the UserWay Accessibility Widget that supports all website builder platforms, ensuring ADA and WCAG compliance without the need to modify the code or design. With hundreds of AI-assisted functions under the hood, it adds the missing piece of the website accessibility puzzle in a user-friendly manner by means of preconfigured profiles that correlate with specific types of disabilities.

As is the case with any third-party application, the use of widgets is a double-edged sword as they present a potential entry point for malicious actors to compromise a website. The provider’s coding hygiene and commitment to the “shift left” principle define whether or not this is a possibility.

UserWay CTO Leo Muzyka emphasizes the importance of baking SecDevOps into the development and deployment pipeline when it comes to accessibility software so many people and organizations increasingly rely on. Moreover, he notes this must be a continuous and multifaceted process.

“UserWay ensures the security of its products by maintaining a tamper-proof software development life cycle, using a secure network and least-privilege access policies, encrypting all data in transit and at rest, performing vulnerability assessments and pentests, with all of these practices annually audited by a third party,” he says.

Going forward

Modern technology helps strike a balance between robust security controls and accessible digital experiences. As a result, people with disabilities can benefit from more socially inclusive services while staying safe online, and businesses can remove accessibility hurdles for customers while ensuring compliance with ever-tightening regulations.

The internet has got a long way to go before it’s fully accessible, but technological advancement lays the groundwork for fundamental change in the field. All that’s left to do is stay the course.