Digital inclusion is an important part of your website and business. Ensuring that your site is accessible, easy to navigate, and informative can make or break its success. You must ensure each user who visits your site has an equal user experience. Let’s dive into what you can do to help get your site get up to speed and reach accessibility.
Meet the ADA
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990 to prohibit discrimination against roughly one-in-four Americans with disabilities. In 2008, the ADAAA or Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act was signed into law, going into effect on January 1, 2009. This made several changes to the definition of disability and accommodations.
Our Design Standard Made Easy
We strive to make curating an ADA-compliant website a simple process. Businesses that fall under Title I or III of the ADA are required to ensure that their entire website is accessible to those with disabilities. Working with our team takes the guesswork out of website compliance. Our experts perform a full human expert audit on your website, identify all accessibility problems, and help you remediate them.
Why Make Your Site Accessible?
Failure to create and maintain an ADA-compliant website opens a business to lawsuits and reputational damage to your brand. Being inclusive to those with disabilities will allow you to reach audiences you never considered before. An ADA-compliant site also increases your SEO and visibility. Our accessibility solutions mitigate legal risks while breaking barriers for people using assistive technology. Are you interested in getting digitally compliant? We’d love to become your partner! Contact ADA Site Compliance today to get started on your journey to digital compliance.
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The ADA prohibits any private businesses that provide goods or services to the public, referred to as “public accommodations,” from discriminating against those with disabilities. Federal courts have ruled that the ADA includes websites in the definition of public accommodation. As such, websites must offer auxiliary aids and services to low-vision, hearing-impaired, and physically disabled persons, in the same way a business facility must offer wheelchair ramps, braille signage, and sign language interpreters, among other forms of assistance.
All websites must be properly coded for use by electronic screen readers that read aloud to sight-impaired users the visual elements of a webpage. Additionally, all live and pre-recorded audio content must have synchronous captioning for hearing-impaired users.
Websites must accommodate hundreds of keyboard combinations, such as Ctrl + P to print, that people with disabilities depend on to navigate the Internet.
Litigation continues to increase substantially. All business and governmental entities are potential targets for lawsuits and demand letters. Recent actions by the Department of Justice targeting businesses with inaccessible websites will likely create a dramatic increase of litigation risk.
Big box retailer Target Corp. was ordered to pay $6 million – plus $3.7 million more in legal costs – to settle a landmark class action suit brought by the National Federation of the Blind. Other recent defendants in these cases have included McDonald’s, Carnival Cruise Lines, Netflix, Harvard University, Foot Locker, and the National Basketball Association (NBA). Along with these large companies, thousands of small businesses have been subject to ADA website litigation.
Defendants in ADA lawsuits typically pay plaintiff's legal fees, their own legal fees for defending the litigation, and potential additional costs. In all, the average cost can range from tens of thousands of dollars, to above six figures. There are also high intangible costs, such as added stress, time and human capital, as well as reputational damage. Furthermore, if the remediation is incomplete, copycat suits and serial filers can follow, meaning double or triple the outlay. It's vital to implement a long-term strategy for ensuring your website is accessible and legally compliant.