In March 2024 Level Access completed its acquisition of Delaware-based UserWay
If, a mere two or three years ago, news had emerged that one of the leading U.S.-based traditional digital accessibility services companies had acquired a web accessibility overlay firm, more than a few eyebrows would likely have been raised across the industry.
A web accessibility overlay, or widget as they are sometimes referred to, is essentially a piece of code that can be injected into a website to automatically identify and fix common accessibility bugs that make web pages difficult to interact with for users with disabilities. These types of barriers may include missing alt descriptions on images or inadequate keyboard navigation.
Often marketed as a scalable and affordable, AI-based approach to tackling web accessibility, accessibility overlays have faced stiff criticism over the past few years from both digital accessibility experts and disability advocates alike. This stems from a perceived lack of honesty and transparency regarding the limitations of automated solutions and the way in which the resultant confusion has led to new access barriers for disabled users.
Back in 2020, at the height of the pandemic-fuelled digital gold rush during which the AI approach to web accessibility began to gain traction, one of its outspoken critics was Tim Springer CEO of Virginia-based Level Access which offers its clients a suite of digital accessibility-focused services from consultancy and training to live monitoring and manual remediation.
Last month, Level Access closed its acquisition of Delaware-based UserWay, a pioneer in AI-powered accessibility solutions which has its software on over a million websites worldwide, in a deal worth $98.7 million.
The hope and the hype
Springer, who once described AI for accessibility as something that works “better in theory than It does in practice,” freely admits that the UserWay acquisition was met with some skepticism within accessibility circles.
“We were prepared for a frankly fairly negative reaction because people have characterized the solution that UserWay brings as an overlay and there are clearly some challenges with that class of providers,” says Springer.
Springer notes that the general feedback from both the wider investment community and those working in digital accessibility has been overwhelmingly positive but concedes:
“When it comes to overlays, within disability and accessibility, there’s always been a very vocal minority that says, ‘Look, these things are bad.’ They want to view the world as black and white but the reality is that the world is a bunch of shades of grey and there is an appropriate place for artificial intelligence and automation in digital accessibility.”
For Springer, those shades of grey revolve around separating out the early-stage marketing hype that initially came out of the then disruptor AI overlay solution model from the raw technology itself.
“A few years ago, you had early-stage solutions coming onto the market for addressing accessibility, particularly for SMB customers with the promise of, ‘Look, you take this thing, and magically, it's going to fix all of your web accessibility issues.' What was problematic about that was that automation alone cannot address all areas of accessibility from either a legal compliance or user perspective. You’re never going to be able to remove human judgment entirely from the equation.”
Springer continues, “Back then, we had a very strong point of view at Level Access, which we still maintain, that these solutions are not a panacea. They don't fix everything but they do fix a lot of stuff. If you look at the various players in the market, some are certainly more responsible in their claims than others. We found that UserWay was probably the most accurate and nuanced in relation to a market demanding a cheap quick fix to a complicated problem. However, from our perspective, we feel that amidst all this noise a lot of the accessibility community has missed how profoundly powerful these solutions are on a technological level.”
The challenge then, as Springer views it, particularly in the context of market realities that show that 34% of organizations leveraged automated remediation technology in 2023 — up from 14% in 2022, is to figure out how to talk about AI and automation in an accessibility context in a way that is both responsible and transparent.
“Our job moving forwards will be to communicate very clearly to our customers the difference between elements that we’re highly confident A I can fix and those that require human attention If we tell that story well and deliver it in a consistent integrated package we’re confident that we will succeed in the market,” Springer says.
A game-changing opportunity
Due to its resolute focus on getting it right, the new parent company is keen to avoid any rash decisions around changes in branding and management structure and will only slowly and judiciously begin to infuse UserWay’s automation into its existing products.
However, the true long-term market opportunity, particularly from a sustainability perspective, has not been lost on either company.
“We’re thrilled to join forces with Level Access to help organizations create and maintain accessible digital experiences,” said Allon Mason, CEO and Founder of UserWay who has now become President of Level Access. “Advanced automation and user personalization, coupled with Level Access’s proven, comprehensive digital accessibility approach, will be an industry game-changer.”
“UserWay’s technology is going to allow orders of magnitude cost savings of around 90% for certain elements of accessibility,” Springer enthuses.
“It’s so interesting and exciting to be able to offer a solution that can impact the smallest of websites right through to the largest and most complex. We're confident in our ability to knit that solution together and to be able to scale with customers. To my mind, you truly have now the first real opportunity to do this at scale across the substantive mass off the internet. That means every single website and every single mobile app," adds Springer.
In the end, due to its inherent technical complexity and increasingly high legal stakes, digital accessibility continues to be a subject that remains equally as terrifying as it is mystifying for organizations of all sizes. Adding in discussions around AI and automation has done little to alleviate this. Yet, as niche as it appears on the surface, web accessibility is, in reality, not so different from other industrial and societal spheres. The exponential impact of AI, as it turbocharges our technological world is a non-negotiable. The only choices left are simply what to say about it and how fast to go.
