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Web accessibility & ADA compliance

WHAT IS WEB ACCESSIBILITY?

Web accessibility is a set of rules, behaviors, code standards, and design guidelines that ensure people
with disabilities, who comprise 20% of the world’s population, can use websites effectively.

To achieve this, the W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium) has created the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1), for direction on how to make websites accessible. These
guidelines have been adopted by governments around the world and have been incorporated into
various legislations such as the ADA, Section 508, and EN 301549.

The WCAG focuses chiefly on three areas of accessibility: 1) blind people using screen readers (e.g. JAWS, NVDA). 2) people with motor impairments who only use keyboards, and 3) a variety of other disabilities, including color blindness, epilepsy, and minor visual impairments that mostly concern the Ul and design of the website (color contrasts, animations, fonts, etc.)

AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ACCESSIBLE DESIGN STANDARDS

Under the authority of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), all business websites must be accessible to people with disabilities. The law prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in the activities of places of “public accommodation” which includes websites that provide goods and services on the internet.

Immediately after the law took effect in 2018, 150,000 demand letters were served in litigation against non-compliant websites. 93% of these lawsuits are settling out of court for $20,000 to $150,000 on average.