#adasitecompliance

Every day, thousands of people are unable to use and interact with websites because of web accessibility issues. This can lead to a website accessibility lawsuit for you or your company. Over the past few years, certain regulations and guidelines to prevent this have emerged – more specifically, the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

The Act was carried as a civil rights legislation, which passed in the US to protect the rights of people with disabilities, as well as prohibit any discrimination against them. As per the ADA website rules, all people with disabilities have to have equal opportunities to participate in programs, receive services, seek knowledge, and express themselves freely.

Why Is Web Accessibility Important?

Website accessibility refers to the ability of people with a wide range of physical and mental disabilities to access websites, products, systems, services, and facilities featured on a website. For instance, web accessibility means that visually impaired or blind people can purchase tickets, use apps, recharge transportation cards, and use other services offered online.

Web content should be accessible to people, even ones using screen readers and other assistive technologies and automated tools. In times when around 1 in 5 people in the U.S. lives with one or more disabling conditions, statistics show that there are more than 50 million people in the United States and around 1.3 billion around the world who have a certain form of disability.

At the same time, improved digital accessibility benefits everyone. The features that would be designed for 20% of the population can also be used by the other 80% – we all know that anyone can be affected by a disability, which is why equal access matters. Adhere to these new standards for the disabled or you are likely to face a website accessibility lawsuit soon.

Digital Accessibility Features That Can Benefit Everyone

Some of the most important digital accessibility features that can benefit everyone include the following:

Text-to-Speech and Voice Recognition features, help people access online services on a mobile device when driving, or when their hands are full.

Features that enable captions on media content, can help when you are in a noisy environment or in situations when you don’t want to distract others.

An option to easily magnify text by screen magnifiers, which can help disabled and people with vision impairments and difficulties, but also people who suffer from temporary eye injuries.

Besides regular business compliance, an ADA site can improve the overall marketing of the company, especially when using the right tools that are known as popular in this manner. These can assist you in avoiding a website accessibility lawsuit.

About ADA & The Web Accessibility Guidelines

Web accessibility guidelines have existed for two decades. They aim to bring usability and user experience design together, removing barriers for people with disabilities and enabling more users to complete tasks online.

Generally speaking, these guidelines are designed to provide a sufficient level of detail for any person interacting on the web. Some guidelines involve discrete and identifiable criteria (for example, embedding images and link areas with appropriate text) while others require greater amounts of professional discretion (the use of code to improve navigability, predictability, compatibility with certain software, etc.).

Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)

Establishing a legal framework around digital accessibility ensures that companies give equal access to content to disabled users, and make their services accessible to a large audience. Over the past decade, companies have been rushing to embrace accessibility in order to strengthen their financial and ethical benefits. The legal requirement came into effect in 2010, known as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

This legal framework outlines all the digital accessibility requirements for every company profile in the United States. Basically, ADA compliance ensures that a set of laws is put in place to prevent any discrimination against people with disabilities. It is applicable in all areas of public life including work, school, education, and transportation services. Established by the Department of Justice, ADA compliance requires websites to enable people to use the Internet as well as online services.

Who Needs To Follow The ADA Requirements?

There are three main titles within ADA, where Title I applies to all businesses with at least 15 full-time employees. Title II of the ADA applies to state and local government compliance. Lastly, ADA Title III refers to most businesses as well as non-profit business entities in the “accommodation” and “public spaces” categories.

Online services and digital information are also considered public accommodations and require ADA compliance. Below is a summarized list of companies, businesses, and organizations that are required to comply and are at risk of ADA lawsuits in case of violations:

State and local government offices

Private business entities employing 15 or more people

Corporations that operate for the benefit of the public

Banking Institutions

Hotels and travel/tour agencies or businesses

Hospitals and healthcare institutes

Schools, universities, and educational institutions.

WCAG

A document known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is what has been the globally accepted standard defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The regulations spread through three levels of accessibility for both online and digital services, including:

Level A is the minimum level of accessibility that is required for individuals to make digital content accessible to people with disabilities.

Level AA is the medium level of accessibility that is required for individuals to access and interact with digital content, navigating it without any barriers.

Level AAA is the maximum level of accessibility that is required for individuals, where digital content needs to be accessed but also has an additional interface layer, providing the most convenient experience.

Many types of web content are unable to reach Level AAA. On the other hand, Level AA compliance is the minimum required level in order to make a website accessible.

Why Are WCAG 2.0 And 2.1 Created?

The WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 guidelines have been created to provide a clear methodology and a unique standard for digital accessibility that meets the needs of all individuals, companies, and governments. The standard applies to a broad range of web technologies, implemented by a set of web development and web design techniques, as well as tested by a range of automated tools.

In times when many businesses or website owners don’t understand how people interact with their websites or mobile apps, having an ADA website that conforms to the regulations can help you prevent accessibility lawsuits.

Moreover, a website designed as per the latest website usability and accessibility reviews is a good way to expand your reach to a broader target audience, improve your marketing efforts, and ensure that every user has equal access to your information, products, or services.

Here, it is important to prepare the digital content including text, audio, video, graphics, and illustrations with alternatives, as well as use formats that are supported by the users’ assistive technologies.

Still, the remaining challenges include the lack of skilled developers that are trained in accessibility, as well as the lack of awareness about ADA compliance and how to build an ADA-compliant website or mobile app and avoid a website accessibility lawsuit.

U.S. Rehabilitation Act

The U.S. Rehabilitation Act is a federal law that prohibits any discrimination on the basis of disability in programs conducted by federal agencies. The rule applies to programs receiving federal financial support and includes the following two sections designed for website accessibility compliance:

Section 504 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act, protects children and adults with disabilities from discrimination in schools and workplaces. There are specific accessibility criteria for online educational resources.

Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act, where government bodies and federal services are required to make electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to all people, including disabled people.

ADA Lawsuits Are On The Rise: Is Your Website At Risk?

While many still don’t understand what accessibility is and why it is important, advocates are everywhere writing guides and helping website owners understand and implement these digital accessibility rules. However, website accessibility lawsuits are on the rise and make the news nearly every day in the United States. This happens mostly because there are still no enforceable regulations for website accessibility.

The set of regulations is under Section 508 by law, where federal websites in the U.S. are required to check and meet these standards. In order to prevent ADA lawsuits, most simply follow Section 508 or the WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 AAA guidelines.

Accessibility laws are changing and are different in many countries. Besides the U.S., the UK and Canada are also starting to enforce accessibility. However, we will stick to the site accessibility lawsuits and how to prevent them by complying with the law while making your website accessible.

Popular Website Compliance Lawsuits & Settlements

Statistics from Seyfarth show that in 2018 alone, there were a total of 2258 website accessibility lawsuits to the federal court, which was a 177% jump from the previous year. In 2019, the number of cases also increased, most of which were in the retail, food service, entertainment and leisure, travel/hospitality, self-service, and real estate industries.

One of the first federal court lawsuits filed against a big name occurred in 2006, when the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) as the plaintiff sued Target, a U.S. supermarket chain, for its inability to comply with ADA rules.

In the hospitality industry, Domino’s Pizza was one of the companies which received a lawsuit filed in federal court. In 2016, a visually impaired man sued the popular chain because his screen reader was incompatible with their mobile app, so the device could not read aloud its contents.

In 2012, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) filed a lawsuit against Netflix, for not providing closed captions in its online TV and movie streaming services. The plaintiff has taken legal action against the popular streaming service and the case quickly arrived at federal court.

Education facilities have not been exempt from lawsuits, too. Two federal class-action lawsuits were filed against Harvard and MIT by the National Institute of the Deaf (NAD) for not providing captions in their online content and courses. After four years of legal action on federal court grounds, Harvard was made liable to pay $1.5 million in litigation and attorney fees.

In most of these cases, big names could have saved themselves from litigation costs and bad publicity by simply adding some accessibility features to their website to reduce the risk of such lawsuits.

Recent posts show that even today, the number of lawsuits filed against companies in federal court actions is increasing. Many small to medium-sized businesses are on the radar, too. Among all states, New York, California, and Florida seem to be hotbeds for legal ADA-related lawsuits.

How to Comply With The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

If you want to prevent an ADA lawsuit, the only route is to plan for, design, as well as build an accessible website. This form of inclusive design should optimize content and help the visually impaired, as well as people with other disabilities, to use and interact with your website.

In fact, every business with a website, mobile app, or internet software application should hire an accessibility specialist to go over the site and ensure full ADA compliance. In order to have an ADA-compliant business website optimized for people with disabilities, you will need to hire these experts who know what needs to be changed and how to ensure compliance.

For instance, if you apply ARIA with HTML5 or your image alt tags are not written properly, you could be facing a lawsuit. However, the source of most ADA lawsuits is the actual inability to access web pages or mobile apps, especially for visually impaired or blind people who use assistive technologies.

There are some builders that are integrated within content management systems and help website owners make the site ADA-compliant. Elementor, a popular WordPress theme-building, and page design plugin are one of them. The plugin helps incorporate parallax, dynamic content, and animations that comply with the accessibility guidelines. There is also the creation of new themes, headings, and footers with full developer control.

What Can You Do To Create An Effective ADA Website And Comply With WCAG: Checklist

The WCAG guidelines outline a set of principles and techniques that make web content “perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.” In other words, users should be able to access content, use interactive elements, navigate through web pages and apps, and use the content on their device of choice.

There are three vital ways to achieve the goals for website accessibility:

Correct use of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Organization of content properly and logically, so that both humans and assistive tools can interpret its layout, including the use of text alternatives for visual content (YouTube is a good example of this – the platform was designed to automatically add captions to videos uploaded on the network).

Extra attributes are added to HTML and other code so that assistive devices can be used effectively, complying with the existing web accessibility standards.

From Braille readers used for hearing and reading text or images to screen readers and magnifiers for blind or visually impaired users and keyboard/joystick navigators for people who can’t use a mouse or other input controls, all of these ways ensure compliance.

How Do You Test Web Accessibility Across Different Devices?

There are two main ways to test how content shows on a website or mobile app.

The first is automated testing, which involves running a test against the latest WCAG principles. With this method, you can identify 20% to 30% of the compliance issues. That is why developers use it as a starting point when familiarizing themselves with the WCAG requirements set by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Second is manual testing, which is obviously more detailed and complex and will deliver the BEST RESULTS. Here, the testing should identify areas of partial compliance with regulations. Common tests use keyboard-only testing schemes to identify where certain issues occur for people who cannot use mouse or touch interfaces. We specialize in manual testing and correcting all errors.

Within manual testing, there is also the practice of testing pages and case scenarios with a screen reader or an emulator that shows how a webpage will respond to a user who wants to access content with text-to-speech technology.

Run a FREE SITE SCAN with us today to test the accessibility of your website.

Facing An ADA Lawsuit? Here Are 4 Steps To Make Your Site Accessible

As we mentioned above, the purpose of the ADA is to ensure that any disabled person has the same opportunity and rights as others in ensuring that digital content is accessible. Violating ADA can land you a lawsuit and some serious fines (up to $20,000 or more), and the best way to avoid potential litigation for a violation is through the four steps below.

