For a long time, many SaaS leaders treated accessibility as a “nice-to-have” feature or a box to check right before a product launch. That era is over. That mindset no longer works. Today, accessibility is a legal imperative, a market requirement, and a fundamental marker of software quality. If you are building or selling cloud-based software, you are no longer just responsible for uptime and security, you are also responsible for inclusivity.
With the European Accessibility Act (EAA) looming and the U.S. Department of Justice reinforcing ADA Title II, the window for “getting around to it” has closed. Compliance is now a baseline expectation for procurement, especially if you sell to government, education, or enterprise sectors. It’s time to take a closer look.
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What is SaaS accessibility?
Lets discuss more about the unique challenges of SaaS accessibility
SaaS accessibility is about making web-based software easy to use for people with disabilities. This includes users with visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor impairments. When accessibility is built into a product, it allows everyone to navigate, understand, and interact with the software without barriers.
In today’s SaaS landscape, accessibility is not optional. Software providers have a responsibility to create inclusive experiences and offer equal access to all users, regardless of their abilities. Doing so not only supports compliance, but also leads to better, more thoughtful products for everyone.
SaaS is not like a static marketing website. You are building dynamic, complex applications with constant updates. This environment creates specific accessibility hurdles that you must manage actively.
Unlike basic websites that update occasionally, SaaS platforms roll out new features and fixes all the time. That fast pace can easily introduce accessibility issues, especially if teams are not testing for them regularly.
Let’s delve further into the chalenges:
Dynamic Content and Custom UI
SaaS platforms are filled with interactive and custom widgets which may not be inclusive out of the box, you need to ensure that they are available to everyone.These are rarely accessible out of the box. A screen reader needs to know that a ‘<div>’ is actually a button, or that a change on the screen (like a form error) has occurred.
If you don’t code these semantic relationships using ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) standards correctly, your “intuitive” dashboard becomes a brick wall for assistive technology users, and we don;t want that!
The Velocity of CI/CD
In the SaaS world, we ship code daily or weekly. A platform that is perfectly compliant on Tuesday might be broken on Wednesday because a developer introduced a new modal that traps the keyboard focus. Traditional “audit once a year” models fail here. Accessibility needs to be integrated to your Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline.
Third Party Integration
Third-party integrations are a big part of modern SaaS products. Features like payments, chat support, analytics, or social logins often rely on external tools. It is important to review these components for accessibility and keep monitoring them, since updates from third-party providers can introduce new accessibility problems without warning.
Why “Quick Fixes” Don’t Work
Many companies panic and reach for an “accessibility overlay”, those little widgets that sit in the corner of a screen promising instant compliance with one line of code. Don’t do it!
Overlays are widely regarded by accessibility experts and legal professionals as insufficient. They often fail to correct the underlying code issues and can interfere with the assistive tools that users already possess. Overlays don’t protect you, on the contrary, they become a beacon that attracts lawsuits. True compliance requires remediation of the source code.
You cannot put bandage on a broken foundation.
A Strategic Compliance Framework
Accessibility is not something you can add at the very end of development. It needs to be understood, planned for, and looked after over time. To manage legal risk and build a better product, you need a structured and sustainable approach. Here is the workflow we recommend:
1. The Audit Phase
You cannot fix what you do not measure. Start with a comprehensive audit of your platform.
Automated Scanning: Use tools like Axe or Lighthouse to catch the “low-hanging fruit” (missing alt text, low color contrast). These tools catch about 30-40% of issues.
Manual Testing: This is non-negotiable. You need web accessibility audit experts to test your key user flows (login, checkout, dashboard navigation).
Assistive Technology Testing: Test your product using a screen reader (like NVDA or VoiceOver) and keyboard-only navigation. If you can’t use your own product without a mouse, neither can your users.
2. Remediation and Design Systems
Once you have your audit results, prioritize the critical blockers.
Fix the Core: Address issues that stop a user from completing a task (e.g., a “Submit” button that a keyboard user cannot reach).
Update Your Design System: Don’t just fix the bug, fix the component. If your dropdown menu is inaccessible, fix it in your design library so every future dropdown is compliant by default. This scales your efforts.
3. Documentation (The VPAT)
If you sell to enterprise or government, you need a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). This document explains how your product conforms to accessibility standards (Section 508, WCAG).
Be honest: A VPAT is not a marketing brochure, it is a technical disclosure. If you are not fully compliant, admit it in the document and provide a “Remarks and Explanations” column detailing your roadmap for the fix. Procurement officers value transparency over false perfection.
4. Continuous Maintenance
Accessibility is a program, not a project. Think of it as a marathon and not a sprint.
- Training: Train your developers on ARIA patterns and your designers on color contrast and focus states.
- Regression Testing: Add accessibility checks to your QA process. Automated tests should run with every pull request to prevent new errors from entering production.
Best Practices for Inclusive SaaS Design
While the structured framework takes care of several aspects, here are a few simple, practical ways to make your SaaS product more inclusive and easier for everyone to use.
- Design with real users in mind. Test your product with people who have disabilities and let their feedback shape your decisions. It often reveals issues no checklist can catch.
- Make sure everything works smoothly with a keyboard, since many users rely on it as their primary way to navigate.
- Write clear, meaningful alt text for images so screen readers can describe what is actually important.
- Use good color contrast and readable fonts so text is comfortable to read and not a strain on the eyes.
- For videos and audio, always include captions or transcripts so the content is accessible in different contexts.
- Keep navigation consistent and predictable so users do not have to relearn how things work on every screen.
- Test regularly against accessibility guidelines, and remember that accessibility is ongoing. Keep your teams learning, revisiting decisions, and improving as the product grows.
Conclusion
Accessibility is no longer a just a roadblock or just a checklist item, it is an essential part of every business planning to expand. Canada (AODA), Europe (EAA), USA (ADA), etc. and many countries are gradually leaning towards accepting WCAG level AA as the benchmark. Furthermore, you are restricting your organization to procure government contracts as most of them require you to be accessibility compliant.
Quick-fixes and fear-based reactions will always inhibit your organization from achieving its core goals as you end up losing your audience. Therefore, its time to adopt a sensible and strategic approach by baking accessibility into your development lifecycle and include best practices.
Investing in accessibility is absolutely worth it, and not just for ethical reasons. Making your SaaS product accessible helps you reach a larger and more diverse audience, including a sizable group of users with disabilities.
The best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is now. Start right away! Reach out to us at AEL Data to understand further.
