Level Access Recognized as a Notable Vendor in Forrester Digital Accessibility Platforms Landscape

As more organizations recognize the benefits of creating accessible digital experiences, they are increasingly committing to, and funding, digital accessibility programs. Most begin with the basics, utilizing free accessibility testing tools to surface problems users might encounter while navigating their website or mobile app. But to scale an accessibility program—establishing organizational policies and procedures, integrating accessibility into existing workflows, and driving cultural change—accessibility leaders need an end-to-end solution supported by a unified digital accessibility platform.

In its most recent report on the market, The Digital Accessibility Platforms Landscape Q2, 2023, leading global research and advisory organization Forrester underscores the value of an accessibility platform solution. According to the Forrester report, platforms “help companies implement their accessibility policies and create effective, easy, and emotionally positive experiences for all customers, including those with disabilities.”

But not all platforms are created equal. While there are a variety of vendor options, Forrester states that only a few established providers offer a combination of technology and services. Level Access is proud to be among the notable vendors listed in the report. In this post, we’ll explore a few of the key factors informing Forrester’s overview of digital accessibility platforms, and the ways in which we believe Level Access exceeds core use case capabilities.

Core use cases

The Level Access solution combines an advanced software platform with access to strategic support services and custom role-based training, equipping organizations with the tooling and expertise needed to scale an accessibility program. And with this technology-plus-people approach, our solution aligns with the top use cases Forrester identifies as most frequently sought after by buyers:

• Audit/test experiences, leveraging rapid automated testing alongside expert manual evaluation and functional testing by users with disabilities.
• Continuously monitor experiences to swiftly find, prioritize, and fix any new accessibility issues.
• Remediate experiences efficiently with access to strategic guidance, as well as advanced, integrated project management capabilities which streamline workflows.
• Measure and report on compliance, whether a single website or a portfolio of assets.
• Embed accessibility into development, using our browser extensions, CI/CD integrations, and APIs to catch errors proactively during the build phase.
• Raise internal awareness and expertise with self-paced, on-demand, customized digital accessibility training courses mapped to specific job functions.

But Level Access goes beyond these core use cases, with differentiating capabilities that support a long-term approach to accessibility.

Top differentiators

To help buyers evaluate the platform provider that will best meet their needs, Forrester identifies 26 top differentiators of core and extended use cases. We believe the Level Access solution aligns with many of these differentiating capabilities, helping organizations establish a sustainable and scalable program:

• Integration with design tools: We’ve created the market’s first design-based Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) rule library, tying accessibility directly back to individual WCAG success criteria. This library provides insights and immediately actionable feedback on color palettes, typography, component libraries, wireframes, and more. By identifying accessibility issues in design, teams can proactively address preventable barriers before development begins.

• User task flow testing: Level Access takes a user-first approach to testing. We prioritize the critical paths users take to complete core tasks—like making a purchase or booking a demo. By testing user flows, organizations can prioritize and address high-impact barriers, significantly improving the usability of their experiences and positively impacting their primary business objectives.

• Issues prioritized by severity to user and risk level: The Level Access Platform organizes issues by severity—clearly defining critical, high, and low-level issues. Organizations can analyze issue severity within individual digital experiences or aggregate across their entire portfolio. This categorization makes it easy for organizations to prioritize fixing issues that are blocking user access, which ultimately reduces legal risk.

• Component-based issue breakdown: When teams address accessibility issues in global components, they fix repeated issues across a digital experience—all at the same time. Our component testing increases efficiency and accelerates improvements.

• Policy configuration options: Our platform enables organizations to establish thresholds for each accessibility metric. We refer to these thresholds as policies. They include metrics such as percentage of remaining findings, overdue findings by severity, web properties with monitoring established, and more. Should a policy dip below an established threshold, organizations are alerted and can quickly make improvements. And falling below policy thresholds will identify opportunities for learning, which can be accomplished through our expert-led accessibility training Academy.

• Customizable enterprise dashboards: Organizations need a way to quickly assess the accessibility health of a single asset, or an entire portfolio. Level Access provides a variety of different customizable dashboard views, enabling users to better manage an entire program, or the accessibility of a single asset. Our Governance Dashboard provides a comprehensive program overview, allowing users to set policies, track progress against those policies, and identify key areas for improvement. The portfolio view lists every experience managed within the platform, highlighting metrics like health and remediation progress for each. Meanwhile, dashboards for each individual asset drill down to that asset’s health score, manual evaluation overview, scan history, findings by severity, and more, integrating remediation work with project management systems like Jira.

To further help buyers considering digital accessibility solutions, Forrester plans to publish a digital accessibility Forrester Wave™ evaluation report in October. 

Get started with Level Access

To make lasting, meaningful progress with digital accessibility, organizations need a platform that supports their objectives and scales with their efforts. To learn more about the value Level Access will provide your organization, request a demo today.