ADA (American with Disabilities Act) Compliant Website

Tools to Help Your Site be ADA Compliant

Is your website ADA compliant? Earlier this year, federal regulation took effect that requires “public accommodation” websites or business websites serving consumers to be ADA compliant. The guidelines help Americans with disabilities easily navigate the web.

The World Wide Web Consortium (WWWC) created the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to help businesses and those serving consumers understand the requirements. There are 61 guidelines that ensure your website is compliant. For example, visual accommodations require having a certain contrast ratio for the text and the site should scale up to 200% without distortion. Nonvisual accommodations include the ability to navigate the site using only the keyboard. The site should have the necessary alternate text for users requiring a screen reader. Screen reader software allows for the translation of visual information so that a user can make sense of the site without seeing it.  Using a screen reader a user knows what content and pictures are on the website.

The ADA has an online toolkit to help you identify the changes. The full accessibility guidelines can be found here. There are a couple of online solutions to check compliance. You can use WAVE, Web Accessibility, or Lighthouse. You can go here for a list of tools to check compliance.

Businesses can face fines and the threat of litigation for not adhering to the WCAG 2.0. The best thing to do is to check the online tools and look at implementing changes. You can also check with your website designer for help.

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