It’s a New Day for ADA Compliant Website Design
Today’s SCOTUS decision against Domino’s pizza chain means it’s now more important than ever for your website to be ADA compliant. If you do not make this effort, you can be sued. It’s now that simple.
This is a major win for disabilities rights advocates. Websites and apps must be accessible for those with disabilities. People with limited mobility or low vision must have equal access to products and services available on your website. The bigger your company, the more likely you’ll need to comply with this new ruling. This does not mean small companies can ignore ADA compliance. All companies must comply, or risk a law suit.
What Does ADA Compliance Mean in Practice?
What exactly does this mean in practice? What will you have to do to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)?
As noted by Kris Rivenburgh in his medium article entitled “The ADA Checklist: Website Compliance Guidelines for 2019 in Plain English“, you need to do something. You need to take action. The best place to start is with your website’s images. By adding alt text to the image code into every meaningful image on your website, you’re allowing screen readers to tell the visually impaired what that image is. You’ll need to be descriptive. If your website very large, apply descriptive alt text to homepage images and then move on to the five most trafficked pages on your site and work down from there.
Creating an ADA compliant website is hard work. When you design your website for a great user experience, you’ll also be on the road to an ADA compliant site.
If you plan for a visit by the color blind person, you are also creating a site that is more accessible for the visually impaired. Other than high contrast, another easy way to facilitate those color blind and/or visually impaired, is to have all links underlined. For this, you start by making sure there is good color contrast, as well as using certain colors in juxtaposition, judiciously.
If you would like Keystone Media to assess your website for ADA compliance, contact us at 734.997.3000.