How To Check And Update Your Website For ADA Compliance

Did you know that Netflix, Amazon, Target, Nike and many of your favorite brands have faced legal battles because their websites do not meet the accessibility standards? All these lawsuits ended in hefty settlements.

When a commercial website fails to meet ADA compliance standards, it faces legal recourse and the average settlement amount is $25,000. These lawsuits not only tarnish the reputation of a brand for being incapable of offering their products to people with disabilities, but also end in expensive lawsuits that affect the company’s financial growth. Reports revealed that the massive increase in lawsuits is affecting small businesses adversely as the settlement amount has increased by 300% in the last two years. To keep the risks at bay, make an ADA compliant website checker tool your best friend.

What is ADA Compliance?

ADA stands for Americans with Disability Act, which is a legislative definition for accessibility standards of information technology and electronic products, including websites. The ADA ensures that all these offerings are accessible by everyone regardless of their disabilities.

Both private and public sector organizations including non-profits must aspire to attain ADA compliance standards. Adhering to the accessibility norms makes sure that no one is feeling discriminated against due to their disability. Businesses use website ADA compliance checker tools to develop designs that any individual with visual impairment, hearing loss or cognitive disability can use easily. To facilitate the design, developers and business owners implement varied innovative techniques like screen readers, assistive inputs, navigational assistance and more.

How to check your website for ADA Compliance?

There are two options through which you can check your site for ADA compliance, i.e. use free ADA website checker tools or via a manual audit.

ADA checker tools: There are plenty of free tools available that anyone can use for quick testing of compliance standards. These evaluation tools work best to address accessibility issues related to contrast, alt text for images, the size of text, navigational errors and things like that.

Using software scans is a quick fix for minor accessibility issues, but the accuracy rate is only 30% and you can also run the risk of getting tons of false positives, which only further muddy the process. Businesses operating for public benefit should opt for manual audits to check ADA compliance standards.

ADA Manual Audit:The repercussions of failing to address the accessibility guidelines are expensive. To stay on the safer side, it is best to choose manual audits. No matter how advanced the scanning software you are using, artificial intelligence simply cannot beat human logic, which is why manual audits work best. Individuals who are trained and certified to verify your website’s content accessibility utilize their years of experience to ensure the highest standards of ADA conformance. There is a long website accessibility checklist released by WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Trained auditors are well aware of the guidelines and they can check your website quickly and accurately.

Final Word

ADA plugins or evaluation software can be a good starting point for website accessibility checker functionality, although the latest released WCAG standards have made the conformance even more stringent. Therefore, it is best to check and update your website for ADA compliance using the expertise of trained manual auditors. For more information, visit the link given below.

Read the entire article, to know about what is ADA compliance and also about the ways of ADA compliance. Generally, there are two to do it. An ADA manual checker tools and an ADA manual audit. Let’s put a glance at both options in the next steps.

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