The Primary Components of ADA Compliance for Websites

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 is a civil rights law in the United States which legally prohibits discrimination against those with disabilities. It is meant to protect disabled individuals against discrimination, in the same way, that the Civil Rights Act, enacted in 1964, protects citizens from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, etc. The ADA also imposes certain accessibility requirements on businesses and public accommodations.

What is ADA Compliance for Websites and Why Is It Needed?

In the case of private sector businesses, the ADA applies to companies that employ fifteen or more people. According to federal regulations currently in place, all corporate websites falling within this category must meet ADA compliance requirements in order to do business in the US legally.

In particular, any business that is considered to be a ‘public accommodation’ must have a website that is ADA compliant. A public accommodation business is essentially one that is used by members of the general public, such as retail stores, theaters, shopping malls, pharmacies, and most other types of B2C concerns or outlets. The websites of these businesses need to be designed so that they are easily understandable and accessible by persons with disabilities.

In order to abide by the ADA compliance guidelines and requirements, businesses of all types need to ensure that their website can be used by disabled American citizens. This measure is meant to enable the businesses to serve all their customers better and to make the society – including the corporate sector – more inclusive and equitable.

Features and Components of ADA Compliance

When it comes to commercial websites, ADA compliance is an important yet tricky subject that can confuse web designers and software developers. Therefore, companies, managers, as well as web designers should familiarize themselves with the basic features and components that a website needs in order to meet the ADA compliance regulations. Some of the primary factors that must be kept in mind when designing an ADA compliant website are:

1. Get a Thorough Understanding of the WCAG

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, released by the World Wide Web Consortium, is something that you and your team must be familiar with, if you aim to design an ADA compliant website. These guidelines provide a clear outline of the appearance and features of an ADA compliant website, including recommendations for ideal text formatting, image uploads, navigating input fields, videos, graphics, as well as any required adjustments to the website code. Therefore, to ensure ADA compliance for your website, you need to sit down with your team and figure out ways to implement the primary directives of the WCAG.

Ease of navigation is one of the most essential facets of ADA compliance. The website should be optimally designed so as to be easy to navigate for individuals with various disabilities. Some things to make sure of include:

• Clearly labeled menu options and navigation buttons.
• Strong contrast between the text and the background and a high minimum contrast ratio.
• No seizure inducing graphics or videos.
• Alternative text options for non-text content, such as pictures and videos.
• No time-sensitive procedures that limit the amount of time viewers have to complete a process.
• Consistent and predictable design.
• The website should be easily navigable via the keyboard alone.

2. Vet the Code of Your Website and Make Necessary Changes

The code behind your website must be properly structured in order to ensure ADA compliance. The type of coding affects the fundamentals of a website, so the code must be in line with the WCAG.

Start and end tags should be added to all the elements of a website; elements should be nested in accordance with their specifications; extraneous and duplicate characters must be removed; and programmatically determined user interface components should be incorporated. As a website owner, cleaning up and optimizing your code should be a major priority for you as this will help improve user experience and SEO rankings.

3. Use Accessibility Testing Tools on Your Website

Just altering your website to meet ADA guidelines isn’t enough. You also need to test the new website to ensure that it actually works the way it is supposed to and causes the least possible inconvenience to disabled persons. The World Wide Web Consortium provides a Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List which contains many accessibility testing tools meant for website developers.

You can browse through this list until you find the tools that can help you test the specific aspects of the website that concern you, so as to ensure that they meet the ADA compliance guidelines. However, some of the tools only work for certain web platforms or types of code, such as HTML 5, Google Chrome, or Safari.

For businesses that deal with overseas clients, tools which check the accessibility of a website on the basis of international standards are also available. You can also visit the website of the American Foundation for the Blind to see some of the navigation tools and techniques that they use in order to enhance accessibility, so that you can then incorporate these in your own website.

4. Ease of Use and Navigation

To ensure ADA compliance for website design, a website must be made to be easily navigable with just the keyboard. Moreover, the website should be simple and easy to use, particularly for those with various disabilities. This means that all its features and functionalities should be designed keeping the question of accessibility in mind.

The text of a website must meet the minimum contrast ratio so that it can stand out properly against the background. This is to ensure that individuals with impaired vision or eyesight can easily read the information available on the website of the company. In some cases, designers might have to tweak the color of the background or the text, especially if the two colors are too similar. For example, having light gray text on a white background would make it harder to read for individuals with imperfect eyesight.

For better navigation and handling, skip navigation buttons can be very helpful, and the website designer may even need to manually set a tab index on all parts of the website for improved and easier navigation. Every button, as well as the various menu options on the website, should be clearly labeled in easily legible text. Alternate text options such as captions should be made available for all audio and graphic content.

A website designed for optimum ADA compliance should also be able to handle text enlargement or scaling of up to 200 percent, without breaking down, hanging, scrolling downwards, or experiencing any other type of layout issue. This will enable disabled users to determine the text size that they are the most comfortable with.

Moreover, to enable blind users to navigate the website, a screen reader or text-reader plugin should be installed. This plugin will identify the elements on the screen and then represent the same to the visually impaired user in a text-to-speech format. As a result, blind or visually impaired individuals will be able to participate in the digital world unencumbered.

In Conclusion

Companies and businesses should do everything in their power to ensure ADA compliance when it comes to their websites. They might even consider hiring a reputable firm that specializes in providing ADA compliance solutions for commercial websites. This will enable them to avoid lawsuits and serve their customers in a more effective and inclusive manner.

For the best results, businesses should always keep abreast of the latest website ADA compliance laws and regulations. Periodically, they should also conduct evaluations to ensure that they are serving their disabled customers and clients to the best of their ability, both online and offline.