What is Website Accessibility Compliance?
Website Accessibility Compliance falls under Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA. The goal of this ADA law is to provide equality by way of reasonable accommodation to people with disabilities. This law also requires for website content that offers products, services, and employment opportunity to be accessible to people with disabilities. Therefore, it should be on your radar.
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Who Benefits from Accessibility Compliance?
Compliance with website Accessibility standards accommodates people with auditory, cognitive and neurological, physical, speech and visual disabilities. People with disabilities rely on tools and content that follow specific web page design structure and content rules. For instance, color and contrast adjustments, audible readers and navigation aid in content accessibility. For those reasons, proper remediation should be done on your website to provide better accessibility.
Does my Website Need to Follow Accessibility Compliance Guidelines?
Federal Agency
If your organization is a Federal organization, then your website must follow the guidelines for Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.
Non-Federal Entity Receiving Federal Funding
If your organization is not a Federal entity but receives Federal funding then based on Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, Section 508 is the guideline. Your organization must check with the funding agency to determine the appropriate guideline.
If that entity tells you that you do not have to be compliant with Section 508, then your website must be compliant with the American’s with Disability Act. The Department of Justice and courts reference WCAG 2.0 Level AA as the website content accessibility guideline in most lawsuits.
Non-Federal Entity that Does Not Receive Federal Funding
Similarly, if your organization is not Federal and does not receive Federal funding, the use the guideline referenced in most court cases, WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
Why should Website Accessibility Compliance be on your radar?
The main reasons that an organizational website should follow website accessibility guidelines is because it is a law. Over 2200 website accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2018; more than 1550 lawsuits were filed in New York State in that year. In other words, making sure that your website is compliant can miticate the impact of a lawsuit.
Website accessibility also benefits your company by expanding your audience to customers and people of influence that may otherwise have difficulty accessing your website content.
Misconception about Website Accessibility
The common professional assumes that the content is “website accessible” because access to content is readily available 24 hour per day. The truth is that many website-design companies do not develop websites to the appropriate standard. Therefore, your website may not be compliant and thereby not accessible to people with disability.
In conclusion, websites, by law must be compliant with guidelines to make your website more accessible to people with disabilities. If you are not sure about your website, you should have it checked immediately and develop a plan to achieve compliance. The process to achieve compliance requires experience and tools to help audit your website, remediation of issues and maintain compliance.
Get your website Website Accessibility Report from Go Gonzalez at no charge. Submit a request using the form below or if you have questions, call Go Gonzalez at 1-888-559-0001.
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