In 2017 the Americans with Disabilities Act was expanded to include technology, including websites and apps owned and operated by private businesses and entities.
This updated Americans with Disabilities Act was rolled out quietly by the US government, resulting in thousands of lawsuits being filed against ill-informed US businesses.
To help businesses as they work to make their websites accessible and compliant, the Americas with Disabilities Act (ADA) has adopted the Web Content Accessibilities Guidelines. Here is what that means for your website if you have a US based website.
To support business owners, the ADA adopted the World Wide Web Consortiums (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and all future releases of the guidelines. If your website meets the guidelines, you can prevent or potentially win a ADA Website Compliance lawsuit.
So what are the requirements and what do you need to do to meet them?
The first step is to understand the requirements and how they will change your website and how you approach design. You can read a full breakdown of the requirements below, but let's start with the short definition of the compliance requirements.
The guidelines are written for a more technical audience, but the majority of websites are designed by expert marketers and designers who have migrated into the technology space.
The requirements are based on technology best practices. Unfortunately, technology best practices are often in direct conflict with marketing best practices.
For example, from a technology and accessibility standpoint, it is best to keep all actions within a website in a single browser window. Directing links to open in a new window relies on technical variables that may interrupt the function of the site. Opening linked content (to your own site or another website) in a new window has been found to be disorientating to the user as they are not expecting a new window to appear.
But from a marketing standpoint, the number one rule is never take the user away from your website. A website is the only piece of internet real estate a business owns and once you have a visitor there you never want them to leave.
Therein lies the conflict. Marketing vs accessibility.
There are ways you can make links opening in a new window compliant, but it will require coding and design changes.
This is just one example of the 78 rules or success criteria set out by the WCAG. But this one alone has the power to upend a websites compliance standing.
DON'T WAIT!
The best advice anyone will ever give you about compliance is don't wait to get a demand letter or a lawsuit notification to act.
The clock is ticking. If you've done nothing about your compliance and haven't received a demand letter yet, it's reasonably just a matter of time.
Every website has a path to accessibility, and an expert can help you find the best one for your business.
The guidelines are intended to be testable criteria to help determine if a website is easily accessible for people with disabilities.
Each guideline also has a set of requirements, known as Success Criteria.
In order to conform to WCAG’s standards, you need to test your website to ensure all elements meet the Success Criteria.
While most standards have only one level of conformance, to meet the needs of advancing technology and help websites become complaint WCAG 2.1 designated three levels of conformance:
Level A includes the simplest website changes, such as color contrast and font resizing. While these changes will certainly enhance the experience of a disabled user, it would not make the site completely accessible.
Level AA includes all requirements from Level A plus additional accessibility elements that will further enhance the users experience and allow the site to function nearly equally for a person identifying as disabled.
Level AAA is the highest level of accessibility, including all requirements form Levels A and AA plus additional elements that will ensure the site functions identically for every visitor, regardless of ability level.
W3C used common factors when setting the level of conformance including:
Boiled down, it means that the Success Criteria on which your site will be judged must be reasonably attainable, able to move forward as technology advances, and not unreasonably prevent the design from achieving the objective of the website.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines exist to create accessibility for all, to ensure that your website equally serves every person who views it.
Not sure if your website is ADA compliant?
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