Is your website accessible? And no, we’re not just talking about ensuring color contrasts are suitable for individuals with visual impairments. Website accessibility goes way beyond this. For example, have you ever thought about these things before?
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- Clarify with Alt Text: It doesn’t matter how eye-catching your images are if your visitors can’t see them. This is why having alt text on all your images is so important. Not only does it enhance accessibility, but it also helps search engines understand your content and determine who to show it to.
- Practice Responsive Design Principles: Have you ever zoomed in on a website to read the text, only to have it go blurry? This is a common issue for users who need to magnify text for better readability.
- Streamline Site Navigation: Imagine trying to navigate a website by pressing the Tab key, but it jumps all over the place, skipping important buttons or forms. Inconsistent tab order makes using a website frustrating for people with mobility limitations.
These are just three of the thousands of things you need to know about ADA-compliance for your website.
It really is a lot and you might be thinking, “well, no one actually follows ALL of these.”
And while you have a point—not all websites do—that doesn’t eliminate the fact that they’re still at risk.
Why Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Matter
We often hear small business owners say, “That would never happen to us,” or “We’re not big enough to be targeted.” However, the reality is that individuals and organizations actively seek out small businesses for ADA lawsuits, knowing these businesses may lack the time or resources to fight back.
A comprehensive website accessibility audit will identify areas where your site falls short of current accessibility standards, allowing you to make the necessary changes to protect your business and provide a better experience for your users.
How to perform an accessibility audit on your website
When it comes to web accessibility, here are some common issues to check:
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- Color Contrast: Ensure that text contrasts sufficiently with the background. Use tools like the Color Contrast Analyzer to check your site’s color schemes.
- Alt Text: Verify that all images have descriptive alt text. This helps screen readers convey the content of images to visually impaired users on digital platforms.
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- ARIA Landmarks: Implement ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) landmarks to define regions of your site and improve navigation for screen readers.
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- Forms and Labels: Ensure all form fields have associated labels and that error messages are clear and helpful.
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- Video and Audio Content: Provide transcripts for audio content and captions for videos to make multimedia accessible to all users.
Here’s a more comprehensive accessibility checklist for those interested in performing frequent manual accessibility audits. But it’s important to keep in mind that web accessibility is constantly evolving, and maintaining compliance can be time-consuming and complex.
This is why we don’t necessarily recommend business owners perform audits unless you have no other option. Most of the time, you’ll find that using an audit tool—like the one we’ll talk about later in this post—saves you days of research, implementation, and having to keep up to date with the latest accessibility standards, which can become a full-time job.
Avoiding Legal Risks with Website Accessibility Audits
As small business owners we often think “not us,” but accessibility-related lawsuits happen more often than you might think.
If you’re not familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), it’s a law designed to protect individuals with disabilities. As a small business owner, your website falls under its scope.
Unfortunately, that also means it has been used to sue businesses for financial gain. In fact, countless companies have faced legal action due to non-compliant websites.
Just take a look at what our 10-second search on Reddit turned up:
It doesn’t matter if you’re a “small business.” No one thinks it will happen to them until it’s too late.
It’s important to note that some people and even lawyers will actively search for businesses that aren’t ADA-compliant so they can try and file a suit for money. As you can see, that’s what was most likely going on for our friend here:
How to Protect Your Business
We don’t want you to suffer from the same mistake, which is why we’re offering a Free Website Accessibility Audit to help you identify and address web accessibility challenges before they become a problem.
Our web accessibility audit will provide you with a detailed report on the digital accessibility of your website, highlighting areas that need improvement and offering practical solutions to ensure your site meets web content accessibility guidelines.
Not sure where your website stands? We’d love to offer you a Free Accessibility Audit Report!
Send us an email letting us know you’re interested , and we’ll reply shortly with your detailed web accessibility audit. 😉
Improving Your SEO with Website Accessibility Audits
Improving your web accessibility doesn’t just benefit users with disabilities—it can also have a positive impact on your web pages search engine optimization (SEO).
By ensuring your web pages are accessible to everyone with alt text, transcripts, and much more, search engines like Google can do a more thorough crawl of your site. This means it’s easier to scan your site’s content and provide an accurate page rank!
We’ve seen this increase organic search rankings for a few of our clients already, improving online accessibility for everyone (including search engines which can then more easily categorize your digital content.
Streamlining the Accessibility Audit Process
If you’ve attempted to design an accessible website, you know. Just the time it takes to research everything there is to learn about your site’s accessibility standards can be a lengthy process.
There are thousands of tiny details you need to understand. And without a comprehensive list or expert on web accessibility standards taking this over—you can easily spend all your time working on optimizing digital content that isn’t even wcag 2.1 compliant. That means while your hard work might have made your site more accessible, your business is still at risk for lawsuits due to poor web accessibility. No, thank you!
Picture this: you’ve spent days performing a manual accessibility audit to ensure your website is compliant and you’re following accessibility laws. Unfortunately, you weren’t aware of the latest changes regarding accessibility guidelines (which are constantly evolving). So, although your site might have passed accessibility laws yesterday, today it’s a different story.
Automating Website Accessibility
Web accessibility is super important, but it’s also not a part of your business that you should spend all your time on. It doesn’t make sense from a money-making perspective. That’s why we’re encouraging you to use automated tools like assistive technologies—giving you peace of mind that everything is handled and allowing you to focus on the parts of your business you truly enjoy.
Our automated tools ensure web accessibility in just 48 hours, helping:
✔️ Give you peace of mind
✔️ Ensure your site is wcag 2.1 complaint according to the disabilities act (ADA Accessibility Compliance).
✔️ Improve your organic search rankings
All without having to spend time on lengthy manual accessibility audits to meet web accessibility standards.
Can I get an ADA Tax Credit?
You can file for ADA Tax Credit at the end of the year and get up to 50% back on your spending when you use automated testing tools to maintain your site’s accessibility.
Get a FREE Website Accessibility Audit
Reach out to our team to request a Free Website Accessibility Audit and learn more about the assistive technologies we’re using to help our clients automate this part of your business, so they’re always protected.
