Where Can I Find A Complete Set Of ADA Compliance Guidelines For Websites?
The past two years exposed the pitfalls in digital accessibility standards practiced by businesses. With the increased usage of ecommerce and digital mediums, the number of lawsuits over digital accessibility israpidly increasing and all businesses, large or small, are at risk. If you have a website, an app or a video that is inaccessible to disabled users, it’s high time to recognize the significance of ADA compliance and put a plan in place to get accessible.
The steady rise in the number of lawsuits filed against business websites emphasizes the awareness of ADA. Let’s find out what exactly is ADA and what are the guidelines that a business should follow to develop a compliant website. What is ADA Compliance?ADA (Americans with Disability Act) is a piece of legislation that was created to protect the rights of the disabled population. Although the journey to get here was, the ADA laws and accessibility requirements now extend into technology and websites, which means if the content on your website is not accessible to a disabled user, you are at the risk of legal penalties. What are the guidelines to comply with the ADA?The ADA is a civil rights law and title III of ADA mandates that commercial websites and technology products should follow comprehensive accessibility requirements. The standards are discussed in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)which is created by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The first set of accessible design frameworks was created in the year 1999when WCAG 1.0 was born. With time, the specific standards were updated and currently, WCAG 2.2 is considered as the gold standard for accessible design. To attain the goals of Website Accessibility Tool as per the ADA, one has to adhere to the standards defined in WCAG. The guidelines are useful to create accessible web pages, websites and web applications. Using these standards, one can test the images, text and media on a website for ADA compliance. WCAG 2 can be used as a supporting document to understand and practice the technical standards to create an accessible design. There are three levels for accessibility that can be tested based on the clearly defined success criteria. In the latest version of WCAG, there are 13 principles related to navigation, keyboard usage, contrast levels, input modalities and more.
How to develop an ADA compliant website?An overview of WCAG technical standards can be attained from the official website of W3C. However, developing an accessible design is quite complicated. You have to keep the accessibility challenges of every user in mind, including low vision, physical disability, seizures or cognitive disability. The best practice is to contact the ADA compliance manual audit specialists. The audit experts thoroughly check every element of your business website and make sure that the desired level of WCAG conformance is achieved. You can seek expert guidance for the required accessibility level in the desired timeframe. Bottom lineDepending on your business needs, an Ada Compliance Testing expert can guide you if Level A is enough to get you started or do you need Level AAA to develop an accessible design. To learn more about the process of auditing for ADA manual compliancevisit the link given below.