Identify Your Barriers – Examining your business site and any of its features that could be a barrier to people with disabilities is usually the best place to start. Know that having more text is never a bad idea, as more people use assistive technologies nowadays. Put yourself in the shoes of an impaired person and try to understand whether your site is designed so you can freely navigate through its pages.

Understand The Requirements – Understanding the ADA requirements is equally important for everyone. New websites are already being designed with web accessibility in mind, and seeing what these rules require can only help you visualize and plan for new content in a better way.

Train Your Staff To Assist – If you work with a web design specialist, make sure that person is familiar with WCAG and able to align your content and marketing tools to support the ADA laws.

Hire A Professional – If you have multiple websites, or find it difficult to optimize your company website to comply with web accessibility laws, you can always seek our professional assistance to prevent an ADA lawsuit.

Hiring expert ADA consultants to audit the level of your website’s accessibility, provide guidance on remediation, and maintain accessible design is recommended if you want to lower the risk of a potential lawsuit.

Final Words

The bottom line of complying with web accessibility is that it offers a number of ways to build a reputation but also targets a broader audience. Users deserve to have equal access to content online, and many of their common tasks have been identified by regulators as essential for modern living. Therefore, it is vital to take advantage of these services and opportunities, and doing that would also prevent accessibility lawsuits.

Every organization, whether large or small, should ensure that they are aware of their accessibility obligations. In doing so, they will mitigate any risks of facing an accessibility lawsuit, but also maximize their revenue potential. In the end, wider accessibility equals a better online experience for everyone.

Web accessibility is important nowadays, and making your website accessible can offer numerous benefits beyond compliance. Believe it or not, statistics show that around 25% of adults in the United States live with a certain form of disability.

Still, many websites are not optimized for users with disabilities, who mainly use screen readers, text-to-speech devices, and other forms of assistive technology. Before we go into detail on the subject, let’s talk more about what is web accessibility and how to design an accessible website.

What Is Website Accessibility?

Website accessibility is the practice of designing and developing websites, tools, as well as other assistive technologies that can help people with disabilities use and interact with websites. Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), this standard allows users with disabilities to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with or contribute to the web.

Generally speaking, web accessibility is a set of criteria that applies to all disabilities that prevent people from accessing the web. These include cognitive, physical, speech, visual, neurological, or auditory disabilities.

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) gathers all of the standards under Title II and Title III requirements, where:

Title II requires all state and local governments, as well as governmental entities, to receive federal funding to provide access to their programs, services, or activities to people with disabilities

Title III, which are guidelines that prohibit “places of public accommodations such as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, museums, and hospitals from disability-based discrimination.”

Not complying with the ADA website requirements puts you at risk of a lawsuit. the number of lawsuits has increased over the past few years, and small to medium-sized businesses are currently some of the common victims.

Why Is Web Accessibility Important For Every Business?

There are plenty of benefits when making your website accessible. For the most part, you will benefit by:

Giving your target audience equal access to your site, and with that, expanding your audience

Protecting your company from potential fines and lawsuits that may arise from having an inaccessible website

Demonstrating your brand’s ability to serve everyone

Growing your business by being ethical and using that as part of your marketing

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

The set of guidelines developed through the W3C process and in cooperation with certain individuals or organizations around the world aims to provide a single shared standard for web content accessibility, meeting the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments around the world.

The WCAG documentation clearly explains how to make your website more accessible. The versions WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 are commonly used and present guidelines on how to present standard text, alt text on images, text in videos and sounds, as well as how to alter your code to define the structure, presentation of things, etc. The good thing is that if you optimize a web page to conform to the WCAG 2.1 standard, for example, you should know that it automatically complies with WCAG 2.0, too.

The WCAG guidelines are primarily intended for web content developers, web designers, and web accessibility evaluation tool developers, but also other people who want to explore the standard for web accessibility that is becoming common in many countries around the world.

2020 Was A Record-Breaking Year For ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuits

In 2020, the number of website, app, and video accessibility lawsuit cases went up by 25%, and December 2020 alone saw a rise of almost 100% compared to January 2020. The total digital accessibility lawsuits exceeded 3,500 and there were more websites that were reported as not accessible to people than ever before.

Compared to the 2314 cases reported in 2018, or the 2890 cases in 2019, the numbers in 2020 show that plaintiffs keep finding websites with accessibility issues.

According to a 2020 WebAIM research report, 98.1% of the top one million websites’ home pages had some easily detectable WCAG failures. Right now, companies are adding stores, websites, and digital content at a rapid pace, and the accessibility initiatives are not keeping up.

Among the lawsuits, companies in retail are taking the lead. Not having an accessible website is one of the main reasons plaintiffs decide to sue retailers. Other prominent industries include food service, education, entertainment and leisure, banking, insurance, etc.

How To Make Your Website Accessible And Avoid A Lawsuit

Optimizing your website for disabled visitors is what every business owner should be doing nowadays to prevent a lawsuit. Making your website accessible not only helps to prevent a lawsuit — it can also position you as a leader in your industry and help you expand to a wider audience.

There are two main ways to do that.

The first one is to hire an expert specialized in website accessibility and pay them to go over your website and all of its elements to ensure full ADA compliance. However, if you are out of budget or can’t afford to pay for such services, there is another option. We here at ADA Site Compliance are those experts!

The second option is to get an expert consultation from an ADA specialist and do things yourself. Obviously, this would require much more effort from your side, but getting a list of things that you can do to improve your accessibility can help a lot, especially if you are new to the subject.

What About Using Widgets Or Apps to Make Your Website Accessible?

