The Dangers of an ADA Non-Compliant Website

Is your business website or website application accessible to all? When I say “All”, it also includes people with diverse disabilities. What if your website is not ADA-compliant and what are the risks associated in that case? This article will help in clearing a lot of your questions related to ADA compliance website design.

According to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Designs) lawsuit, web accessibility encompasses all the disabilities outlined below that affect access to the web. This list is included under the web accessibility category by World Wide Web Consortium, popularly known as W3C.

• Auditive
• Cognitive
• Neurological
• Physical
• Speech
• Visual

➡️ ADA gives crucial importance to equality to able and differently-able people when it comes to accessibility of a web design. And as per its lawsuit, it is now mandatory to develop ADA-compliant websites and web solutions.

➡️ Talking about the USA alone, 1 in 4 adults is living with a specific disability, CDC reports. That’s about 61 million people not having “EQUAL ACCESS” to your website if it is not ADA compliant.😲

If that is not clearer to you yet, let us first discuss the web accessibility basics.

What is Website Accessibility?

It means that your web design process delivers a design that is used by normal and differently-abled people. The main purpose of delivering accessible web designs is to remove any technological barriers whatsoever so that anyone can access and interact with your website content.

Do not worry 💆‍♂️ if you are unaware of where to get started. Explore the W3C documentation for web accessibility here. This documentation includes three categorized guidelines shown below:

• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG): Focuses on tools that users use to create internet content.

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): Includes the guidelines that help to make the website accessible to EVERYONE.

• User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG): It looks at the accessibility of tools that render web content.

  
  

In this article, our sole focus will be on WCAG which has three different levels of compliance: A, AA, and AAA. If you go from A → AA → AAA, it means that you are following more ADA standards and guidelines to launch a website that is accessible to a larger number of people.

So, How Do You Know Your Website is Accessible?

The only answer is: “Do an audit” of your website accessibility.

Remember that you do not have to perform the audit on your own. If you are feeling uncomfortable doing it or lack the technical knowledge to do so, the best way is to outsource the audit for yourself.

Get in touch with a top web design & development agency and talk to the team of experts. The web designers and QA engineers will analyze all the aspects of your website or web app to make any necessary adjustments needed through automated and manual checks.

How Much It Will Cost?

The cost will depend largely on the complexity of your website, adjustments, and the level (A/AA/AAA) you wish to achieve. A standard process is followed to refurbish and revamp the existing website by implementing WCAG standards and guidelines to deliver your AA/AAA level ADA-compliant website. A full spectrum of ADA compliance services guarantees to make your website compliant with ADA, Section 508, WCAG, and more.

What are the Risks if Your Website is NOT ADA-Compliant?

⚠️ Brace yourself to face the charges if you get caught launching a website that is not ADA-compliant.

The first-time violation 🚫 fine could fall within the window of $55,000 - $75,000. Even after that, if you do not make your website ADA-compliant, there come the second-time violation charges. And that could cost you a hefty fine of approximately $150,000.

First and foremost, ADA compliance is a legitimate requirement to make your website live. Businesses of any size could come up against legal action from an individual or advocacy groups if they fail to comply with ADA regulations and WCAG guidelines.

Organizations that need to follow ADA requirements include:

▶️ State and Local Government Agencies

▶️ All Businesses Open to the Public

For instance, retail stores, banks, hotels, hospitals and clinics, restaurants, movie theatres, etc. are affected businesses.

A lawsuit can bring severe damages to your company’s finances and goodwill in the market. It only takes a moment to see your reputed empire fall down, which took years and decades to build.

No one is above anyone in complying with ADA regulations. All are equal as many giants have been already named in the lawsuits. Huge brands like Amazon, Nike, Hershey’s, The Wall Street Journal, Domino’s Pizza, Fox News Network, Burger King, etc. are not spared from filing a lawsuit for not being ADA-compliant.

List of Actions to Make Your Web Design ADA-Compliant

Follow the quick reference guide on WCAG 2.1 guidelines for website accessibility. These 12 guidelines are organized under four principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. The three levels A, AA, and AAA are given to every guideline as success criteria indicators.

WAVE is the most popular extension available for quick initial accessibility audit and it runs on Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. You can also download its paid product version in the form of WAVE API to schedule and/or automate routine checks on website accessibility.

Note: Automated tests can only identify and catch 20-30% of total issues on your website.

To give you a better understanding, we are listing some of the action items considering various aspects of our website audit process to make an ADA-compliant website.

🎬 Captions for Live Videos

For every video on your website, you can automatically add captions to all videos using a tool like wave.video and manually edit them later if you feel like it. Or outsourcing it to professionals is always possible. Because it not going to be perfect captions coming from an AI-powered tool like Wave.

📻 Audio Descriptions

For all pre-recorded content, you have to add audio descriptions for each one of them. You can also add a link near the content that directs users to your audio description.

🔡 Text Readability

Any regular-size text that conveys useful, important, and critical information on the website shall be easy to read. Contrast plays a vital role here. Large text (Headings for instance) needs a 3:1 text-to-background contrast ratio. Whereas, regular text that makes up the body of your content shall have a 4.5:1 text-to-background ratio.

🔍 Text Zoom-in

Any user shall be able to zoom to the areas he or she wishes to see larger. But this action shall not restrict or limit the web page functionality.

🔠 Text-resizing

Without any assistive feature, users shall be allowed to resize text up to 200% without affecting website functionality and content. This action item is not applicable to Captions and images of text.

🖼️ Image Optimization

Adding Alt Text to the images has become more than an SEO practice. Alt Text is giving captions to the images to explain what’s up with these images. Alt Text resides in the coding part of your web page. You can see an Alt Text for an image by checking its source URL Page.

🖱️ Keyboard & Mouse Friendliness

Not every one of us uses a mouse to access and navigate the website on the internet. However, your website shall be accessible to such users. It is not only important to make it accessible to a keyboard or a mouse, but it is equally important to showcase what part of your website shall be in focus.

📍 Easy Navigation

The main navigation header should be constant from page to page. Improve website navigation through HTML sitemap, site search, and consistent navigation menu for better accessibility.

🏷️ Headings & Labels

To explain topics or purposes, use headings and labels that are descriptive and self-explanatory. Labeling site elements such as a pricing list, size chart, or contact form would be a plus.

🌐 Language Option: Adding a language attribute (French for example) to the web pages helps foreign people who are not familiar with the language used (English) on the website. Adding language attributes massively helps to increase website accessibility.

📢 User Suggestions for Validation: This includes providing textual recommendations and guiding users to fill in valid information asked of them. A simple example would be suggesting the format of a phone number in the USA in the contact form.

👨‍⚖️ Verdict: ADA Compliance is Mandatory NO MATTER WHAT!

Even if you think that ADA compliance does not include your area of business, accessible web design and development should be still a top priority for you.

The lawsuit protocols are subjected to change in the future. So this is definitely not the comprehensive list of guidelines for website accessibility.

If you are a government (Federally) funded organization, you risk yourself to lose its funding, at the time of first-time violation itself or the repeated violation.

If you want to do it yourself, we recommend doing comprehensive research to evaluate your web design accessibility as per the ADA regulations.