UsableNet Review

UsableNet is a pioneer accessibility solution with 20 years of experience. This web accessibility brand aims to provide end-to-end accessibility services for websites, mobile apps, and other digital products. UsableNet offers a wide range of services including, but not limited, to accessibility consulting, automated and manual testing for sites and mobile apps, pdf remediation, accessibility training, etc. To achieve WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 compliance, UsableNet undergoes three stages of planning and testing, fixing and verifying, and accessibility maintenance.

UsableNet AQA is an all-inclusive accessibility management platform for testing, fixing, and reporting accessibility as well as maintenance. AQA makes accessibility easy as it supports both automated and manual accessibility evaluations to unravel compliance errors in line with the World Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0 and 2.1). The cloud-based platform captures real issues down to code levels with minimal false positives and duplicates. Simply put, AQA makes website accessibility easier, faster, and more accurate.

As an all-in-one tool, the AQA platform also reveals how pages and contents on your website support keyboard navigation and assistive technologies such as the screen reader. Thus, the platform facilitates user testing for accessibility as well as usability. With its built-in automated screen reader testing, you can save a lot of money that otherwise would have been expanded purchasing licenses such as JIRA. With its robust API and integrations, AQA makes it exceedingly easy to incorporate accessibility testing into your development and release cycle. It integrates seamlessly with content management systems such as Sitecore, and release management solutions such as Jenkins. At the same time, AQA handles complex functionalities in applications, menus, forms, and so on.

No doubt the AQA platform may not attain its full potential without an efficient reporting tool. Against this background, the dashboard is an essential feature of the AQA through which testing activities, reports, and accessibility trajectories are computed and displayed. The dashboard also makes it easy for your team and UsableNet accessibility team to work on a project without hassles. Finally, AQA provides 24/7 support for your internal team of developers.

UsableNet Assistive helps you achieve accessibility compliance within a short period. As you might have inferred from its name, it is an assisted web accessibility service that is handled entirely by UsableNet’s expert team of web developers, Quality and Assurance (Q/A) testers, UX designers, and project managers. Each contingent of experts handles different aspects of website accessibility to deliver a WCAG 2.0 complaint website at the AA level. Perhaps UsableNet designed this service for emergency purposes. It is extremely useful on occasions when a company has been served a demand letter and must achieve compliance within the shortest period.

In a situation like this, UsableNet’s expert team uses its assistive platform to remediate your website without necessarily undertaking any web development process or integrating any back-end systems of your site. What UsableNet essentially does is to combine both automated testing and evaluation on your site to detect compliance violations as well as accessibility barriers. Part of the evaluation is testing a website with various assistive tools employed by people with disabilities. Following the automated audit and testing, a manual approach is deployed for both testing and remediation after which people with disabilities are enlisted to evaluate and provide feedback on the site.

As much as this service is apt for an emergency, it could also be adopted on a good day, especially when you and your organization have decided to delegate the whole accessibility task to a third party to free up time for more productive work. In this case, UsableNet takes charge of your compliance exercise. Upon completion of initial evaluation and automated and manual remediation, its expert contingent oversees your website for ongoing compliance by consistently making necessary adjustments. UsableNet provides a certificate of compliance and accessibility statement to show your compliance efforts as well as a perpetual commitment to inclusion.

On UsableNet’s dashboard, users have access to a detailed report of the accessibility evaluation. The following information is displayed under the accessibility evaluation summary: report information including time and date, issue review status which details the website page that was scanned and the number of accessibility issues found within. In the next section of the dashboard, there is a further classification of issues flagged during the evaluation process according to the degree of intensity: low, medium, and high issues are broken down with counts.

The dashboard does not stop there. It goes on to provide a more elaborate discussion of the issues under the review tab. For instance, in one of its sample images, Usable gives a feel of its comprehensive dashboard and reporting tool.

On this sample page, a web page featuring running shoes was scanned to sift for accessibility violations inherent within. Under the review segment, the first tab displays “Element Information”. The accessibility issue under this section is the color contrast —the contrast ratio has been flagged for insufficiency. You can find technical attributes of that page element just below the first column under the review tab.

UsableNet Software – AQA

An exhaustive description of the issue is given on a new tab further to the right with the title “Not enough contrast between texts and its background.” A precise single-line description of the problem comes under this tab, followed by a lengthy discussion of solution(s).

The solution tips are so detailed that it becomes hardly impossible to find it difficult to implement. Perhaps the assumption is that an average user might not possess technical knowledge of these issues, hence the information is presented in the simplest way possible. To justify your remediation effort, Usable attaches the related success criterion that addresses the solution that had been provided to the accessibility violation.

Does UsableNet provide accessibility training? Yes. The brand boasts one of the richest information and resources bank. There are a variety of reports, documents, and checklists to prepare you and your organization for accessibility. Should you be willing to know more, you can request accessibility training taught by professionals.

UsableNet does not have fixed predefined plans like EqualWeb, HikeOrders, Max Access, and so on. It is possible to have an inkling into its pricing system, however. For its service charges, UsableNet employs an ADA Remediation Calculator. This programmed calculator gives an approximate cost of service based on the features you desire. You will be required to input your business details including website type and complexity. Website complexity is categorized into three under:

a) Content/informational
b) Basic e-commerce/transactional
c) Large e-commerce transactional

The next criterion for determining the cost of accessibility is the number of unique templates or pages on your website. You should understand that the higher the number of pages, the higher it costs to audit and remediate. Finally, UsableNet would require you to tell the automated calculator how often you —or plan to— update your website.

As soon as you enter these details, a price corresponding to the service you filled in pops up under 3 service types: Audit & Document, Plan, Fix, & Verify, and Maintain all updates. All of these charges are summed together and charged every year.

To have practical experience of how the calculator works, I tested with rough data. I filled in for a content/informational website with 4 unique pages and yearly updates. Guess what popped up as my fee, $6,562 total charge. Breaking it down by service, it costs $2,266 to audit for accessibility; $4,068 to plan a remediation solution, fix issues, and verify compliance; and $228 to ensure ongoing updates throughout the year.

It may interest you to know that UsableNet adopts the IBM costing model for its remediation service. According to industry standards, the average cost of website remediation is between $5000 and $20,000 for five pages based on a host of factors, chiefly complexity.