We’ve narrowed it down to a top-five list of website accessibility standards that are commonly missing on even the most ADA-compliant websites.

We based our list on ADA audits conducted by Capitol Tech Solutions and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the organization that publishes webpage guidelines so the internet can better serve people with disabilities.

A recap on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines & ADA Compliance

Federal and California state law requires government websites to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA, but the U.S. Department of Justice gives business websites a bit more leeway. Most private-sector webpages use WCAG 2.0 AA for ADA compliance.

In a separate blog, we explain WCAG best practices and the success criteria of WCAG 2.1.

Ensuring your business website meets these web accessibility standards will allow users with disabilities to have equal access online while using assistive technology. And having an accessible website will save you from a costly lawsuit.

Remember, businesses fall under Title III of the ADA, guaranteeing places of public accommodation provide equitable services.

We break down the importance of website accessibility and the potential legal repercussions you could face here.

Our Top Five ADA Website Compliance Mistakes

1. Missing or poor alternative text on images

A common feature on webpages is an accompanying picture, just like on this blog post. Assistive technology cannot yet scan and describe images to users, so web developers (like those here at CTS) add alternative descriptions, also known as alt text.

When writing alt text, you have to keep in mind the context and character count. The optimal character count to ensure screen readers correctly relay an alt text should be fewer than 125 characters. Basically, as long as the previous sentence, which came in at 118 characters.

The context you fit into the restrictive character count is the most crucial aspect of this digital accessibility rule. To write a successful and inclusive alt text, you should:

• Be specific in your description. Start with the subject or setting.
• Add context based on the topic of the webpage. This blog is about ADA compliance, and our alt text reflects that.
• Don’t start a description with “picture of” or anything similar. Assistive technologies will be able to determine a picture based on the website’s HTML coding.

2. Insufficient Color Contrast

WCAG 2.0 Level AA requires a contrast ratio of 4.5 to 1 for standard text and 3 to 1 for large text (14 point font, bold or larger).

You might be wondering what precisely a contrast ratio is. Well, when used for ADA compliance, it means the brightness of a completely white image is 4.5 times brighter than a completely black image (or three times brighter for large, bold text).

Text included in your logo is one of the few exceptions to this rule.

3. Keyboard Access

A quick way to check if your website’s architecture supports keyboard-only use is to tap the tab key while on your website. If the content is surrounded by a visible outline, like the blue box on our website, then you’ve passed. The visual indication informs users of their location on the page.

Often, website creators disable the default indicator for design esthetics. You should avoid doing this or rectify this soon after discovery. Keyboard focus should be visible and follow a logical order through the webpage to comply with ADA standards.

4. Meaningful Link Text

Descriptive and meaningful links help users choose which links they want to follow easily. Pages with links should provide enough detail that allows for a cursory understanding of what content to expect while they search your site.

You can design ambiguous links like “Click here” or “Read more” to include a summary of the pages they lead to.

Also, speech recognition users can click links with a voice command like “click” followed by the link text. So, it’s helpful to keep link text short and easy to say.

5. Landmark Roles

But for users with disabilities, who primarily use keyboards, screen readers, and other assistive technologies, developers need to use landmarks representing a block of content.

Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) allow rich, interactive user interfaces to be more accessible.

There are eight of these roles, each representing a block of content commonly on webpages. To use them, add a relevant role attribute to an appropriate container within your HTML. Then, users with assistive technologies can quickly jump to that section of the page.

The eight ARIA landmark roles are:

• role=”banner”
• role=”navigation” (such as a menu)
• role=”main” (the main content of the page)
• role=”complementary” (such as a sidebar)
• role=”contentinfo” (meta data about the page like a copyright statement)
• role=”search”
• role=”form”
• role=”application” (a web application with its own keyboard interface)

CTS Celebrates 31st Anniversary of Americans with Disabilities Act

Leading up to the July 26 anniversary date, we published comprehensive reports on the importance of equitable web browsing for the business and government communities.

“Digital accessibility has become increasingly important as technology continues to advance,” said Capitol Tech Solutions’ CEO Bobby Reed. “I’m proud of the work we’ve done to make the websites of our government and business clients more inclusive for everyone.”

Signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination based on disabilities and guarantees equitable treatment in public accommodation, employment, transportation, and community living.

The U.S. Department of Justice, federal and state court cases have expanded the meaning of public accommodation to include government and business websites.

People with disabilities interact with websites through assistive technologies, such as screen readers, alternative keyboards or switches, braille and refreshable braille, screen magnifiers, sound notification, scanning software, voice recognition, and more.

The User Experience Team at Capitol Tech Solutions ensures the company’s web clients meet ADA website compliance standards.

Through the Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the federal government requires all national electronic information to be accessible to people with disabilities. This mandate extends to existing or new government websites and uses WCAG as the standard.

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In broad terms, WCAG is the standard published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as part of the group’s Web Accessibility Initiative, more on that in a moment.

There are different versions of WCAG, each with varying levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. To make your website digitally accessible, developers (like ours here at Capitol Tech Solutions) will help you comply with WCAG 2.0 AA and WCAG 2.1 AA. Worldwide, WCAG 2.0 AA is the most-used standard.

What’s the difference between version 2.0 and version 2.1? WCAG 2.0 AA has 38 success criteria, and WCAG 2.1 AA has 50 success criteria. The requirements are essentially to-do lists that will make your website easier to use for people with disabilities and save you from a compliance lawsuit.

In another blog post, we explain why your business website should be ADA compliant.

What About Overlay Widgets? Will that solve my ADA Compliance Issue?

Whether you’re getting started with a new business website or you’ve received a letter threatening an ADA compliance lawsuit, an ad promising an overlay widget that will solve your problem sounds like a godsend, but it’s merely snake oil.

These widgets don’t change your website’s code or content to be accessible and conform to WCAG. Instead, you’ll get a JavaScript menu that lays over your website when it’s activated.

When a person with a disability activates the overlay widget, it forces them to have a different experience than normal users would.

And a separate and unequal experience is an explicit violation of the ADA.

ADA Maintenance of Your Business Website

It’s a good idea to schedule periodic accessibility checks to ensure your content stays digitally accessible, either through automated or manual testing. As developers deploy updates to browsers, devices, and assistive technologies, it will change how users interact with your website.

Launching new webpages and products, or updating site navigation or functionality, is also an optimal time to test for website accessibility and ADA compliance.

The Full Breakdown of WCAG 2.0 & WCAG 2.1

W3C initially released WCAG 2.0 in 2008, with the WCAG 2.1 update arriving in 2018. The W3C is in the final stages of publishing WCAG 2.2 this year. The group continually refines its guidelines and success criteria to ensure websites are more inclusive for users with disabilities.

WCAG Website Compliance Standards

• Perceivable
• Operable
• Understandable
• Robust

Under these four principles are a group of guidelines, which directly inform WCAG success criteria.

• Perceivable
  • Provide text alternatives for non-text content
  • Provide captions and other alternatives for multimedia
  • Create content that can be presented in different ways, including assistive technologies, without losing meaning
  • Make it easier for users to see and hear content
• Operable
  • Make all functionality available from a keyboard
  • Give users enough time to read and use content
  • Do not use content that causes seizures or physical reactions
  • Help users navigate and find content
  • Make it easier to use inputs other than a keyboard
• Understandable
  • Make text readable and understandable
  • Make content appear and operate in predictable ways
  • Help users avoid and correct mistakes
• Robust
  • Maximize compatibility with current and future user tools

Think of the guidelines as goals. The WCAG success criteria are the tools to meet these goals.

What Are WCAG Success Criteria? How Do I Meet These Standards?

As mentioned earlier, there are three degrees of WCAG compliance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. Each is progressively harder than the last. This blog post will highlight WCAG 2.1 AA, as its the standard required under federal and California state law for government websites.

Requirements to meet WCAG are very technical, even when your User Experience team specializes in bringing clients into compliance with the ADA.

If the summary of principles and guidelines didn’t answer your questions, our comprehensive, expandable list below provides a more thorough explanation based on W3C published reports outlining all 50 WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria.

