How to Create an ADA Compliant Website

Did you know?

1 in 4 adults in the U.S. have some kind of disability and they have a disposable income of over 645 billion dollars annually!

With numbers so high, if your website is not accessible to people with disabilities that affect their vision, hearing, or physical capacities, you are leaving out a huge portion of the population.

With more than 400 million active websites, it’s imperative that they be non-discriminatory and accessible to people with disabilities.

This is where the ADA or Americans with Disabilities Act comes into the picture. In this blog post, we will talk about how you can make your website ADA compliant.

Introduction to ADA

Introduced in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is meant to make sure that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as anyone else. In other words, any business serving the public must ensure that its website is accessible to people with disabilities of various kinds. Lack of which will result in penalty and filing of a lawsuit.

Therefore, making your website ADA and WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) compliant has become the need of the hour!

But Why Should You Care?

Web accessibility is vital, and there are two reasons why you need to take it seriously.

First: The content should be accessible to everyone regardless of their mental and physical abilities. Second: You may get sued if you don’t follow.

In fact, in 2019, 2,285 lawsuits were filed against various companies in the United States!

Benefits of ADA Compliant Website:

• Increases your target audience
• Enhances website usability
• Helps build a brand reputation
• Improves SEO efforts
• Prevents lawsuits and penalties

How to Improve Your Web Accessibility?

In order to make your website ADA compliant, there’s definitely a lot to think about.

On a basic level, acquaint yourself with WCAG 2.0.

Apart from this basic requirement, here are a few pillars of an ADA Compliant Website:

• Make navigation simple
• Use captions for videos
• Keep your layout consistent
• Use simple labels for different form fields
• Opt for sharp color contrasts between the background and text
• Organize the text properly with header tags
• Use text resizing capabilities
• Permit users to disable javascript
• Enable voice search

Conclusion

Moving forward, it is important for businesses to be proactive when it comes to accessibility.

So, abiding by the WCAG accessibility standards can help avoid accessibility lawsuits and negative publicity.

Besides that, accessible websites demonstrate that your business is committed to helping others while promoting equality and doing things the right way.

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