Don’t Roll Your Eyes, I Will Explain
The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990 to make the lives of disabled Americans better. Title III of the ADA has been interpreted by the DOJ and U.S. Courts to apply to websites as they are considered “places of public accommodation”.
Basically, this means if you have a business website, you are a potential target for lawsuits.
The ADA itself created the ADA Tool Kit for Website Accessibility for state and local governments. This is one of the documents we look to for updating or creating ADA accessible websites. We also look to the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). The WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 provides a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of disabled individuals. There are also levels of compliance, but I truly do not want to bore you with the details of our job making websites compliant.
Here is where you do need to pay attention. If your website is not ADA compliant, and you sell anything, you could be sued by anyone that is disabled because they cannot access your goods or services.
Enter GMCI Creative and the Advenger to the rescue!
We have been updating current sites with the WCAG 2.1AA standards and building new sites using these standards. These rules have 50 success criteria to follow to make your website more accessible. This means we will add closed captioning to any videos with sound, write live captions, create audio descriptions for photos and graphics and readable text. Plus, create clean website structure with meaningful order, integrate screen readers, build accessible keyboard only functions, add descriptive labels, and follow error prevention protocols.
We can perform an audit of your site today to assess what you need to become ADA compliant before you get stuck with demand letters or lawsuits.
Let’s avoid that eye roll.
