Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is around the corner. Looking back at last year, I found some troubling things people in this field should be aware of. Because they're likely to be repeated.
Feeling nostalgic and missing the now-shattered Twitter accessibility community, I scrolled back through my timeline over the weekend. My scrolling took me to posts from GAAD 2023, during which I had retweeted a number of posts from my peers in the field.
This glimpse back in time showed a flood of social media posts about it from companies looking for some cheap and easy social proof. Many fumbled it. So few of them bothered to add alt text that Matt Eason created GAAD Bot (rest in peace). The bot would detect images without alt text shared using the #GAAD hashtags and respond with helpful reminders and instructions for how to do so.
The unfortunate uses of the #GAAD hashtags weren't limited to companies paying lip service to a day that their PR and marketing departments failed to fully comprehend. It was also abused by companies that do not operate in good faith. While GAAD Bot was collecting the low hanging fruit, there were a number of accessibility specialists responding to another concurrent flood of corporate memes from companies shilling for accessiBe, an accessibility overlay vendor.
Those replies, which I had boosted, noted that accessiBe wouldn't actually make websites accessible and that the overlay actively blocks many disabled users. They also offered links to some great and informative resources.
As I looked through the shallow marketing stunt a second time, I found myself wondering if, after nearly a year, any of those companies had listened to the experts in the field and removed the overlays from their sites. If you had to guess at the answer, you'd be right.
Instead, I found a whole other type of fuckery afoot.
These posts all used the same general template with minor variations. You can find them all easily by putting some of these lines into the platform's search field.
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
We’re proud to prioritize inclusion and have a website that is accessible to all. #LetsChangeThat #GAAD #GAAD2023 #GlobalAccessibilityAwarenessDay #DigitalAccessibility #WebAccessibility #accessibility #DiversityAndInclusion #accessiBe
It's very amusing that they followed up these statements with #LetsChangeThat. "We're proud to prioritize inclusion and have a website that's accessible to all. Let's change that." This might be the most honest marketing any accessibility overlay company has done.
Most of the companies sharing this were small local businesses with social media followings in the 2 or 3-digit range. Sometimes 4. And then others had zero (or close to it). This usually means is the account in question is a sock puppet.
The sock puppets
All of these accounts were some type of contractor in the concrete or power washing industry. Some had a few generic "HAHA BUSINESS!" type posts, then this meme, and then nothing but silence. Some had no other posts at all.
Morbidly curious, I looked into each of them.
Gilman Concrete Solutions in Dothan, "Alambama"
Macon Concrete in Macon, Georgia
Twitter: @concrete_macon (screenshot) and link to GAAD tweet
@concrete_macon (screenshot) and link to GAAD tweet Website: maconconcretepros.com (archived website)
maconconcretepros.com (archived website) Phone number: (478) 739-3896
(478) 739-3896 Notes: Phone number hangs up immediately. No alt text on the shared tweet image. It is also interesting that the top level website domain redirects to a subdomain to show the suspended status, and still features the brand's logo. This sort of error page is rarely branded, unless perhaps by the registrar/host, and usually does not redirect to a subdomain.
Edinburg Concrete Construction in Edinburg, Texas
Twitter: @EdinburgConcre1 (screenshot) and link to GAAD tweet
@EdinburgConcre1 (screenshot) and link to GAAD tweet Website: edinburgconcreteconstruction.com (archived website)
edinburgconcreteconstruction.com (archived website) LinkedIn: profile and GAAD post
profile and GAAD post Other profiles: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube Phone number: (956) 452-0773
(956) 452-0773 Notes: Website is a generic referral website. Phone number is picked up by an automated system. A robotic voice states that the call will be recorded, then rings another department and lands on a voicemail box saying they are unable to take a call. No alt text on the shared tweet image.
Killeen Concrete in Kelleen, Texas
Pearland Power Washing Pros in Pearland, Texas
To summarize:
All of their phone numbers either immediately hang up or play a message stating that have been disconnected, except one. This is intentional; they are likely owned by someone, thus unavailable to be recycled and given to new phone subscribers.
They have aged accounts across multiple social networks. It's important that they are aged because it lends credibility to human eyes and reputation to security/moderation protocols. The implementation is a bit lazy though, with the lack of posts before, almost none after, and almost no effort put into following or attracting follows.
Their websites are nearly identical. All of them have a disclosure in the footer stating they are "referral websites" - which is to say, not real businesses, and likely generated en masse.
On the plus (but also very confusing) side, none of these websites even use accessiBe, so I don't know... great job!
As the great Reverend Frakes says:
It's no quick or easy thing to set up such an assortment of digital raccoons stacked inside trenchcoats. These were set up by professionals who stack raccoons in bulk. It would not have been cheap to buy them either. Someone most likely purchased these "companies" specifically to put more accessiBe noise into our social media feeds during GAAD 2023—or someone had already stockpiled them and donated a handful to this purpose.
