ADA-compliant websites have become a major talking point in recent years, and while compliance is a primary driver of the conversation, it’s not the only reason to consider it for your business or firm.  While it can be a time- and cost-intensive process, making your website fully accessible can help prevent potential litigation against your business and provide several other long-term benefits, making it a worthwhile investment.

In this article, we’ll dive deep into what having an ADA-compliant website requires to help you understand where your current site stands. We’ll also break down the importance of web accessibility, including why it should be prioritized and how it can benefit your business or firm in the long run.

What is ADA Compliance?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed in 1990, prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities and ensures accessibility to all individuals, regardless of their physical limitations. With the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design in 2010 and the continued evolutions of the digital landscape,  ADA compliance now expands far beyond access to public storefronts and includes all public-facing entities, including websites. Why is this important?

Those with disabilities are a large and valuable audience.

The CDC estimates that 26% of adults (or 1 in 4) in the United States have some form of disability. From mobility issues to visual and hearing impairments, disabilities can create significant challenges in accessing the internet even with assistive technologies such as screen readers, magnifiers, or voice recognition tools.

By prioritizing web accessibility, brands and businesses can better serve all their potential audiences and position themselves as an inclusive partner.

What are the Web Accessibility Standards?

While the Department of Justice has not issued binding rules or regulations on ADA compliance for websites, it doesn’t necessarily let businesses off the hook.  An increasing number of organizations, especially those in the public sector such as higher education institutions, museums, and real estate businesses, can face potential litigation and lawsuits for not having an accessible website that accommodates users with disabilities. As web accessibility becomes more important, all businesses will be expected—from both a legal and ethical standpoint—to follow through on delivering equal access to online content.

To avoid potential litigation and pushing away valued visitors, it is important to first have an understanding of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from the Web Accessibility Initiative. The WCAG acts as the baseline of accessibility for all digital content and includes 12 guidelines organized under four guiding principles.

Four Fundamental Principles of Accessibility

1. Perceivable
Web visitors must be able to understand and comprehend the content and information being presented on your website.

2. Operable
From navigating to a page to selecting a link from a menu to playing and pausing a video, web visitors must be able to interact with the website’s interface without disruption.

3. Understandable
All content on your website must be presented in a way that’s easily understood by visitors, including written text, graphics, and the website’s structure and architecture.

4. Robust
Content across your website should be easily interpreted by all visitors, including those utilizing assistive technologies like screen readers.

7 Tips for Optimizing Your Website’s Accessibility

Meeting the WCAG guidelines is a time-intensive process that can require restructuring your site’s design or even a full redesign. At Durkan Group, we’ve been at the forefront of building accessible websites, especially in the private equity and higher ed spaces, and work within industry standards to create an ADA-compliant website on various levels from level AA to AAA.

The tips below can help you understand a few of the steps involved in building a more inclusive and accessible site. Keep in mind this is not an exhaustive list, but a sampling.

1. Provide text alternatives for all non-text content
All images, icons, videos, and buttons that convey meaning or that are interactive should have a text alternative describing the content. This can be achieved by creating image ‘alt text’ to non-decorative, non-text content. This allows visitors with disabilities to read or hear alternative descriptions of content they might not otherwise be able to view. Videos should also include closed captions and/or text transcriptions.

Bonus: In addition to contributing to web accessibility, alt text is also an important element of SEO, and provides additional information to Google about the content on web pages, helping your pages to rank.

2. Make your content easy to see with high-contrast colors
Content across the site should use high-contrast colors to allow visitors with vision impairments such as low vision, dyslexia, and color blindness to see and engage with your content. To meet a minimum contrast level, as specified by WCAG, colors must meet the correct contrast ratio between text and the background on a web page. Our team utilizes the WebAIM Contrast Checker to ensure we meet this guideline on the websites we design.

3. Enable keyboard navigation
Not everyone can use a mouse. All functionality across the site—from moving between links, buttons, forms, and other controls—must be accessible with the keyboard alone. Common keyboard navigation tools include using the ‘Tab’ key to navigate between elements, ‘Enter’ to open dropdown menus, and the ‘Esc’ key to close menus.

4. Use schema markup to structure
Schema markup uses a unique semantic vocabulary in HTML to create enhanced descriptions of elements on the page that are understood by search engines and assistive technologies like screen readers. It helps provide users with more accurate information and enables screen readers to accurately describe the content being displayed.

Another bonus: Schema markup adds rich snippets to your page results in search engines and can help improve click-through rates on your pages.

5. Create a consistent, organized layout and hierarchy
The website’s structure should place the navigational links and other page elements where users will intuitively know to look for them. This includes implementing the navigation above the fold, most commonly in the header and footer of the page, and clearly delineating menus, links, and buttons from one another, while ensuring they are easily navigated throughout the site.

6. Ensure form inputs have descriptive text
Forms are another common challenge for screen readers. Links, buttons, and form elements must have descriptive text or labels that indicate what the form does or where it goes so that screen readers can communicate this information to users. Forms should let all users know if the information they’ve entered is valid or invalid and report successful or unsuccessful submissions.

7. Mobile optimization
Web accessibility is just as important—if not more—on mobile devices as it is on desktop. The guidelines mentioned previously must also be incorporated on mobile, all while maintaining a simple and easy-to-use experience. Including options to increase text size, streamlining navigation, and ensuring buttons and icons are large and widely spaced apart are some of the additional considerations to think about for mobile.      

Why Web Accessibility is Important

Ensuring your website is ADA-compliant can help you better serve everyone who visits it — regardless of their usage requirements. The WCAG principles work alongside SEO efforts and can help improve the overall user experience and organic ranking. As a result, your audiences will more easily be able to find and engage with the content on your website, helping to increase the number of new visitors and your visitors’ site duration, in addition to avoiding potential litigation threats.

Maintaining an ADA-compliant website is also an ethically responsible action to take. By implementing these best practices, you’ll help ensure that no one’s access is limited due to disability and ultimately, position your business or firm as an inclusive partner in your industry.

If you have follow-up questions or concerns regarding whether your website is ADA-compliant or if you’re interested in learning more about how we can help, drop us a message.