Thirty years ago, a landmark piece of legislation was passed. The Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Act ensures that people with disabilities have equal access to government-funded locations. This included things most people without disabilities take for granted: sidewalks, train stations, airports, public transportation, parking lots, bathrooms, voting places, schools and universities, and more.
But does it include websites?
When the ADA was signed in July 1990, few people had heard of the web, let alone used it. At that time, the internet was a rudimentary information distribution system. Fast-forward 30 years later and not a day goes by that most people don’t use the internet. Websites are ubiquitous. We watch our favorite movies on streaming services, listen to music via the web, read our daily news and weather, and shop from our favorite stores all with the tap of a button.
Because the internet has now become the main source of information, entertainment, and commerce for most people, many argue that yes, ADA compliance must also encompass websites, too.
Here’s what you need to know about ADA compliance and your company’s website.
Disabilities Come in Many Forms
The original Americans with Disabilities Act was primarily concerned with accommodating people with physical limitations in public settings. Such limitations may include physical impairment, coordination, motor skills, sight, or hearing impairments.
Today, the term “disability” now encompasses a much broader range of impairments. People with dyslexia, color blindness, and cognitive impairments may all come under the umbrella of disabled.
The ADA requires that all federally funded organizations, both for profit and not for profit, and companies with 15 or more employees provide ‘reasonable’ accommodations for people with disabilities. The burden of proof as to what encompasses ‘reasonable’ accommodations is on the business itself; any customer can complain (or file suit) that the business does not provide adequate accommodations. If a lawsuit is filed, it is up to the business to prove it has provided reasonable accommodations.
Aspects of Website Compliance
This notion of reasonable accommodations now encompasses website accessibility, too. During the pandemic, as people were forced to work and learn from home, it became painfully obvious that few, if any, websites are accessible by people with disabilities. Parents of special needs children, for example, found that many online learning portals did not accommodate children with dyslexia, learning disabilities, or color blindness.
Depending on the nature of an individual’s disabilities, screen readers, adaptive devices, or other equipment may be needed to make the internet accessible to the users. If a website is not coded properly to render websites for such devices, it may be considered “inaccessible.” It’s the digital equivalent of high curbs, narrow doorways too slim to allow a wheelchair through, television shows without closed captioning. Not everyone can use it. Such websites can then be deemed discriminatory against people with disabilities.
Search Engine Journal provides an excellent overview of the many aspects of website compliance that site owners must consider. Everything from forms to images and navigation must be considered to ensure that every site visitor can easily navigate and understand the information you are sharing.
Making Your Site Accessible
If you have never considered making your website accessible, it can seem like a daunting task. Where do you begin? How do you ensure that you have taken every reasonable precaution to welcome all visitors to your website?
The first step is to conduct a brief accessibility audit. Dashboard Internet Marketing can help you with this step. The audit examines both the site itself and the code underlying the site to ensure that adaptive devices can render your site properly.
Depending on the results of this audit, your site may need some major or minor tweaks. Major tweaks may require fixes to the code structure, buttons, and site hierarchy. Minor tweaks may include added alt tags or updating tags to ensure they read properly.
Remember that every aspect of your website must be compliant, not just the web pages themselves. Videos must have closed captioning available. If you offer PDF downloads, images and links in PDFs must also be accessible. Podcasts should also have closed captioning available so that hearing-impaired individuals can access transcripts.
With so many low-cost ways to render content, including video and audio files, accessible in multiple ways, it just takes a bit of time and know-how to ensure your site is accessible to all. There are plugins and other technologies to transform non-compliant sites into ADA compliant sites, as well as website themes and frameworks that are built with full accessibility in mind.
And while you may think you can shrug off ADA compliance as just another fad or tell yourself that you have only five employees and thus aren’t going to be targeted for a lawsuit, think again. Remember the stock photo lawsuits? There are attorneys who specialize in sending scary, threatening letters to business owners claiming they are using unlicensed images and thus violating copyright laws. Such letters, dubbed stock photo extortion letters, demand high fees to make the threat of a lawsuit stop. Similar letters are now arriving daily in the mailboxes of small and mid-sized business owners demanding money or face a lawsuit over website ADA-compliance issues. Do plaintiffs win in such suits? Do you want to find out firsthand? Most business owners would prefer to avoid such headaches in the first place. The way to do that is to take simple steps now to ensure your website is ADA compliant.
Not only will doing so offset the risk of a lawsuit, but it means you’re doing the right thing for people with disabilities. And in the end, that’s what counts; ensuring that all customers have equal access to information, goods, and services. It’s the right thing to do.
Dashboard Interactive Marketing is a full-service digital agency offering ADA compliance audits and fixes, website design, SEO, and SEM services, and much more. Please call us at 763-242-2454 if you have any questions or would like to request a free consultation.