As more and more destination marketing organizations begin to work towards total inclusivity, one area that is often overlooked is digital accessibility. That is, ensuring that your digital content is fully accessible to people of all abilities, including those with visual, auditory and cognitive disabilities.

In fact, it's estimated that 15 percent of the population live with disabilities, relying on assistive technologies such as screen readers to access the internet. And while many business owners simply assume that their website is accessible to all, that’s often not the case. For now, it falls on businesses and organizations themselves to create digitally accessible and inclusive sites. 

Visit Oakland is one such organization that found themselves in this situation. After launching a diversity and inclusion initiative to ensure they were representing and serving everyone in their community, they realized that there was a facet of the population that they were under-serving. 
 

To rectify this, the team at Visit Oakland reached out to several activists in the community, researching the steps that needed to be taken. Eventually they reached out to Simpleview for guidance on digital accessibility, who recommended AudioEye, a Tucson-based company that specializes in digital accessibility solutions. 

From there, the process was relatively simple. Visit Oakland signed a contract, handed over the keys to their site, and AudioEye got to work. Over the next 120 days, the AudioEye team worked to implement a three-step process. After all of the enhancements were made and several manual tests were conducted, the Visit Oakland site was deemed fully accessible, and was compliant with ADA-related laws and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. 

To learn more about AudioEye’s process and Visit Oakland’s journey to accessibility, download the use case.