John D Butler
WCAG Accessibility Compliance Specialist
I got into accessibility work because I kept seeing the same thing: small business owners blindsided by demand letters from law firms they'd never heard of, over website problems they didn't know existed. A yoga studio owner in Portland paying $11,500 for something that takes two hours to fix. A dentist in Florida settling for $15,000 because their template builder didn't include alt text on a single image.
That felt wrong. Not because the law is wrong — people with disabilities deserve websites that work for them — but because there's a massive gap between the legal risk businesses face and the information they actually have. Most business owners have never heard of WCAG. They don't know their $3,000 website template has 47 accessibility violations baked into it. And by the time they find out, it's because a law firm already found them.
So I started fixing it. One website at a time.
What I Actually Do
I audit websites against WCAG 2.1 AA, WCAG 2.2 AA, and the emerging WCAG 3.0 draft standards. But I don't just run a scanner and hand you a spreadsheet. I test your site the way real users experience it — with a screen reader, with just a keyboard, with high contrast turned on. Then I fix the code myself.
Alt text. Heading structure. Keyboard navigation. Focus indicators. Color contrast. Form labels. ARIA attributes. Skip links. The stuff that actually makes a difference for the 61 million Americans living with disabilities who are trying to use your website right now.
Why I Don't Use Overlay Widgets
You might have seen those accessibility toolbar plugins — AccessiBe, UserWay, EqualWeb — that promise WCAG compliance with one line of JavaScript. Here's what they don't put in the pitch deck:
- The FTC fined AccessiBe $1 million for lying about what their product does (January 2025)
- 800+ accessibility professionals signed an open letter saying overlays don't work
- The National Federation of the Blind called AccessiBe "misleading and harmful"
- Websites using overlays have been named in 400+ lawsuits
An overlay can't fix broken HTML. It can't add meaningful alt text that an AI guessed from an image. It can't un-trap a keyboard from a booking widget. I fix the actual code, and my clients pass both automated scans and real assistive technology testing.
Standards & Expertise
- WCAG 2.1 Level AA
- WCAG 2.2 Level AA
- WCAG 3.0 (W3C Draft)
- ADA Title III
- DOJ Title II
- Section 508
- European Accessibility Act
How I Work
Every project starts the same way: I scan your site for free. WAVE, Lighthouse, axe-core, plus a manual keyboard walk-through. Then I send you a plain-English email — not a 40-page PDF full of jargon — that tells you exactly what's broken, how exposed you are legally, and what it would cost to fix. If you want to move forward, I do the work. If not, you still have the information. No pressure either way.
This whole site was built to the standards I preach. Run it through WAVE yourself — zero errors. Tab through every page with your keyboard. Try it with a screen reader. That's the standard I hold my client work to.
Let's Talk
Find me on LinkedIn — that's the best place to see my background and connect.
Request a free accessibility audit — send your URL, I'll send you results.
johndbutler727@gmail.com — for anything else.