We’d like to bring a very important matter to your attention. Website ADA compliance, unfortunately this has become a hot button topic in the last couple of years and is starting to affect more and more website owners. Let me explain.
 
There is no clear cut federal laws on ADA compliance for websites, the ADA laws were set in place before the explosion of the internet. But as we’re finding, that doesn’t mean the ADA laws can’t be applied to websites. Court rulings are mixed, but there have been enough rulings against businesses to create serious concern. Learn more here from this legal source: (https://www.huntonlaborblog.com/2019/01/articles/public-accommodations/muddy-waters-ada-website-compliance-may-become-less-murky-2019/“)
 
Below are some articles from top news websites discussing the rising incidence of lawsuits over non ADA compliant websites.
 
 
 

We’ve recently been made aware through one of our clients of a local Southern California cafe (3 locations) that was targeted for one of these lawsuits. Faced with a $25,000 lawsuit, the cafe chose to settle for $5000. This is quite concerning for many, as most small businesses would be hard pressed to be hit with such a lawsuit. 

Seeing this hit a local small business, and as a small business ourselves, we felt it was necessary to bring this issue to you, our clients and website owners. You as a website owner need to be aware of this potential risk so you can make informed decisions that are right for your website and business. As your technology provider, we feel we would be remiss in our duties if we didn’t bring this to you. We will be making the necessary changes to our own site as well to reduce our risk.

Unfortunately, because there are no clear cut laws/rules on how to make a website ADA compliant, there is no way to GUARANTEE safety from a lawsuit….but there are things we can do to DRASTICALLY REDUCE your risk. The good news is that as a PCHD client, your website was designed/developed by Jen our web developer with certain SEO (search engine optimization) compliancy rules (these make your site easier to be found on search engines)….many of these SEO compliance rules are a part of ADA suggested compliance as well. So you do already have some of what you need already built in to your website! 
 
But there’s a bit more we should be considering for your site, such as for example:

an “Accessibility” button that allows for text size changes, several various contrast changes for the visually impaired, removal of ‘moving’ or ‘animated’ items with a button click for those with seizures, ensuring consistent keyboard navigation without a mouse for mobility impaired, closed captioning and/or text transcripts for video or audio for the hearing impaired, and pause/stop/hide and timing adjustment for slideshows.

We can provide an individual report for your website to determine which of these items would apply and would need to be implemented to bring your website to the current industry standard of WCAG 2.1 ADA compliance as recommended/suggested by the W3 Consortium, a web standards compliance organization, who’s rules are being implemented across the state of California’s government websites and being used to create new ADA website compliance laws right here in California (federal laws are expected to be enacted soon as well).

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions/concerns and/or to discuss your website and how we can help you to reduce this risk.