ADA: What You Need To Know

Making a website for your new company should be as simple as just finding a template you like and customizing it? Wrong. There are many not-so-obvious policies and rules you have to follow when creating and designing your website. If you don’t adhere to them, you could have a nasty lawsuit on your hands, which is not only a PR nightmare, but also money lost to your company. With that said, let’s talk ADA.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, according to ADA.gov, is “civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. It guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in public accommodations, employment, transportation, state and local government services, and telecommunications”. This means that your website needs to be user-friendly, not just to the general public, but it also has to accommodate those with disabilities. Not following their terms and regulations can be a very costly mistake, here’s what you need to know to avoid this.

The World Wide Web Consortium made a set of guidelines that websites should follow to be in accordance with the ADA called WCAG. The first thing you need to know is that you MUST have text alternatives on your site. For all “non text content” such as video, you need to have a text alternative. Alternatively, for all text content, you need to have another means of comprehending the text such as a program that states the text aloud. Additionally, you need to provide captions for all pre-recorded video or audio recordings. Essentially, you create content for your website that is able to be formatted in several different ways to accommodate any users with disabilities. The second thing you need to be aware of is that your website should have labeling on all the different sections of the site so the user can easily discern where they are and make the site easily navigable with a standard keyboard. Also, if your website has animations, you should include a means of restarting those animations. The third principle in the WCAG is about how comprehensible the website has to be. For the website to be up to par with the guidelines it has to have a clear language that is easily identifiable by a program, functions must act in predictable ways, and be sure adequate instructions are available where users need to fill out any forms or complete any such tasks. The final principle in the guidelines is that the code used to create the website has to be up to date with current standards.

This seems like a lot of work, but always remember that the more people that can access your website, the more traffic your site gets which means more revenue for you! RAC can help you get your website in compliance so you don’t have to do any of the heavy lifting. Contact RAC today to make your website something that everyone can enjoy, so no valuable customers get excluded and you can continue to grow your business!