Make Sure Your Website is ADA Compliant With 2 Steps

What is the ADA?

And how the heck does it relate to a website?

Your content should be accessible to blind and deaf users per the Americans with Disabilities Act. How do blind and deaf users access your content? By using assistive technologies that, hear it, and see it for them. This goes for your website and also goes for marketing materials like email.

How do you stay ADA compliant?

#1 - Make sure you have a perceivable and navigable website.

This means that text only images are a no-no. Because if it's an image that has text on it, there's no way for the assistive technology to read that text in the same way that it would read text in a headline, or in the body of a paragraph. Text only images are a no-no, unless you use alternatives for that alt text feature where you can describe what is in that image. You can put all the text in that text only in the alt text field. Also, websites should be easy to navigate. Think color contrast, placement of images, mobile usage, where the buttons are they easy to see.

#2 - Make sure that your content is understandable and compatible.

This means that it should be readable and it should be friendly to assistive technologies. There are widgets that you can get to upload to WordPress or Squarespace (or wherever you have your website) that can help those assistive technologies with your website.

Why should you care about ADA compliance and your website?

It makes your content accessible to everyone. Additionally, there are a lot of lawsuits creeping up for folks who don't have ADA-compliant websites. One context might be is if you share recipes online, and you have that image text file on your website, or you might have the web the recipe up and it looks really great. And it's got your branding, but it's a JPEG, and it's got tons of text on it, so assistive technologies can't read that. The workaround is, of course, putting the recipe in the body, having that text there so the assistive technology can read it, and voila.

So that's why this stuff matters! Of course, you want your content to be accessible to everybody, and you don't want to be subject to a lawsuit under the ADA for not complying with the ADA.

Head to spear-ip.com/quiz to take my free quiz that will diagnose your legal blind spot and tell you how to fix it.