There are many different widgets, apps, and software that are nowadays used to help make a website more accessible. These companies use artificial intelligence to bring a site up to compliance. However, many of their tools are different in practice than they are in theory, and do not give complete ADA website compliance.

One of them is AccessiBe. Despite being one of the biggest names in web accessibility nowadays, AccessiBe is a widget that is commonly cited in lawsuits. Lately, lawsuits against this company have emerged, where people claim that the websites don’t comply with the ADA standards.

So in other words, using AccessiBe or other software solutions for your business and website is not recommended. The entire scenario only proves that the best way to make your site accessible and user-friendly is by paying a developer for manual web accessibility coding or getting a list of all the things that need to be done so you can change them yourself.

10 Tips To Make Your Website Accessible

Are you ready to learn more about web accessibility, making your website accessible, and optimizing for assistive technologies? Below, we are listing ten tips to make the most out of your website and improve the user experience for the visually impaired and other users with disabilities.

1. Use Descriptive Headings, Link Text, And Image Alt Text For Content To Be Easily Picked Up By Screen Readers

Writing descriptive headings, link text, and image alt text help people who use screen readers understand every bit of content. Screen reader technology is designed to prompt them to interact with these elements, and activate links or images they are most interested in.

Screen reader technology does not look at web pages — instead, it reads HTML code. If any piece of text there is identified as a heading within the HTML code, the screen reader will announce that it is a heading. That is why it is important to design everything in an intelligent way and use proper heading tags.

If the headings are descriptive and sum up or announce the content that appears beneath them, it instantly becomes easier for screen reader users to find the precise information they need when clicking on the link that leads to the web page.

For images, using proper ALT text can help screen reader users understand the information conveyed by images.

The same goes for the link text — using non-descriptive text like “click here” can only confuse people who use screen readers. That is why all links deserve meaningful descriptions. Besides links, URLs should get the same treatment, and be as short and as concise as possible.

2. Write Short And Concise Paragraphs

Writing short paragraphs also allows users to quickly understand what the paragraph is all about. For example, visually impaired users can decide whether they want to keep listening to the paragraph, or they would prefer to skip to the next one, which they can do easily with a screen reader.

Another common practice is the use of “front-loaded” paragraphs, where the conclusion comes first, and is followed by the what, why, when, where, and how. Writing paragraphs like these allow the screen reader users to gain an understanding of what the paragraph is all about from the start.

3. Provide Information In Lists (Better For Screen Reader Technology)

No matter what content management system you are using, your HTML code is extremely useful when it is full of lists. Screen readers often announce the number of items in each list before actually reading out the list items on the web page, which is how this can help them listen or not listen to the list.

The use of lists (which are marked with the <li> tag) represents a behind-the-scenes change to the code, and won’t affect the visual aesthetics of your website.

4. Place Your Important Elements Higher Up The Web Page

Another great way to help the visually impaired and other users is to place your important interactive elements higher on the web pages. If you are wondering why this is the case, it’s simple — these users press the Tab key to get to these parts, and will often arrive on that page because of that element.

So, the key takeaway here is to place important links and other elements higher up the web page. This is a good practice since most website users, regardless of their ability, usually expert the important information closer to the top of the web page. A good exercise is to use the Tab key on your web page content and notice how easy it is to arrive at the important element.

5. Use ARIA Roles

If you don’t know what ARIA is, it basically stands for “Accessible Rich Internet Applications” The role helps users make dynamic content more accessible. Just like alt text provides information about an image, ARIA roles and attributes provide more information or context about web page elements to screen readers and other forms of assistive technology that is crawling through page content.

Adding an ARIA role is easy — just use a role=”<ROLE TYPE>” attribute. Here, the six most common categories of roles for web page elements include:

Landmark (for navigation),

Document layout (for a description of a section),

Widget (description of HTML),

Abstract (organization and streamlining of a document),

Window (subcategories and subsections of the main document), and

Live Regions (detection of dynamic content changes on a webpage).

In order to make ARIA changes, one should have access to the source code and know ARIA and HTML5 to complete the process.

6. Avoid The Use Of Placeholder Text In Your Forms

Online forms found on your page often feature placeholder text to describe various elements of the form and save some space. However, through the prism of website accessibility, this text is also a non-label text which means that screen readers tend to skip it.

If a screen reader skips the value inside each placeholder in a form, the user won’t be able to fulfill it. So, instead of placeholder text, you can use a <label> tag or an ARIA attribute that won’t go away. Also, users with color blindness will appreciate it if you use the highest text and background contrast.

7. Avoid Using Tables Where You Don’t Need Them

Screen readers get confused when crawling through tables — they typically inform the user of how many rows and columns there are in a table. However, tables follow a specific layout that only people without these impairments can detect. So, using a table is complex and challenging for these devices — especially when it comes to reading tabular data that matches the visual order.

If you think that there is no better solution than tables for a certain type of information, you can maybe explore CSS for data presentation. And if you must create a table and don’t want to use CSS, make sure you use the correct headers for each row and column.

8. Add Keyboard Navigation

Many people don’t use a mouse. Yet, there are so many websites that do not allow navigation with a keyboard, yet this is becoming a trend even for people without impairments. For users who use assistive technologies and don’t use a mouse, though, a site that you can access and use with a keyboard is very much appreciated.

For example, most blind users will use Braille keyboards to access your website. So, it is up to you to ensure that they have access to all of the URLs, anchor text, drop-down menus, forms, CTAs, dialog boxes, and more.

Another good tip is to make your JavaScript widgets accessible with the keyboard. If you don’t want that, you can use HTML links, buttons, and form fields to make sure that all elements of your website are accessible by keyboard.

