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As the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) turns 31 years old this summer, there is no better time to talk about ADA compliance and how it influences website accessibility. You most likely understand the ideas of accessibility within your day-to-day life (and almost certainly if your retail business has a brick-and-mortar location), but what does this mean for your eCommerce business? What does website compliance mean, and how can you make sure your website is ADA compliant?
The ABCs of ADA
To understand what ADA compliance means, first let’s dive deeper into some critical terms and acronyms.
- ADA – The Americans with Disibilities Act is a piece of legislation that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability and guarantees that people with a physical impairment are afforded the same opportunities as those without physical impairments. Critically, Title III of the ADA has been applied by courts to require website accessibility.
- ADA Title III – Title II of the ADA prohibits private places of public accommodations from discriminating against individuals with disabilities. This title sets the minimum standards for accessibility and requires places of public accommodations to make “reasonable modifications” to their usual ways of doing things when serving people with disabilities. Under this title, if you operate within the public sphere (and you do because your website is accessible to the public), you must comply with ADA.
- W3C – The World Wide Web Consortium is, in their own words, “an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web.” So the ADA tells us what to do, but the W3C tells us how to do it. To help clarify what an ADA-compliant website is, the W3C created the WCAG.
- WCAG – The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are a set of best practices that aim to provide a shared standard of web accessibility that meets the needs of all users around the globe. Currently, the most current set of standards is WCAG 2.1, but WCAG 2.2 is scheduled to be published later this year.
What Does This Mean For You?
When making choices as a business owner, your responsibility is to weigh the options available to you and choose the best, so let’s make this one easy: ADA compliance is non-negotiable for a few different reasons: morally, financially, and legally.
Morally, we have an obligation to prioritize inclusion. We should be focused on making sure people with impairments are not discriminated against or do not face a disability when using our sites. This has a positive impact on the world around us – do it for the warm feelies.
Financially, it doesn’t make sense to exclude an entire sector of potential customers simply because our sites are not accessible to them. For the retailers with brick-and-mortar locations, if your customers were in wheelchairs but your front door had a step, would you turn them and their dollars away, or would you build a ramp? Website accessibility impacts your profit.
Legally, the threat of web accessibility lawsuits is a real one – and it comes with a pretty hefty price tag. The Americans with Disabilities Act is a strict liability law which means there are no excuses for non-compliance. If you get served and you’re non-compliant, you’re almost guaranteed to be on the hook. Let’s avoid this costly mistake.
What Do I Need To Make My Website Accessible?
For a website to be accessible, it must meet the four principles of the WCAG 2.1: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.
Perceivable relates to the information and user interface components being presentable to users in ways they can perceive. Put plainly, the information can’t be invisible to all of their senses. For this principle, try to focus on making sure that all content can be perceived by more than one of your senses. Provide text alternatives for audio or video content, and code labels for form fields so that they can be read by screen readers. Use sufficient contrast to make things easier to see and hear, and structure your headings so that they are correctly nested. If nothing else, a non-negotiable is alt text. Kris Rivenburgh calls alt text a “gateway complaint”, as “it’s easy for plaintiff’s lawyers to spot and then pile on as many other items as they can find…”.
Operable relates to the interface components and navigation being usable. Users must be able to operate the interface, and the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform. To tackle this, make your website fully operable by keyboard only. Consider the ways you are helping users navigate and find content, and give them enough time to read and use the content. A pretty simple (but big) piece is avoiding content that may cause seizures. Let’s avoid seizures.
Understandable relates to the information and operation of the interface being easy to understand. Make text understandable and easy to read, and make it appear and operate in predictable ways. Help users avoid making mistakes, and when they make them, help them correct them. An easy tip is to use descriptive anchor text for links so that users can predict what clicking on the linked text will result in. For example, avoid “click here” or “see the link”, and opt for anchor text like “Make Your Website ADA Compliant”, or “View Our Newest Line of Items”.
Robust relates to content being robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies – as technologies evolve, the content should remain accessible. To address this, maximize your site’s compatibility with current and future technologies.
How Do You Get Started?
The task ahead can be a hefty one. In some cases, it can take well over 200 hours to bring your site up to complete compliance. While this can seem insurmountable, the most important step is to actually start.
Get familiar with the WCAG and what’s being asked of you as a business owner that operates a website. An audit from a real person who specializes in ADA compliance as it relates to websites will be crucial to helping you identify your current weak spots.
It can be a beast, but fear not! We are here to help. Reach out to EYStudios and we’d be happy to tell you more about what we know about eCommerce ADA compliance. We partner with tech partners like accesiBe to bring you the most optimized solutions possible.
For more information on ADA compliance and how to optimize your store, contact us today!