The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990 and sought to provide equal rights and opportunities to people with disabilities and prohibit discrimination against them. Title III of the ADA concerns public accommodations and commercial facilities.
The ADA does not currently have a section specifically for website accessibility. However, October 2020 saw the introduction of the Online Accessibility Act in Congress. Associated developments could cause some substantial changes. In recent years, many lawyers asserted that a website constitutes a public place. Judges agreeing with that ADA-related stance say websites must have accessibility measures the same way a brick-and-mortar location would.
For example, you may have curb cutaways, dedicated parking spaces, a barrier-free entry and wide aisles at your physical store to support its accessibility. However, if your e-commerce site does not have similar features that make it usable by people with disabilities, you’re likely not complying with the ADA. Here are some compelling reasons to make changes so that you do.
ADA Compliance Promotes User-Friendliness
The most recent set of web accessibility guidelines is called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2. It encompasses an extensive collection of things to assess that may at first seem a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, you’ll soon discover there’s a lot of overlap between accessibility and the best practices for design that you probably use already.
That reality means becoming compliant does not necessarily mean doing a lot of extra work. Some parts of your website probably meet ADA requirements, even if you don’t realize it. For example, the WCAG 2 requires that color not be the only method of conveying information. Another stipulation is that if audio automatically plays on the site for more than three seconds, the site must have a way to control its volume without changing the device’s sound settings.
Parts of the WCAG 2 also concern giving people enough time to read content, creating webpages with titles and section headers describing the material underneath and providing the full meaning of abbreviations and acronyms as applicable. Such aspects make websites more pleasant for everyone — not just people with disabilities. You’ll almost certainly find that any efforts to increase ADA compliance will make sites easier to use. Then, visitors will want to engage with them for longer.
Many ADA Compliance Measures Simultaneously Help Boost SEO Rankings
Search engine optimization (SEO) can affect where a website shows up on a listing of search results. Many people won’t spend more than a minute scrolling through the options, and some don’t bother progressing past the first page.
People with business websites typically invest a lot of resources into SEO. They know failing to do so could mean potential customers never reach them. The good news is that many of the ADA accessibility requirements support best practices for SEO.
For example, descriptive link text, videos with captions and image alt tags help you improve accessibility while following tips to raise your SEO rankings. Headings also make your site more organized. That bodes well for disabled users as well as search engine crawlers that evaluate sites to help determine rankings.
Becoming Compliant Can Shed Light on Overlooked Shortcomings
Creating a website is a time-intensive — but usually worthwhile — process. One of the early steps involves choosing a domain name. However, there are more than 351 million registered so far. Finding an available option could prove difficult, especially if you have a common business name. Once you build pages and set up features such as payment systems, it’s time to test the site.
Having a compliant site is undoubtedly an achievement, but the online destination must be usable, too. Most people have probably seen restrooms with at least one stall large enough for a wheelchair and equipped with grab bars. However, it falls short if that facility lacks a sink at the right height for someone in a wheelchair to use.
Your website could have similar unintentional flaws. Recruiting people with disabilities to test it for optimal functionality is an excellent way to screen for functional problems. You can also encourage testers to bring any assistive devices they use online. Then, it’s easier to see how your site holds up in the real world. Always combine compliance efforts with testing, ideally getting feedback from people with various kinds of disabilities.
Accessibility Can Grow Your Audience
It may seem that striving for ADA compliance caters to a relatively small segment of the population. However, statistics indicate 15% of the world’s population has a disability. Another factor that sometimes gets overlooked is that almost everyone will experience life with a disability at some point. The aging process often causes the deterioration of hearing, motor and visual capabilities. People may break their limbs in accidents, causing temporary disabilities.
Bear in mind that if a person with a disability comes across your website and finds they cannot use it, the visitor could rightfully get so upset and frustrated that they decide to avoid your brand forever. Conversely, taking a maximally inclusive stance by incorporating WCAG 2 principles into the design and functionality could drive your traffic levels and make people prioritize your site over others.
Services also exist to help you create accessible versions of existing digital assets or apply accessibility standards to all newly created content. That means these services could help you reach a new segment of the audience that your business previously did not adequately address or cater to at all.
Inaccessibility May Generate Negative Attention
Just as an ADA-compliant website could help people see your business favorably, an inaccessible one could harm your reputation by making people assume you ignore and shut out people with disabilities.
A lack of website accessibility could also result in legal fees and civil fines. Data showed there were at least 2,285 lawsuits filed in 2018 for non-ADA-compliant websites. Analysts also expected that figure to rise the following year.
Even if your inaccessible website does not cause someone to take legal action, it could make people notice it for the wrong reasons. For example, disability-focused nonprofits and activists regularly illuminate issues with crucial information not formatted in ways that give people with disabilities hassle-free access to it. Some recent examples included government-distributed COVID-19 health information that was not fully accessible.
Better Accessibility Helps Everyone
Someone who does not currently have a disability or know a person with one may not immediately think of the ADA while considering business website needs. However, as these examples show, better accessibility makes your website more pleasing to everyone who uses it.
Emphasizing ADA compliance will also help you become more aware of the various aspects that combine to make your website a place people want to visit and return to often. Thus, you should strongly consider working toward ADA compliance with your website soon and ensuring it stays accessible after every update that occurs.
Eleanor is editor of Designerly Magazine. Eleanor was the creative director and occasional blog writer at a prominent digital marketing agency before becoming her own boss in 2018. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dog, Bear.
