Nobody is perfect. It is inevitable that, despite best efforts, failure in accessibility will happen, especially in website management. How you deal with it will make all the difference in the eyes of most customers. Rather than denying, arguing, or trying to cover up your failure, here are some steps you can take to mitigate your error and do better in the future.
Step one: apologetic ownership
A website error must be apologized for, just like an accessibility failure for a physical store. Express your regret even when an error is unintentional. It is important to take responsibility. Blaming the mistake on anyone else will come across as an effort to deny and avoid the fallout of the error, which will lead to a customer’s loss of trust in your establishment.
It may seem daunting to admit your mistake, but in the long run, it will help you develop more trust and improve your reputation with the community and your customers. To extend a strong, meaningful apology, try the following:
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Acknowledge the issue. Do not try to offset blame, even a portion of it. Specifically, mention what went wrong and, if possible, how it happened.
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Express remorse—apologizing and expressing remorse are not necessarily the same thing. Acknowledge that you have upset people and express regret for causing that upset.
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Make amends. This can be as simple as explaining what you’ll do next time and the steps to learn from this and fix what caused the mistake. Be detailed and honest and make sure what you say is what you’ll do.
Step two: create a plan to correct the error
Just saying that you’ll make changes to fix the mistake is not enough. You must follow through with actionable, meaningful changes to fix and prevent a similar error from happening in the future. The steps you take can vary depending on what the error was, its severity, and how much of an impact it had.
When it’s your website that failed, a few steps you may take are:
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Immediately disable or take down the page. This doesn’t have to be permanent unless the page is no longer in use, but you should remove it until you have fixed the error. For example, until you put correct captions on a video if your error was incorrect or missing captions.
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Make it right. Customers with hearing loss might miss an opportunity due to errors in captions on a video announcing a major sale if they need to be included or corrected. After correcting the error, consider extending the sale or offering further discounts.
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Expand training. Training is for more than just customer-facing employees. All employees should know accessibility guidelines and access to accessibility training. For your website, your IT team should also attend training.
Step three: do better
If you are not already engaging in regular accessibility audits, now is the time to do so. Regular checks of your website content concerning the most current accessibility standards can help catch mistakes before they become harmful. Make this part of your routine website maintenance to monitor your website content continuously.
Professional development is another way to help prevent future mistakes from happening. Investing in regular professional development opportunities in accessibility for all staff can expand the number of people with trained eyes who can catch errors sooner. Not only is it a good idea for the sake of your business, but you will also have a staff that understands the ADA and accessibility on a deeper level.
Continuously create accessibility goals to meet to improve your website every day. S.M.A.R.T. goals are an excellent choice to consult with to make achievable, specific goals. Common goals can help create new opportunities for your website to be as accessible as possible.
Conclusion
Mistakes are inevitable, but they do not have to be failures when lessons are learned. You can mitigate the fallout from a failure of accessibility on your website. Taking quick, direct action and owning up to your mistakes is important. Following these tips will help you come back stronger from a mistake, as well as help you not make it again.
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