Is your website ADA Compliant? Learn all about ADA compliance and why it is essential for your website below.
What is the ADA?
ADA stands for the Americans with Disabilities Act. It started as something that businesses physically had to do to make sure people with disabilities could get into their storefronts. Allowing them to have the same access as a person without disabilities. In 2018, the Department of Justice said that ADA regulations apply to websites as well.
Levels of ADA Compliance
The courts haven’t fully set a legal standard for what ADA Compliance is for websites. There are multiple levels and sub-levels of ADA Compliance. For website owners and developers, it’s hard to determine where to start and how far to go to be ADA Compliant. For example, the first section of WCAG 2.0 (the most commonly used guideline) is labeled Perceivable. This just means how the information on the website is presented on the website. Sounds simple, but within WCAG that are 4 sections, and just within the Perceivable section there are 22 sub-sections. So it’s complex and overwhelming when you start thinking about how to put this into action on your website.
Goals of ADA Compliance
For visitors with disabilities, the goal of ADA Compliance is to be able to access and use your website just like anybody without a disability does. For many business owners, the main goal of ADA Compliance is to avoid a lawsuit. Between 2017 and 2018, lawsuits for ADA Compliance have tripled, and that trend looks like it’s continuing. Small and large businesses alike are being hit with these ADA Compliance lawsuits. Our research found that 95% of these cases are settled out of court, but the cost ranged from $20k – $150K, which can have a serious financial impact on your business. An often-overlooked benefit by business owners is that an ADA Compliant website means more potential customers can be reached.
How Does ADA Compliance Affect My Website Design?
You can try to set up your website to accommodate visitors who have disabilities, including visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, epilepsy, etc., but that will take a long time for a developer to set that up with all of the ADA compliance guidelines in mind. Moving forward, every time you make a change on your website, add new functionality, or there are changes to the ADA Compliance guidelines, your website developer will need to be mindful of those guidelines and make necessary changes. Since this can be time-consuming and costly, we developed a new tool that makes ADA compliance easy and affordable.
How Does Our ADA Compliance Tool Work?
As soon as we install our ADA Compliance tool, it gets to work scanning your entire website using AI (artificial intelligence). This is completed in 48 hours. It then makes the adjustments needed to fall within ADA Compliance and rescans your website every 24 hours for changes. As the guidelines are changed with WCAG, this tool is developed continuously. So that those adjustments will be automatically applied to your website. Visitors on your website will see the ADA Compliance icon displayed at the bottom right or left side on both desktop and mobile views.
When you click on this icon, the accessibility adjustment menu displays that allows your visitors to adjust content (font size, alignment, spacing, scaling, etc.), color and display options (high contrast, dark contrast, monochrome, etc.), and navigation (mute sounds, hide images, emphasize mouse, etc.). As you adjust these settings, you’ll see the changes in real-time on your website. This is a fantastic tool that allows each user to personalize their experience with your website for their individual needs.
If your website is not ADA Compliant, now is the time to do so. It has never been as easy or affordable as it is now. Contact us today to see how simple ADA Compliance can be applied to your website.