9. Accessibility For Video And Multimedia

You should make your video and multimedia content accessible. The best tip to do that is to use an audio description to describe your visuals — here, focus only on the images, gestures, and changes in settings, which would help blind users to enjoy the video. Also, make sure that you don’t end up recording hours of audio description and making it meaningless for every user.

Another good solution here is to provide text captions that can be synchronized with the video and audio tracks for all users who are deaf or hard of hearing. Finally, you need to use an accessible multimedia player — HTML5 players are among the most popular in this manner.

10. Choose Your Website’s Colors Carefully

Color psychology is a big topic and visual elements need to align with each other and create a good contrast. The effect of colors on emotions is also big nowadays. However, some of the rules to keep in mind for your main content and colors include avoiding bright colors and keeping a clear contrast.

Similar to colors, your contrast sensitivity should be kept in mind. Here, you should think about color and contrast and all the users who have low color contrast sensitivity. When designing your pages, make sure to have a high contrast between any foreground and background. Also, avoid the use of JavaScript or CSS features that prevent users from increasing the contrast.

These tips will ensure that your essential elements are easy to read, not too bright for impaired users, and good enough so everyone can interact with your main content with ease.

Conclusion

They say that freedom is one of the main principles online, and accessibility is one of the best ways to support that goal. In times when everyone deserves access to the same information online, businesses are using tools to ensure that their visitors and potential customers can properly interact with their websites. Get a FREE SITE SCAN with us!

From the titles to the form, links, and images, your website content needs to help you grow your revenue and business. Making your entire site accessible can only help you in that manner.

As you probably know like PDF accessibility and PDF remediation, web accessibility evaluation is needed by every website owner, and the main goal is for that website to automatically be accessible and user-friendly to people with disabilities.

If you want to make sure that your website meets certain web accessibility standards, looking for a web accessibility check feature is usually a good place to start. As you may know, website accessibility is a set that includes website usability, which basically means that besides accessibility evaluation, your website needs to be usable, too.

If you do a Google search for “web content accessibility tools” you will likely see a lot of results and plenty of useful tools you can use. In today’s article, we are covering some of the tools that are commonly used for an accessibility check – and what you need to know before using each testing tool.

But first, let’s touch on the topic of website accessibility from the aspect of these testing tools.

How Do These Tools Conform To The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?

Below, we will be listing some of the best web page accessibility tools. You should keep in mind that all of them are used to evaluate your website against accessibility guidelines (including the WCAG 1.0, Section 508, RGAA in France, Stanca Act in Italy, etc.) through scans. Most of them are tools that can be opened as URLs in a browser, but some of them allow you to upload your HTML file or pass your HTML code.. These are not web browser plugins, though – they work without downloading or installing anything to use them.

What’s The Best Web Accessibility Checker?

Here is the list of website accessibility evaluation tools that can help you scan and detect any potential accessibility issues and give you a detailed accessibility check with information on potential broken links, errors, information mishaps, contrast issues, and more on each of your pages.

Accessibility Checker by Intent-Based First on our list is a product that was created in 2020 by Intent-Based as an online web-based audit tool that does a full accessibility check on your site to find any potential accessibility issues and errors. Every potential issue comes with a detailed explanation of what is it, how it affects users with disabilities, and how to solve it.

AChecker – Accessibility Checker Achecker was developed in 2009, this free tool gives you web page accessibility evaluation via URL. You can alternatively upload HTML files and select which guidelines to evaluate them against when creating optimized content for people with disabilities. The list of options includes HTML Validator, BITV, Section 508, Stanca Act, WCAG 1.0, and 2.0.

Cynthia SaysCynthia Says is a website accessibility evaluation tool that can be used for free to identify errors in your content that go against the S. 508 standards or WCAG compliance. The latest version lets you check for issues in your design that are related to the WCAG guidelines.

FAE – Functional Accessibility Evaluator FAE is another program with a great interface and menu, plus a helpful support team behind it. You can check various web page links and test the code for free. The results are divided into five main categories (Navigation and Orientation, Text Equivalents, Scripting, Styling, and HTML Standards) and the insights presented for each URL let you focus on the best way to test and fix issues on each of your web pages.

WAVE – Web Accessibility Versatile Evaluator The wave icon is associated with this unique accessibility tool, which can scan any URL, and give you a detailed report on whether your site is accessible or not. Many websites work with WAVE as their go-to data and accessibility checker, and the best thing about it is that WAVE is completely free to test and use on different websites.

We hope that this group of tools helped you identify some background accessibility issues in your image files, code, app, or business website.  Continuous monitoring and running of tests in the background is the only way to ensure full compliance on every page.

PDF accessibility is also important as web accessibility and can’t be ignored to help people with disabilities and avoid any legal issues. Browse our website for details or contact us if you need services for PDF document accessibility and PDF document remediation.

Technology has forever changed the way we do business and communicate, especially during the pandemic. For people with disabilities, this isn’t always the best thing. There are many websites out there that are inaccessible to those with disabilities. Making the switch to a fully digital world poses many unique challenges for these individuals. At ADA Site Compliance, it’s our goal to ensure people with disabilities have the right access to a digitally inclusive website. See firsthand how inaccessible websites can impact the day-to-day of those with disabilities.

Paying Bills Online

It seems as if there isn’t a bill you don’t pay online these days. More companies are switching to paperless billing, and the world of online bill paying continues to grow. This creates distinctive challenges for those with disabilities. When your online bill-paying software is not easily accessible, people with disabilities aren’t able to use it to look up their account information, ensure their bills are paid on time, and effectively communicate with your company. Think about what it would be like if you couldn’t get access to necessary information without help. That is why it is imperative to improve your website accessibility for customer satisfaction.

