How large acquisitions can harm digital accessibility

It was probably to be expected that at some point even an established company would switch to the dark side. The internationally known company Level Access has bought the overlay provider Userway for several million dollars. Such large acquisitions are actually familiar from companies of other sizes.

Making money is fine, but not like this

Let me first clear up two assumptions: As I have stated many times, I don't think it's a bad idea to make money with accessibility as long as you make sensible and competent offers. Ultimately, like many consulting jobs, accessibility is very demanding and hardly any of us would do it for free in the long term. Welthungerhilfe is not starving either. I also don't think it's a bad thing that companies are getting bigger. On the contrary, I sometimes wonder about the German agencies that specialize in accessibility but don't employ 20 people. Either you grow or you limit the number of projects you can work on, there is no third option. I say this because many people in the accessibility community see it differently. You can only really handle certain projects if you are of a certain size. Many software developments, for example for automation or the use of AI, can only be implemented with appropriate resources. For many of us, leisure and work mix. I pay extra for my website and my po

dcasts and also for my books.

It becomes problematic when the accessibility companies are bought by companies from other sectors. A company naturally has an interest in selling as many services or products as possible. If these are pure and meaningful accessibility services, that's fine in my opinion. Things are different at general stores like Vispero. The company then wants to sell as many products as possible from its other areas to the same customers.

A negative example

Let's take the example of Vispero. Vispero has bought the assistive technologies Jaws, Zoomtext, but also the internationally renowned company Paciello Group for accessibility, which is now called TPGi.

Since then, every other TPGi post seems to be a sales item for a Jaws product: Jaws Kiosk here, Jaws Connect there. In my opinion, these products are worse than the overlays, but that's another topic. TPGi acts as if there are no other screen readers, which costs the company credibility.

As stated above, there is nothing wrong with selling products as long as they make sense. Deque, for example, offers some tools such as the Axe-Core analysis suite. Knowing this, you can read Deque's article on the topic of automatic testing tools a little more critically. But tools like overlays provide limited use at best. Anyone who claims otherwise is not an accessibility expert, but a junk seller. It is also worth mentioning that some of these overlay providers like to sue their critics; arguing is probably more expensive than legal lawyers.

The conflict of interest cannot be resolved

Of course, the parent company Vispero has an interest in selling as much of its stuff as possible: acquisitions are a lot, but they are neither cheap nor a sure-fire success.

Level Access won't do it any differently, the money for the purchase has to come back somehow. The managing director has already started the apology for overlays on LinkedIn, Erik Eggert has worked through it. I would disagree with Eggert on one point: It is actually also a problem of aggressive, suggestive marketing and aggressive acquisition, which sometimes also makes false promises. If the tool providers told the simple truth - a few unnecessary and sometimes non-functioning tools for expensive money - no one would buy the tools.

This conflict of interests cannot be resolved. The acquisition by a well-known company alone will ennoble the solution in the eyes of many potential customers. Conversely, the acquisition forces you to recoup the costs.

The argument that the overlay can be improved is transparent. These things have been around for a few years and so far no improvement has been observed. How Level Access wants to change this remains a secret. According to reports, an overlay tool had even overridden analysis software - I think it was Wave from WebAIM - and displayed false results. It doesn't sound like you're really confident in the capabilities of your tools. As stated above, if Level Access describes the benefits of the extension matter-of-factly, no customer will buy the tool.

Many tools now also have analysis suites integrated. Maybe Level Access was actually interested in buying these analysis tools. That would be a sensible expansion of the portfolio, after all, other large consulting firms also have such tools in their kit.But as I said above, buying obviously forces you to add as many services as possible, whether you think they make sense or not. So you will want to sell the customer both the checking tool and the overlay. This will cost the company credibility, at least within the scene; I don't think anyone outside will really notice. Things could become difficult if organizations that were advised by Level Access were suddenly sued under the American with Disabilities Act.

The large market attracts white sheep

Now no one can say what will happen next. As the overlay providers have shown, accessibility has become a huge market, especially in the USA. It is feared that more companies will try to get a bigger piece of the pie for themselves through acquisitions or junk.

It remains to be hoped that the sensible companies and products can hold on and prevail in the long term. It is recommended that customers seek advice from companies or people who do not have a product in their portfolio or at least be careful if the advisor wants to sell another product straight away.

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