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A quick history lesson first: the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination based on disabilities. It imposes accessibility standards on places of public accommodation, which websites fall under, to guarantee equal access for people with disabilities.

If you manage a federal or state agency website, your website must be ADA compliant. But it’s a slightly different story for business websites.

Not all business websites fall under ADA guidelines mandating accessibility. However, it’s still the best practice to have an ADA-compliant website. Ensuring your website and web content are digitally accessible will save you the headache of receiving an ADA Website Compliance demand letter or lawsuit.

What websites are mandated to be ADA compliant?

• An inn, hotel, motel, or other places of lodging.
• A restaurant, bar, or other establishment serving food or drink.
• A motion picture house, theater, concert hall, stadium, or other places of exhibition entertainment.
• An auditorium, convention center, lecture hall, or other places of public gathering.
• A bakery, grocery store, clothing store, hardware store, shopping center, or other sales or rental establishment.
• A laundromat, dry-cleaner, bank, barbershop, beauty shop, travel service, shoe repair service, funeral parlor, gas station, office of an accountant or lawyer, pharmacy, insurance office, professional office of a healthcare provider, hospital, or other service establishments.
• A terminal, depot, or other station used for specified public transportation.
• A museum, library, gallery, or other places of public display or collection.
• A park, zoo, amusement park, or other places of recreation.
• A nurse, elementary, secondary, undergraduate, or postgraduate private school, or other educational places.
• A daycare center, senior citizen center, homeless shelter, food bank, adoption agency, or other social service center establishment.
• A gymnasium, health spa, bowling alley, golf course, or other places of exercise or recreation.

However, as your goal is to avoid a long, drawn-out, and technical legal battle, it’s best to make your website accessible from the very beginning.

The more commercial your website is, the more likely you are to be sued.

The exact phrasing used in Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act states: “the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation.”

Why focus on website accessibility?

Attorneys representing plaintiffs seeking equal web accessibility may target your website because it’s simply on the web. These law firms specifically seek a business page that does not conform to the ADA standards known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 or 2.1 Level AA success criteria.

Common tactics used by law firms:

• Pick a consumer-facing industry
• Pull a list of all the companies within that industry
• Run a web crawler on the homepage of each company
• Send out a form demand letter with a summary of the web crawler findings
• File a batch of lawsuits

Legal precedents used by plaintiffs:

• The ADA is a liability law, meaning there is no room for excuses/defenses for violations.
• The Unruh Civil Rights Act, a California law similar to the ADA, is often cited in attorney demand letters as it offers more damages to plaintiffs.
• Legal groups use the Fair Housing Act and other anti-discrimination laws to sue website owners and target specific industries.
• Employing fewer than 15 people does not exempt you from ADA compliance as a place of public accommodation.

How does the Department of Justice define accessibility?

The law does not mandate WCAG compliance for business websites (although California AB 434 requires all state departments to provide equal access). WCAG is a list of guidelines published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) under their Web Accessibility Initiative.

The W3C publishes best practices to make the internet more uniform and run better, including the standardization of accessibility.

There are two versions of WCAG: WCAG 2.0 AA and WCAG 2.1 AA. The difference comes down to the number of success criteria, amounting to 38 for the former and 50 for the latter.

In another blog, we explain in-depth what the digital accessibility requirements entail.

How Do People with Disabilities Use a Website?

People with disabilities use assistive technologies to browse the internet, which pages should be coded to interact with seamlessly.

Some assistive technologies rely on the output of graphical desktop browsers, text browsers, voice browsers, multimedia players, and plug-ins to relay a website’s information to users.

A well-known assistive technology is screen reader software, which interprets what is displayed on screen to a speech synthesizer.

Other assistive technology includes:

• Alternative keyboards or switches
• Braille & Refreshable Braille
• Screen magnifiers
• Sound notification
• Scanning software
• Voice recognition

CTS Web Developers Pursue Certification in Section 508

If you choose to partner with CTS, Che will use industry-leading techniques from his Section 508 accessibility courses to bring your website into compliance, either in the private or public sectors.

Section 508 is the federal law requiring government agencies to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities.

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