Checking Emails

Checking emails can be difficult for those living with disabilities. One of the fundamentals of using the internet is typing. Typing emails, for example, is an essential part of the online world. Ensuring that your message is getting across correctly is important for anyone, especially those with disabilities. These user experiences need to be optimized for individuals with disabilities.

Ordering Food Online

In the last year, ordering food online has become routine. It’s important to have an app that is accessible and easily allows those with disabilities to place an online food order. At ADA Site Compliance, we’re committed to not only optimizing your website for accessibility but also your apps to guarantee that everyone can seamlessly navigate your app.

Web accessibility is not a privilege, but a common need. In times when everyone is shopping online, the e-commerce experience should be provided equally for all. This includes people with disabilities, visually impaired users, and other vulnerable categories.

Nowadays, two of the biggest web standards organizations are supporters of e-commerce website accessibility. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the major standards organization, and its WCAG guidelines offer designers and developers many tips and advice on making sites accessible.

Below, we are showing you the ways you can make your website and online store accessible for people who use screen readers and other forms of assisted technologies.

What Is Web Accessibility For E-Commerce Websites?

First of all, you should know that web accessibility is an initiative that demands that all web content on your online store is coded and designed so that individuals with disabilities can interact with it. The range of disabilities is wide, including users with sight, movement, and cognitive impairments.

The website accessibility standards are mandatory according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) which are currently at version 2.1 and focus on certain principles to address all accessibility issues people have.

The guidelines are divided into four main categories, where content must be:

Perceivable: To make the content perceivable, it is recommended to follow principles such as adding alt text to non-text content, using low contrast between text and graphics, providing transcripts for audio and videos, and more.

Operable: In web accessibility, operable websites are ones that have a user interface that is very clear and straightforward to the user, so that they can freely and easily navigate throughout the e-commerce website. To meet these accessibility standards, your site needs to be operable using just a keyboard (without a mouse).

Understandable: Whenever a user interacts with the online store, they should be able to understand the content and operate the user interface. Accessibility is all about making it clear and easy to use.

Robust: Last is robustness – to meet the accessibility guidelines, you should also make your e-commerce store robust. This is purely technical and requires using valid code markup when implementing the website. As a result, your online store will be more effectively interpreted by assistive systems and technologies.

Essentially, web accessibility demands that content should be presented in a manner that makes the most sense to tackle common accessibility issues. Website owners also need to consider writing alt text for images, providing transcripts for both audio and video content, low-contrast text and graphics, and more.

Why Is Web Accessibility Important In Online Stores?

Statistics show that more than 1 billion people all over the world and almost 57 million Americans have certain forms of disabilities, and over half of them are experiencing severe disabilities. While they are not the same, all disabilities demand certain modifications so that everyone can use the Internet freely and shop from e-commerce stores.

Aside from meeting the regulations and addressing e-commerce website accessibility for people with disabilities, an optimized e-commerce website will prevent driving away visitors and is likely to improve (otherwise lost) revenue. The user experience on accessible websites is cleaner and much better for everyone, addressing all challenges and meeting all accessibility standards.

All of these people use assistive technologies like screen readers, screen magnifiers, text-to-speech systems, special browsers, and more. In the next part, we will break down all of these categories and their limitations, as well as the actions needed to address them.

Common Shopper Limitations And The Best Solutions For Ecommerce Website Accessibility

We all know that web accessibility is a form of optimizing your website to comply with regulations and also address user challenges. The best way to do it is by understanding the various shopper limitations and modifying your e-commerce website according to them.

Visually impaired and blind shoppers Believe it or not, more than 1 billion people around the world suffer from some form of vision impairment. To align and make your website accessible for visually impaired and blind shoppers, your store design needs to accommodate the technologies they use to access web content. Screen readers are one of the most popular software solutions that shoppers with visual impairments use. A screen reader is a software that allows them to read the web content clearly, either with the help of a Braille display or a sound synthesizer. To address web accessibility, you should ensure that your website design is compatible with the latest version of the popular browsers, but also align it to specific browsers like MozBraille, EMACSPEAK, and pwWebSpeak that are used by this group of people. Lastly, focus on avoiding any high-contrast color schemes (with no flashy objects) and make your e-commerce business store as simple and as minimalistic as possible.

Colorblind shoppers Color blindness is another form of impairment that affects e-commerce website accessibility. Addressing these changes in your web design to help users with disabilities like these is simple. The first step you should make is to ensure that the colors you use are at the opposite ends of the color wheel, preventing any confusion among people with color blindness. Next, make sure that your buttons also have color contrast and add some texture, shapes, or other cues in them to ensure that you have an accessible e-commerce website.

Users who are deaf or hard of hearing More than 466 million people have some example of hearing loss. All of these can be your customers, which is why you should make your business sites accessible to this specific group. If you are wondering what some of the challenges faced by customers with hearing impairments are, they are generally related to difficulties in reading text because they are used to sign language as their first language. So, one solution would be to create sign language videos for every part of your website. Even though it might take some time, people with visual impairments will appreciate your company and navigate through your sites easily. Another quick solution is to add captions to your videos.

Elderly shoppers We all know that elderly people love shopping and are an appreciated group of customers for most e-commerce business owners. Estimates show that 7% of the global internet audience is people aged 65 and above. To address web accessibility compliance, you should optimize your online shop and fix some of the things that prevent users from freely navigating through it. One of the biggest challenges these people have is related to their weak motor skills, which prevents them from interacting with some page elements. As a solution, you should meet the ADA accessibility standards by designing your web pages in a way that elements like form fields are not too close to each other. Also, make sure that every page can be navigated through with the use of the keyboard only. Also, most of the elderly have short-term and episodic memory declines. To address this with a solution, you can offer them frequent alerts and reminders, such as an alert that they have products in the shopping cart or website elements showing the latest products they visited.

