Is Your Small Business Website ADA Compliant?

A growing number of small business owners are taking steps to ensure their company website can be used by as many people as possible by checking their site for ADA compliance.

In broad terms, the Americans With Disabilities Act promotes the idea that a business should be accessible to everyone, and that reasonable accommodations must be made to ensure equal access. In an online context, this means making sure people with sight or hearing impairments can use a website’s functionality and enjoy its content in a way that’s convenient for them.

To help site owners meet those needs, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) offer 30 standards and suggestions that translate ADA requirements into site improvements. These include, for instance, adapting a website’s navigation, images, form, videos and other elements to improve accessibility.

The Importance of ADA Compliance

Making sure your website is ADA compliant is an important consideration for several reasons. In some instances, site owners can be subject to litigation and potential regulatory fines if a site does not meet the needs of disabled users. As an example, California’s Consumer Privacy Act includes provisions for the accessibility of websites and their privacy policies.

More practically, a small business wants its site to serve as many people as possible within its target market. Anything you can do to make your site easier to use helps people engage with your company, and will likely prove to be a prudent investment in expanding your potential customer base.

Many consumers with disabilities access the web with assistive technologies, such as screen readers or computers that have been adapted to meet their needs. Following ADA-compliant web practices helps reduce potential issues with those devices and frustration for disabled site visitors.

In addition, the items suggested for enhancing website accessibility also provide a better experience for all of the site’s users, and can indirectly help your search engine optimization efforts by making your site perform more efficiently.

Assess Your Site

The WCAG guidelines focus on four main principles to ensure a website is accessible:

• Perceivable – Site visitors should be able to perceive its content, such as your text, images and videos, either directly or through an alternative (such as transcript of a video or podcast episode).
• Operable – Visitors should be able to navigate your site. This may mean offering keyboard alternatives for users who can’t use mouse devices.
• Understandable – Instructions on how to use a tool on your site can help some users.
• Robust – Users should have the same experience. A transcript, for instance, should include the whole video.

There are several tools to help site owners assess their accessibility, such as the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool’s standalone site and a Chrome extension to identify potential issues and suggest corrections.

Companies that use a Wordpress site have several plugins to choose from, including Accessibility Suite and WP Accessibility Helper.

Design Adaptations

Some common adaptions for websites include:

• Text alternatives for images – This includes adding alt text to images, audio and video.
• Multimedia alternatives – This includes closed captions for videos, and transcriptions for audio and video content.
• Color use – Having enough contrast between text and the site’s background so the text can be read easily.

Other elements include easy navigation, reducing the odds of a site triggering a seizure, making a site compatible with machine readers, and other accommodations.