Today is International Day of People with Disabilities!

We're proud to support the rights of #PeopleWithDisabilities with an #accessible and #ADA compliant website!

What is Website Accessibility?

In simple terms: it’s a set of rules, behaviours, code standards and design guidelines, created by the W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium) and called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG 2.1.

Just like stores and offices need to have facilities that allow disabled people to be able to easily access and use their facilities, WCAG 2.1 was  created to ensure that people with disabilities can access public websites and still be able to navigate and read the site, no matter what their disability.

Benefits of having an ADA Compliant Website

There are 2 major benefits to having your website ADA Compliant:

• An ADA Compliant website can open up a large market segment
• Reduced risk of being sued

People with disabilities is a large market segment

According to the CDC there are over 60 million adults in the USA alone, living with a disability.  And it's estimated that there are 1 billion people with #disabilities worldwide.  So an ADA Compliant website can open up a large market segment.

SMB Websites are under attack for Non-ADA Compliance

Since the change in the law in 2018 many businesses with a website have been sued because their website was not ADA compliant and therefore difficult or impossible for disabled visitors to use. Technically, it only takes 1 non-compliance to be at risk of being sued and there is little defence to such claims.
It's not just the large corporations that are on the end of lawsuits. SMBS and local business owners are also targeted. In 2019 the number of papers, or demand letters, tripled the number served in 2018. Usually these will include a settlement request for $10,000 or more!

So having an accessible website is not only legally, and morally, the right thing to do it's also  insurance against possible lawsuits.  

Making Your Site ADA Compliant

Now that you can see the benefits of having an accessible website, the question is how to you achieve that?

There are several ways to get your website ADA Compliant. These range from simple, low cost, overlay plugins that only provide about 20% compliance, or manual redemption using advanced custom coding that can provide a 100% solution (and as you might have guessed is very expensive).

We, however, have another solution that uses to Artificial Intelligence that provides full compliance on-the-fly at a very affordable price. In fact our site uses this solution to  provide full website accessibility.

Do you want to make your website ADA Compliant?

Contact us if you need help making your website compliant or visit our ADA Compliance page and complete the form.

#IDPD2020 #WebAccessibility #accessibility