Users living in developing countries and regions Last is the category of people that are living in developing countries and regions. We all know that the Internet is not a privilege and more people have a screen, mouse, and keyboard than ever before. Still, the only problem that persists is a fast and stable internet connection. If we couple this with the fact that many sites use JavaScript-powered web applications, the page loading speed and overall user experience might drop for users with unstable Internet connections. The easy fix is to use tools like a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for your company sites, which can help you reduce the latency for visitors located away from your business’ server location. Other solutions include creating a cache for page elements that don’t change more often (the footer and navigation bar are examples) or creating a lightweight version of your online store which can be accessed by these users. Now that you know all of the vulnerable customer groups out there and the guidelines to helping each of them navigate through your site in a better way, let’s move to some of the simple steps that you can make to address ADA compliance for all of your website’s elements.

What Are The Simplest Steps To Making Your Ecommerce Website Accessible?

Addressing accessibility has never been so important. If you want to make your store accessible and address WCAG compliance, here are some of the best manual checks that you need to consider:

Start using your store but keep the shoppers with limitations in mind

Look for any images, buttons, videos, and other elements that might appear weird if you take colors out of perception

Investigate potential processes that might affect accessibility and are tedious to perform

If you are using media files, check if all of them can be accessed by the blind, color blind, or people with other disabilities

Check if you have alternate texts that describe each media to an impaired customer

If you are using video, check if the subtitles are aligned and clear enough for people with hearing impairments

Keep the wording to each text link simple, and avoid using links on words like “here”

Build a visual approach that goes beyond pages on your store. For example, you can make your emails and customer support more accessible

Position your navigation bar so that it always appears in the same location relative to other elements

Use a search bar that is visible and sizeable enough so all customers can use it

There is also another approach to addressing accessibility for each customer with disabilities. You can use tools like the following:

ACTF aDesigner, which is a digital disability simulator that lets you ensure that your website’s elements are accessed by visually impaired customers

Pingdom, which is one of the digital tools that address all the slow internet connection issues and does speed tests of your online store

All of these tools are essential and can help you see who can access your sites. They are a great way to ensure that you are meeting all of the compliance requirements.

Final Words

In the end, accessibility is of big importance nowadays. Making your site accessible for all of the vulnerable categories of customers is important, and following the WCAG guidelines can help you set an example in your industry and attract more users. Now is a great time to start doing this and directly attract people who search for accessible online stores.

All aspects of the Web should be accessible to everyone nowadays. The goal is to provide equal access and opportunity for people with disabilities and give them active participation in the digital aspects of our society. Document accessibility is of huge importance in this domain, referring to accessible documents that can be read by people with disabilities, cognitively impaired, color blind, or people with visual impairments.

What Is Document Accessibility?

Microsoft Word is one of the most popular applications for users with disabilities, and one that can be customized, too. The text within Word can be easily read by many assistive technologies including screen readers, Braille devices, text-to-speech technologies, and more. Below, we are describing some of the basic rules you should follow when making your Word, PowerPoint, PDF, Excel, and other files accessible online.

How To Create Accessible Documents?

As you may know, an accessible document is a file that is created to be easily readable by a specific technology. Making a document accessible is best when you are in the early phases of creating it. Below, we are guiding you to the process and the tools needed when creating accessible documents.

Focus On The Document Properties (Found In Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel & More)

Look at the document’s properties by visiting the Properties Tab. Whether it’s a Microsoft Word document, a presentation, or a spreadsheet, your document needs to have a clear Company Name, Address, and Phone Number in the Author field as contact information for the reader. Also, the reading language should be set to English.

Add Alt Text To All Images, Charts, Tables, Embedded Objects, Video, Signatures, or Audio Files

All of your clip-arts, images, charts, shapes, embedded, inked, visual, audio or video files use something known as alternative text (or alt text) that is essentially an audible description of a non-text object meant to help visually impaired users understand it.

In some documents and programs, you need to right-click the object to find the Alt Text menu. In others, you can add alternative text by clicking the image. Doing it is essential, especially in Microsoft Word and PDF documents.

Use Styles In All Lengthy Documents

Just like the alternative text is for images, heading styles in numerical order (heading 1, heading 2, etc.), lists, bullets (preferably round ones), and normal paragraphs should all be used to maintain the structure of your accessible documents. Optimizing your headings and other sections will also make it easy for content to be picked up by a screen reader.

Meaningful Hyperlinks

The format of your external links is important for document accessibility, too. When formatting a hyperlink (in Microsoft Word, PDF, or any other document type), make sure to actually link to the part of the sentence describing the item, and not use a word like “here” to put the hyperlink on. This is one of the common mistakes Microsoft Word users make.

Avoid Using Watermarks That Are Images

An image used for a watermark is not read by a screen reader, so you should definitely stick to symbols only (even though they are defined as “background” on them) when creating accessible content.

Avoid Using Blank Cells For Formatting Or Paragraph Marks For Spacing Between Lines

Doing this in Microsoft suite creates a shutter sound which is very annoying to a listener. Instead, add cell padding and spacing, or paragraph and line spacing when you are creating documents.

Use Closed Captions For All Audio Files

Accessibility in Word documents also means using a closed caption for all audio in your documents or presentations. This will help people with low or no hearing ability or users with site challenges

Write In A Simple And Clear Way

Your writing style matters as well when it comes to creating accessible documents. Make sure to write in plain language, without using jargon and abbreviations. Focus on simple and clear writing in every document – it will make your content easy to be transcribed and understand by users.

