The Bent Agency

Overview

With an endless array of literary genres, including numerous award-winning bestsellers, The Bent Agency represents authors of books for every reader. This innovative literary agency wanted to ensure that their website was ADA-compliant and sought to prevent any legal issues that may arise from ADA non-compliance. They sought our team to conduct a website audit and solve any issues discovered in order to make the website more accessible and user-friendly to people with disabilities.

The updated website was relaunched less than six (6) weeks later with the maximum possible accessibility issues being resolved, and also with an outstanding rating for ADA Compliance. As The Bent Agency continues to provide the gold standard of representation for its clients, its newly updated website will continue to champion the needs of its current and potential clients, agents, and all other users. The client was extremely happy with the results.

Problem

The Bent Agency is a literary agency that strives to provide all its clients with the gold standard of representation. With a vast array of authors, the agency is dedicated to fostering an inclusive space for creativity and inspiration for its agents and its clients. They needed help to update their website to ensure that they were ADA-compliant. Their desire to be proactive, led them to Coalition Technologies for web development services.

Introduction to the Bent Agency

In order to rate the site as compliant, we began by conducting an audit of the website, identified the issues affecting compliance, and made corrections that should prevent future possible legal issues that may arise as a result of being non compliant.

The agency’s website was built on the SquareSpace platform, which limits edits to custom HTML. Our research and experience with SquareSpace revealed that the platform has limited options for development. Despite this challenge, our team of experts designed a detailed course of action for improving the agency’s website. Using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), two levels of conformance categories were drafted and addressed for the client’s site: Level A and Level AA.

Solution

ADA-Compliance Fixes

Using the WCAG guidelines, we categorized the errors discovered based on levels of compliance that websites should support in order to be considered ADA-compliant. These are Level A (must support), Level AA (should support), and Level AAA (may support). Our team worked assiduously to correct text alternative errors discovered in the audit. Some of the corrections that we did were to update form buttons with descriptive values, input text labels on form input, create alternative text for images, and appropriately title frames and iframes.

We also made updates that would make it easier for users to see and hear content and be able to distinguish background and foreground settings. Users of the site would now have enough time to read and use the content, and to make it easy to navigate and find the content.

Correcting text alternative errors from The Bent AGency’s site audit
Level AA ADA compliance corrections for the Bent Agency

We then reviewed the Level AA compliance items. Our aim for correcting the issues in this category was to provide a balance between an attractive, highly-functional website and optimal accessibility. We resized texts to make the pages readable and functional when users zoom in on the pages. Additionally, we corrected contrasting issues and fixed the contrast ratio for large text to be at least 3:1. The site was improved for users to easily navigate in order to find content and easily navigate the site to find information.

Once we corrected the issues, we relaunched the website. The client was so impressed with the quality of our work that they decided to engage us on a retainer basis for all their website needs.

Final Product

Browse through screenshots of The Bent Agency’s website to see our work for them.

Results

Once we had made corrections and improvements that addressed the issues discovered in the audit, we completed the tasks and launched the newly ADA-compliant website. We wanted thebentagency.com to be of the highest standard and allow the agency’s clients to be able to easily navigate this website.

Some of the issues we corrected include:

Adding content and value attributes to empty buttons on The Bent Agency’s website

Empty Button Fix

Placing text content within the <button> element and giving the <input> element a value attribute

Empty Link Fix

Removing the empty link, or inserting text within the link that describes the functionality and/or target of each link

Inserting content into an empty link to describe the functionality of the link
Updating heading structure on The Bent Agency’s website with appropriate headings and subheadings

Heading Structure Fix

Providing a clear, consistent heading structure, generally one and subheadings as appropriate.

Additional Site Updates

Once we resolved the issues discovered in the audit, our team tested the updated website and found no errors. Shortly after the relaunch of The Bent Agency’s SquareSpace website, the site was rated as outstanding in terms of ADA Compliance. Users experienced improvements in their experience which can be seen in new author enrollment and new user traffic.

Site users are now able to access visual and auditory content on thebentagency.com. They now have adequate time to read and use the content on the website, and are provided with the option to adjust the time limit allocated for accessing the content.

Our team implemented a link that users can use to skip navigation and other page elements, as well as added descriptive and informative page titles. Users of thebentagency.com are now able to utilize input assistance that helps avoid and correct mistakes when submitting forms. The ADA-compliant site is now more robust, compatible with different browsers, and removes most of the digital barriers impacting the accessibility of the web by everyone.

The owners of thebentagency.com are happy with the performance, functionalities, and ADA compliance of their new site. Likewise, users of thebentagency.com are now able to easily use the website and enjoy the overall experience.