What is ADA compliance: It Goes Beyond Accessibility

20% of Americans have a disability, and in the next decade, this number would likely multiply. Disabilities shouldn’t hinder people’s access to information and services, but many businesses still neglect ADA compliance. 

The Department of Justice is working hard to eliminate the gaps. Fines are charged and bad press is prompted for non-compliant firms.

How ADA Compliance is Applied Online 

Modern web design and user interface should be concerned with accessibility. We should be mindful of alt text, text-to-speech, and other accessibility options for the deaf, blind, and differently-abled. Disabled Americans have the same civil rights as abled Americans and ADA compliance prevents lawsuits. 

Text-to-speech helps persons with literacy issues, learning disabilities, low vision, and language learners obtain their needed information. It also helps others access digital content more easily.

How ADA Compliance Helps Avoid Lawsuits

Overlooking ADA compliance on your company's website means you may face ADA online accessibility lawsuits. In 2019, 11,000 title III ADA cases were filed. In 2020, federal courts filed 2,523 web and mobile accessibility cases, which is more than what the number looked like in 2019. 

To avoid lawsuits, first, read the act's contents and obligations, test your website, and request a free website scan or audit. If you don't have the technical expertise to fix accessibility flaws, reach out to professionals for help. 

 

Factors of ADA Compliance 

In general, you should be mindful of these four factors: 

• Operability: Do you have easily navigable content? Even with assistive technology, are links and headers obvious? Can you navigate using the keyboard?

• Understandability: Is your writing simple to read? Is it provided understandably and predictably? Are you using unobtrusive formatting?

• Robustness: What is the compatibility of your media with various hardware, browsers, screens, and technologies? Does your website work well with various assistive technology options?

• Perceivability: Are there accessibility options in your content, such as alt text on images and videos, audio alternatives to visual content, compatibility with different assistive technologies that translate content into different languages, or the ability to make information more easily accessible to visitors who are visually or aurally impaired? On a final note, are they seizure friendly?

It’s Not Just About Accessibility

Investing in your UI and UX to make browsing easier for impaired visitors is a must. Better testing, content quality control, and a unified, legible web layout and formatting system that displays information reliably and consistently across devices. 

Better fonts, larger texts, better contrast, logical button placement, a clear menu, competent search features, alt text and text transcripts for all visual assets, and language title tags and meta tags—all these items help SEO and legal compliance.

Usability as a key SEO target

ADA compliance doesn't negatively affect Google or Bing's rankings. Creating an ADA-compliant website improves SEO nearly immediately. 

Alt text, suitable title tags, understandable headers, video transcriptions, and high-contrast design will help your website rank higher in search engines. 

A great website design reflects well on your business, and accessible design is typically good design. Google continues to focus on usability and user experiences, including the recent emphasis on the three Core Web Vitals. UX is key to making your content shine.

Benefits of ADA Compliance and accessibility 

• Better SEO, more traffic, more customers

By letting anyone access your site, traffic grows over time. With more traffic, user engagement and SEO rankings improve, leading to higher conversion rates.

• Prevention of legal trouble 

Optimizing your site for people with disabilities reduces the possibility of legal issues. Ensuring your site's accessibility lowers legal problems and possibly prosecution. 

• Fast page loading time

If your page load slowly, viewers may leave. You must enhance page load times to provide speedy online access to visitors.

• Business growth

Free promotion and traffic are good for your business. Disabled people often belong to many groups. WCAG sites provide these groups with free marketing. 

Consider making your website ADA-compliant by availing of professional services. Call (866) 206-8016 now.