Check If Your PDF Documents Are Accessible

PDF documents are often difficult to optimize and problematic for users. The best way to check whether every page of a PDF is accessible is by using the Accessibility Checker that is built-in within the Acrobat suite. Similarly, to make every page of PDFs accessible, you can use Adobe Acrobat Pro’s Action Wizard (in the “Tools” section of the menu).

Add An Accessibility Disclaimer

Make sure to use a general title for the document which would be the main one. In the starting part of your document, add a space or small image or text box where you describe that if users have problems reading or understanding the document, they should contact the right person. Provide contact information.

Letters, Font, and Point Size

The ideal fonts include Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana, which are all part of the ‘sans-serif family. The right text size of 12-points benefits most users, with the right color contrast (black text on a white or yellow background is a good example). Among the other important considerations for making your documents accessible on the web, you should avoid using color alone to convey meaning, focus on lowercase letters and use bold font to highlight and emphasize text. Do not hyphenate words at the end of lines, stick to normal text for numbers from one to nine, and use numerics from 10 upwards.

Specify Column Header Rows In Tables

Creating accessible documents with headers relies on one rule – designing a simple structure of rows and columns where it is easy to specify which row is your column header or row title. This applies to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and other tools.

Ensuring Your Content Is Accessible On All Screen Readers

Whenever you are creating a document in a certain format (Word or PDF), think about its structure and how easy it would be for users with disabilities to navigate through it. If the layout of your document is full of graphics, has alternate text that is similar in every image, or has inconsistent spacing and structure, it will certainly be hard for people using assistive technologies to access it.

Once your website goes live, it’s accessible to all – a common misconception seen when creating and designing a website. There are standards and procedures to ensure a website meets the qualifications to be user-friendly for all.

User experience design is the key to creating a website that is both accessible and compliant while also being legal and inclusive. Digital inclusion will ensure your website is experiencing maximum reach. Follow along as we walk you through our tips for creating a beautiful and accessible website.

How Accessible Web Design Leads to a Better User Experience.

Accessible website design leads to a better user experience overall. Designing your website with accessibility in mind ensures that content and functionality are all built-in at the ground level of any web development project. The elements for accessibility are available to all. No user should have to ask for or seek out website features that will accommodate them. These features should be readily available with the user’s first touch on your site. Designing with accessibility in mind is more efficient and cost-effective. Start by creating a digitally inclusive website, as it provides your users with an optimum user experience and helps your website be seen by all.

The Best way for Designers to Test their Accessibility Goals.

Designers can start by running accessibility scans of their digital assets. Software scans will catch 15% – 30% of the issues found on your site, but they can also produce both false positives and negatives. The best approach is for the designer to partner with an accessibility specialist that has proven to have success and have them do an independent audit of the website or app being analyzed. Testing of your website is very important, and at a minimum, should be semi-manual. The best approach to website testing is to perform a full-human expert audit to ensure all problem areas are identified and corrected, ensuring your website is in full compliance with all of the WCAG 2.1 AA criteria.

The main Web Accessibility Standards and Tips to be Considered at the UX Design Stage.

Once you’ve reached the design stage of your website development, there are several questions you will want to ask yourself.

Can the user navigate the website in a clear, logical, and intuitive way? Your website should be easy to navigate for all users. User experience will allow you to better achieve digital success.

Is there sufficient color contrast between the text and background? Exposure to certain shades of light can cause those who are color blind or vision impaired to experience sensitivity or even pain.

Can the user get through the website and use all features without needing a mouse? A website should provide ease of use for every user. Ensure your website navigation is simplistic, allowing users to flow from page to page without feeling the need to seek assistance from others.

Can the user see where they are on the website at all times? Ensure your users can easily identify which controls currently have focus. Users with motor disabilities often cannot use a mouse pointer, so alternatively will use a keyboard to browse websites utilizing the “TAB” key.

Does the website or app provide a substantially equal experience for those who are not just blind, but low vision, deaf, hearing impaired, physically disabled, or cognitively disabled? Your website should provide the same user experience to all users.

An expert can analyze your website to help you create an equal usability experience for all.

Since the start of the pandemic, many companies have pivoted from daily office life to a work-from-home environment. At the same time, online shopping, both for necessities and indulgences, has become more common. How have these changes affected people? For some, the transition to a fully digitally connected life has posed challenges. For many people with disabilities, the shift to an increasingly online life has proven especially hard. One reason for this is the simple fact that most websites, mobile platforms, apps, and other digital media were not designed with accessibility features for those with disabilities. Equal access for all users is crucial in a digital world. At ADA Site Compliance, we provide the resources needed to ensure your digital presence is user-friendly for those with disabilities.

Common Problems that Prevent a Website or Digital Experience from being ADA Compliant.

There are dozens of different reasons why a website or app may be inaccessible for people with disabilities. Some of the most common problems include poor navigation, insufficient color contrast between text and background, and keyboard “traps” for non-mouse users. Websites must be structured properly with elements such as headings and labels, as well as a clear indication of interactive fields. An accessible website needs focus indicators to let users navigate with ease. These are just a few examples of accessibility barriers. To identify them all, however, companies must partner with a dedicated accessibility expert who will conduct a full website audit. There are other means to test for ADA compliance, such as online compliance tests, but most of these methods of testing have proven to identify only a percentage of discrepancies that prevent a site from reaching full compliance. Performing a full website audit will guarantee that any problem areas are identified, ensuring action can be taken to make the website fully compliant.

How can we help make your website ADA compliant for people with Disabilities.