If you own a website or work as a website administrator, there are high chances that you may have come across the need for ADA compliance. ADA or Americans with Disabilities Act is a federal law that mandates the need for public utilities, including websites, to be accessible to people with disabilities. Considering their special needs, the websites need to ensure that there are all accessibility features incorporated into the web pages to make those ADA compliant.
ADA rule is primarily applicable to all government websites and public information websites, but apart from these, private business websites too largely opt for ADA compliance for the following reasons. Ensuring ADA compliance offers many benefits to the business websites too, which we will discuss below.
Why ADA is important for business websites – AccessiBe
1.For business websites, accessibility sets open up more opportunities by reaching a greater number of potential consumers. Studies show that about 10% of the population in the United States are people with disabilities with special care needs. AccessiBe points out that by making the website accessible to this category too, businesses have a big scope to explore an untapped market.
2.As of late, the search engine algorithms also check for accessibility compliance of web pages to rank them high on the search results. Ensuring accessibility compliance requires clean web development practices, which also contribute positively to the search engine performance of the websites.
3.There are many lawsuits against various public services providers, including the e-commerce giants like Amazon, for violating the accessibility requirements. So, by ensuring ADA compliance, a business can avoid the scope of any penalization or future possibility of lawsuits.
Rules for ADA compliance
Rule #1: Avoid any links with ‘skip navigation and other modes of providing access to specific page content only.
Rule #2: Do not use multiple types of navigation on different pages of the same website. Try to be unique and consistent in the navigation to avoid confusion for the users and screen readers.
Rule #3: The web designers and developers need to appropriately label all web content so that users know which pages they are viewing.
Rule #4: Ensure that all the forms on the web pages can be easily filled out using the keyboard only.
Rule #5: It is not advisable to use pop-ups, which may disrupt the accessibility requirements.
Using content management systems
There are many website development CMS platforms with which you can easily and quickly build business websites now. However, it is also important to ensure accessibility while using CMS for website building as these may not have built-in accessibility features.
AccessiBe is a leading provider in offering accessibility tools for website developers and businesses. Using these tools and techniques makes it easier for website builders to ensure built-in accessibility to their websites. The major website elements to consider in order to ensure accessibility are the alt tag, header and footer, navigation, content text, color usage, font and size of the text, background, webpage layout, and so on.
