Why Your Business Website Must Be ADA Compliant

Posted by: KHTS Articles in News Articles August 20, 2020 - 9:31 am 0 764 Views

Although the internet had already existed before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), it only came into much wider use after the law’s enactment. Today, it has found its firm place in our day to day activities. Since the ADA aims to provide everyone with equal opportunities, it is only right that persons with disabilities are also afforded the ease of online navigation in their daily life.

Title III of the ADA concerns spaces of public accommodations. Since the internet is a public space, making it more accessible to everyone is in keeping with the full spirit of this law.

Whereas the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design is more concerned with mobility issues in physical areas, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is directed more towards those with vision and hearing impediments.

According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, 1 in every 4 Americans have some form of disability. Of those 61 million people, a combined 10.5% suffer from lack of vision or hearing. This means that since 2016, online pages that do not strive for more accessibility are flying off the radar of more than 6 million people every single day.

Imagine that you are a vendor in a market out in the real world. If a person with a hearing disability passes in front of your store, you will not be able to express the qualities and benefits of your wares unless you learned sign language and made use of it on the spot.

Websites are the online extensions of businesses. When the lights dim and the malls close, people go on the web when they want to seek further information about a product or a service. It is also often the venue for interaction. Shoppers can easily check out goods in the comfort of their homes or reach out to customer care when they need to send a message or file a complaint. In the age of COVID-19, this too has become an essential form of brand visibility and operation.

For those with vision disabilities, screen reading tools are available on the web for download. This means that when there are images on a website, there should be an accompanying descriptive text for the screen reading tool to read aloud to the person with disability. For those with hearing difficulties, the opposite is applied. Sounds and oral dialogue in media need to be transcribed so that they can appear as text on the screen in sync with the videos. If a page lacks any of these features, those are abstract barriers hindering it from reaching more users.

Accessibility also deals with navigation, especially for disabilities that concern the use of upper extremities. It is recommended that websites be constructed while keeping in mind that there are potential visitors who might not be able to make use of computer mouses or keyboards. This is a tricky part of the technological consideration. First and foremost, however, the ADA was created during a time when the internet was not yet a major part of everyday life. This means that pages most equipped for everyone’s use will be at the forefront of progress. The WCAG details a lot of techniques to meet these recommendations as well as assist web creators to understand the goals of these same techniques.

Quite recently, a man filed a lawsuit against a pornographic video sharing site claiming that they lacked closed captioning. The complaint cited the ADA saying, “Websites that prevent accessibility to deaf and hard of hearing individuals is a discriminatory act.”

In this issue, prevention is key to avoid litigation. With the number of Title III cases just increasing year by year, it is reasonable to expect more of these lawsuits concerning the internet. Compliance may not be as readily observed now but in time it is going to become compulsory. That is why, more and more, corporations must also make it their business to adopt the use of an ADA website compliance checker. Regulations have yet to be updated on this matter but that doesn’t mean that online pages should bide their time and wait.

Even today, web designers can already look to existing recommendations to help them in determining their readiness for all users.

Online presence is a good way for businesses to show who they are. A website that will be more available to all is a tool for companies to communicate that they are ready to accept everyone. Whatever the cost, ADA compliance over the internet offers only advantages to those willing to embrace it.

Going back to our imagined scenario of you as a vendor out in the real world. You can always learn sign language on the spot or you can simply pick up a pen and write everything you want to say as fast as you can. But the merchant in the next stall who had already adopted the use of sign language is going to beat you to the sale.