Selkirk Partners

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Accessibility

Got a web site? Get to know the ADA.

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What’s the ADA and why should you care?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a law that prohibits discrimination against those who have disabilities. Signed into law on July 26, 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, the ADA protects the rights of those with disabilities to be employed, use government resources, use public amenities, commercial facilities, communications and transportation. ADA compliance is not an option; it is a responsibility to make services and products available to everyone.

ADA & WWW

The Web Content Accessibility Content, or WCAG, provides website developers and Web content creators with the best practices for ensuring that websites are accessible to those with disabilities. WCAG addresses visual, auditory, cognitive, physical, speech, learning, language and neurological disabilities. With the growth of technology and variations in disabilities, it is nearly impossible to create a perfect solution. The WCAG is always working to update and expand the guidelines to provide the best possible solution for those with disabilities.

WCAG 2.1 has expanded WCAG 2.0 to include new success criteria which can be found here. Items like orientation, text spacing, and identify input purpose have been on web developers’ radar for a long time. These days, most websites you visit are easy to navigate no matter the orientation of your cell phone. The text on those websites is at a readable size, and you know what information you are submitting when completing a form.

New topics like animation from interactions, concurrent input mechanisms and timeouts are more challenging to address for those with disabilities, due to their complex nature.

A, AA, AAA…what is this, baseball?

There are three different levels of ADA compliance which developers aim to reach. Each level has a set of guidelines and recommendations for compliance, but reaching compliance can be challenging based on the content you are displaying.

  • Level A is the minimum level of compliance. It means you’ve implemented the most basic and easiest of the recommendations.
  • Level AA compliance means that all level A & AA recommendations are met, or that you have provided an alternative version of the web page which does comply. This is the level of compliance we are always looking to achieve.
  • Level AAA means that you have complied with all the recommendations provides by the WCAG for levels A & AA and are continually working to improve your website compliance.

Your website & the ADA

So at this point you are probably asking… Is my website ADA-compliant?

Chances are, your website is not fully ADA-compliant. You are probably doing some good things toward compliance, and some bad things that you can easily fix to get close to full ADA compliance. Let’s start with some simple things that will help you reach Level AA ADA compliance.

  • Provide alt-text for all your images!
  • Provide captions for any video or audio on your website.
  • Ensure that audio can be paused, stopped, and has volume control.
  • Ensure the code structure of your website has a consistent template structure and passes the validation markup tool.
  • Ensure that forms are fully accessible to screen readers

Any time you update the content of your website, you can work on your ADA compliance. The Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool allows you to review any website for what improvements are needed to reach ADA compliance. Like many aspects of the web, ADA is an ever-moving target to work toward, and it takes teamwork and collaboration to reach this target.

For more information on ADA compliance and  how you can take your website to the next level, feel free to reach out to us at Stride.

How to make your website ADA compliant

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As the world becomes more aware of how people with differing abilities access products and services, web accessibility has become a priority for many of our clients. Many of them have a legal obligation to ensure people with disabilities can access their websites, and they’ve leaned on Stride to apply our expertise to make their sites ADA compliant.

What is ADA compliance?

ADA compliance refers to website accessibility standards set by the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). ADA requirements apply to state and local government agencies, private employers with 15 or more employees, and businesses that operate for the benefit of the public.

Even if your business or organization doesn’t fall under the above criteria, you may still care about making your website as accessible as possible. We’ve applied our web design and development experience to create this handy tip sheet to address the most common errors in website accessibility and how to fix them.

Write ALT text for every image

ALT text (or ALT tags) help people with visual impairments have equal access to web content. Web visitors who are visually impaired sometimes use screen reading software that reads content on a page out loud to them. Writing ALT text for your website’s images that describe the images and their purpose helps users understand your content when they can’t see it.

Example: Man wearing a plaid shirt who uses a wheelchair smiles as he plays the guitar

Man wearing plaid shirt who uses a wheelchair smiles as he plays guitar

Best practices in writing image ALT tags have changed over time. Read our recent blog post to get up-to-speed on how to write them.

Colors and fonts matter

There should be a high level of contrast between the color of your text and the background it’s on. If the text is difficult for a sighted person to read, imagine what it’s like for someone with a visual impairment. White paired with black, dark blue, or dark gray is best. Also, be sure to use color for design purposes only, and not as a prompt or to convey information. For example, don’t say “Click the red button to continue.”

Website fonts should be a minimum of 16 pixels, and it’s preferable to build in the option for the user to make the text larger if they wish. Most browsers do this, but it’s best to be sure your site is compatible with browser scaling features and software that expands text size for users with visual impairments.

Use headings and subheads as often as possible

Headings are good for organizing content. Well, headings are good for a lot of things, actually. They’re good for SEO, they make a page easier to scan, and they help people who use screen readers navigate a page’s content more easily. 

Remember that making text bold or large won’t be recognized by a screen reader as a heading, so it’s important to use proper headings and heading structure. H1 should be the page title, and H2 should be your first heading. A further subhead should be H3, and so on. Screen readers will read these headings in order, so the content of each header should be written accordingly. 

Fix your empty links, buttons, and forms

Another common mistake in website accessibility is inadvertently making links, buttons, and forms difficult to use. If your website has forms, make sure to use form labels instead of placeholder text in the form fields, as placeholder text disappears as soon as someone starts typing into the form field. 

As for buttons and links, make sure they’re descriptive and use text that describes where they’re taking the user. Buttons that read “Click here” to “Learn more” aren’t very helpful to a screen reader. Instead, use language like, “Learn more about web accessibility.” If a link opens another document, like a PDF, make sure to name the document and the link using a descriptive name that says exactly what the document is about. 

While this isn’t an exhaustive list of everything that makes a website accessible and/or ADA compliant, this tip sheet describes some of the most common mistakes and how to address them. For additional help, there are many website accessibility testing tools out there to try. There are also several great accessibility plug-ins for WordPress websites that help solve many of the technical accessibility issues easily, and they’ve worked great for many of our clients.

We’re here to support all your web design and development needs. If you h