ADA Website Compliance: What You Need to Know

A website is mandatory for every business. All the information you need is right at your fingertips. While opening a website seems an easy task, it is not quite that simple for everyone. Someone with a disability who wants to access your site may not be able to get all the information they need.

In the last few years, the awareness surrounding disabilities and their limitations has been on the rise. Therefore, many courts now include websites under the ambit of ADA or Americans with Disability Act. Suffice it to say that many companies are then left wondering: What is ADA, and what does it mean to be ADA compliant? What are the repercussions if a website doesn’t follow the guidelines? How do I make my website ADA accessible?

Let us find out!

How Can Your Website Meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA Standards?

The World Wide Web Consortium created the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA standards to help website creators in making their content accessible to all. Every business should follow these guidelines to develop an ADA compliant accessible website. The guidelines can be broadly classified into four categories.

Perceivable

These guidelines specify how to make all forms of media accessible to everyone.

It requires to provide text alternatives to non-text forms of media such as images and videos.
Videos should also have another audio that describes the information that is not included in the original audio.
The content should also be scalable up to 200% without impacting the website’s usability.
It also specifies that there should be a color contrast of 4.5:1 between the text and background.

Operable

These guidelines target the operability of your website. They ensure that the features of the ADA compliant accessible website are designed in a manner that makes it easy for people with disabilities to use.

The user should be able to access all the functionality of the website from the keyboard. Anyone using keyboard-only controls should never get stuck on a particular page with no way out.
It specifies that all information that is blinking or moving or flashing should have a pause or stop option. Content shouldn’t flash more than thrice in one second.
The website should provide users with adequate time to consume all the content. Anything with a time limit should also come with the option that the deadline can be extended if needed.

Understandable

These guidelines are established to ensure that a user can grasp the flow of content without much difficulty.

Every page should have a descriptive title and must use heading and labels.
The appearance and operation of the website should be predictable. It also shouldn’t change drastically from page to page.
Pages should also have a sitemap, navigation menu, search bar, etc. that make it easy to search for information on the page.

Robust

These guidelines ensure that the code of the page follows universally accepted standards, and therefore, can be easily understood by assisted readers.

Assistive technologies must be able to successfully decode the markup language of the page.
Custom-built interfaces must also abide by the same standards as other markup languages on the internet.

What Are The Benefits Of ADA Compliant Accessible Websites?

The guidelines mentioned above should give you a general idea of how to make a website ADA compliant accessible. While the list may seem long and complicated, let us assure you that the benefits do make it worth the effort. Here are just some of the reasons why you should make your website ADA compliant.