So images, much forgetting alt text, very accessible, wow.
Likely in response to GAAD Bot's benevolent nagging, accessiBe started to replying to posts that shared their little meme sans alt text, in order to remind them:
Thanks for helping spread awareness about web accessibility! To make it even more AWESOME add the alt text we provided! Alt-text is a description of an image read to blind and low vision users using screen readers. Here’s a quick alt-text guide: [link to Twitter's docs on adding image descriptions]
This is a good (ironic?) way to try to save face after you seem to forget to tell your customers to add this crucial detail when they send your little social media chain letter into all of our timelines. Of many dozen posts, only two or three bothered to add alt text, and only one of them that I could find used alt text correctly.
These replies were added to posts from legitimate customers AND these sock puppets. It's worthwhile to note this as we explore the question of who the actual f— set up these fake companies to throw accessiBe's meme around.
The easy answer would be accessiBe, but I don't think we can say for sure.
Who shoved their hands up these socks?
Why were the real businesses sharing this meme? Were they incentivized in some way, through promise or payment? If there was some kind of incentive for others. accessiBe might not have had anything to do with this.
Sock puppet accounts probably outnumber real humans on the internet at this point, so their existence and participation here isn't alarming in and of itself. The responsible party and their motive, however, might be. It's curious that this thing happened just after the CEO of accessiBe wrote a half-assed heart-felt apology in the National Federation of the Blind's May 2023 issue of the Braille Monitor.
The letter says that the marketing department has undergone extensive changes, including the replacement of their chief marketing executive. It's curious that he isn't named, but it's probably because the author wants to give the impression that someone was fired and that some accountability actually happened (even if as an unnamed scapegoat). In reality, that person is now the Chief Revenue Officer, and we're meant to just trust that he's no longer contributing to a series of spurious marketing deeds.
No one appears to bear the title of Chief Marketing Officer and they're not hiring for the role. Given that, I'm not even sure I trust that there actually were "extensive changes" made to their marketing department and leadership, especially since this sort of digital fraud is perfectly in line with tactics they've used before.
Given the timing, if (1) that did actually happen and someone new is running that part of the circus, and (2) accessiBe had anything to do with employing a bunch of sock puppets to pollute the conversations during last year's GAAD, then this would be one of their first acts in this role. In which case, so much for the apology and the promise of a clean slate.
And if not—if someone outside the company was responsible, it still doesn't look good for them to have their branding on this and so many unanswered questions as to why, to what end, and fueled by what sort of incentives?
Update: Not wanting to leave this issue hanging on assumptions and unanswered questions, I reached out to some of their customers who participated in this last year. On 18 April, 2024, I received the following reply (emphasis mine):
accessiBe encouraged its users to join the conversation about digital accessibility and provided some basic content to make it easy for us to include consistent messaging in our content calendar. There was no contest or benefit to participate. It was just an optional opportunity to contribute to the conversation, and we were happy to do so.
To put this in all context:
Someone spent considerable time, effort, and money to set up numerous fake businesses and an arsenal of social media accounts.
This was done to bolster an coordinated marketing effort that many legitimate businesses were participating in voluntarily and without incentive.
The only return on this investment was more visibility of the accessiBe brand and whatever social proof might have been generated from the stunt.
Given the fact that there were zero incentives to participate, the possible motives and suspects dwindle significantly. While some of their customers received some momentary, vapid engagement, the only possible beneficiaries here are accessiBe and its investors. I will let you draw your own conclusions as to who was responsible. It seems pretty clear how sincere their CEO's "apology" was.
Conclusion
The main takeaway here is this: If (when) you see a marketing stunt like this from an overlay company again, especially on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, pay close attention to where the messages are coming from. This flew under the radar last year. Next time, we may be able to respond appropriately as it happens.
Some of us get into this field to remove barriers to functional needs. Some folks think the best way to do that is to shill for a panacea product that purports to be the cure to all barriers. Because such a thing is not realistic or even possible, those products can't be sold honestly or on their own merits. You wouldn't buy them if they were asking you pay a few hundred dollars a month to address a small fraction of accessibility issues while you also accrue significant legal risk. So it should come as no surprise that there are so many accounts of dishonest marketing and underhanded tactics.
But, I suppose if you're shilling for that type of product, you're going to have to get creative. You're going to have to try to drown out your critics and the loud sounds of lawsuits being served to your customers—even if those are the most reliable feature of your product.
This article was updated on 18 April 2024 (one week after publication) to include a message received from one of accessiBe's customers stating that no incentives were offered for participation in their GAAD 2023 social media marketing initiative.
Further reading: