About accessiBe
Did you know that your website is by law required to be accessible? yup. Having an inaccessible website is just as bad as having an inaccessible building that has no wheelchair access or bathrooms. It may sound like a minor subject to most of you, but for about %20 of the world's population this is one of the most painful subjects to deal with every day. You accessing this article with zero friction may be taken for granted, but for people with disabilities, reaching this article (or any other website for that matter) could be an impossible thing to do.
accessiBe is all about web accessibility. The company, with its offices in Israel, develops products and services using AI and consultancy in an effort to flip this narrative. Making the entire internet access for people with disabilities by 2050 is our main vision and mission.
When the company announced a new, profit-free project by the name of accessFind, this vision got a clearer shape and form.
How do you brand for an unpopular market?
Let's face it. The discussion of web accessibility is not a popular one. The rules and regulations are still in the process of helping PWD (people with disabilities) receive the inclusivity they should have got all along. The truth is that it seems people would like to look away when it comes to this subject. And although I don't agree with this personally, I understand why this happens. Making your website accessible (and keeping it like that) was a complicated task until not so long ago. The journey is still young.
We asked ourselves "how do we brand for an unpopular opinion?" how do you create a visual representation for a subject that is ignored by so many people?
In other words, how do you flip a narrative, and brand for positivity instead of exploiting negativity?
Building accessFind to display our "WHY"
Since the brand guidelines share the same principles as the company, accessiBe, we only had to dig deep into the "Why" in order to proceed with the branding of this product.
We asked internally - "why are we building this?". I asked our C-level managers, the project managers, the community team, and my manager. We had brainstorming sessions with the goal to shape the "why" as clearly and simply as possible.
With the help of Simon Sinek's method, we tried to remove all "analytical or basic" statements out of the way and get to the emotional areas of the message.
We also asked a lot of "why"
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We are building an accessible search engine
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why?
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So that people with disabilities can access the internet better
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why can't people with disabilities access the internet?
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Because people who built those websites didn't think or care about making them accessible
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why wouldn't they care?
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because they don't have people with disabilities in mind, they don't see them.
Collecting the information into a brand
After digging into this subject and coming up with emotional responses, we finally understood what we want to do.
We wanted to show inspiration. Because these people are inspiring. They are strong. They are resilient. They are brilliant.
We didn't want another "accessibility" brand that says "look at me, I'm a disability-related product" because this is not a disability story. This is a story about overcoming, winning, moving forward, and showing the light to others to follow.
"The best brands are not created, they reveal themselves"