ADA Compliance

ADA Website Compliance

I’d like to bring a very important matter to your attention. Website ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance, unfortunately this has become a hot button topic in the last couple of years and is starting to affect more and more website owners. Let me tell your  more about it:
 
Unfortunately at this time there are no clear cut federal laws on ADA compliance specifically for websites, because the ADA laws were set in place before the explosion of the internet. But as we’re finding, that doesn’t mean the ADA laws can’t be applied to websites. The ever growing court rulings are mixed, but there have been enough rulings against businesses to create serious concern about ADA compliance for websites. You can learn more here from this excellent legal source: (https://www.huntonlaborblog.com/2019/01/articles/public-accommodations/muddy-waters-ada-website-compliance-may-become-less-murky-2019/“)
 
Below are some articles from top news websites discussing the rising incidence of lawsuits over non ADA compliant websites.
 
 
 

I was recently made aware through a client of a Southern California small business that was targeted for one of these ADA Website Compliance lawsuits. Faced with a $25,000 lawsuit, the small business chose to settle as the costs of the lawsuit itself would have been too much. This is quite concerning for many small businesses as most would be hurt by a lawsuit of this amount. 

You as a website owner need to be aware of this potential risk so you can make informed decisions that are right for your website and business. As a technology provider, I felt I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t bring this to the attention of small business owners. I’ve bee working to make the necessary changes to this site as well to reduce my own risk as a small business owner.

Unfortunately, because there are no clear cut laws/rules on how to make a website ADA compliant, there is no way to GUARANTEE safety from a lawsuit….but there are things we can do to DRASTICALLY REDUCE the risk. The good news is that as I build all websites with certain SEO (search engine optimization) compliancy rules (these make your site easier to be found on search engines)….many of these SEO compliance rules are also a part of the ADA suggested compliance by W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web). But there’s a bit more we should be considering for your site, such as for example:

an “Accessibility” button that allows for text size changes, several various contrast changes for the visually impaired, removal of ‘moving’ or ‘animated’ items with a button click for those with seizures, ensuring consistent keyboard navigation without a mouse for mobility impaired, closed captioning and/or text transcripts for video or audio for the hearing impaired, and pause/stop/hide and timing adjustment for slideshows.

I can provide an individualized report for your website to determine which of these items would apply and would need to be implemented to bring your website to the current industry standard of WCAG 2.1 ADA compliance as recommended/suggested by the W3C, who’s rules are being implemented across many state and government websites and being used to create new ADA website compliance laws in many states  (federal laws are expected to be enacted soon as well).

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with questions/concerns and/or to discuss your website ADA compliance and how I can help you to reduce this risk. 

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