ADA Compliance
Did you know that 1 in 4 Americans is living with a disability?
In fact, it’s estimated that disabilities impact more than a billion people throughout the world.
Yet, while only 10% of the internet is currently accessible to this large pool of consumers, ADA compliance remains an often overlooked aspect of website design and development.
Ensuring your law firm’s website fully complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) won’t just help you connect with more potential clients; it’s also the right thing to do, and it’s the law.
Bring Your Website Into ADA Compliance
If you’re ready to bring your law firm’s website into full ADA compliance but aren’t sure where to start, we can deploy the latest tools and technologies to ensure your current site is and remains fully accessible to everyone, regardless of disability.
Contact us today for your free consultation.
ADA Compliance and Website Accessibility
The Americans with Disabilities Act mandates the inclusion of all people, regardless of disabilities, in all areas of public life. Among other things, the Act requires that websites and other electronic information and technology—such as your website— be accessible to those with disabilities.
The law applies to:
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Federal, state, and local governmental organizations.
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Private businesses and organizations with at least 15 people.
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Businesses considered places of public accommodation.
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Organizations that work for the public’s benefit, such as grocery stores, healthcare facilities, gyms, banks, etc.
Apart from the ADA, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has created the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to make online content more accessible to a broader range of people with disabilities. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, now require WCAG compliance, so if your firm operates outside the United States, you’ll need to ensure its website also meets these standards.
Why is ADA Compliance Important?
An accessible website is designed in a way that allows people with disabilities to more easily navigate and access the available content. Generally, this means optimizing the site screen readers (i.e. images with alternative text), providing audio alternatives, using ADA-compliant graphics, and ensuring pages can be navigated via a keyboard, among other things.
An ADA-compliant website obviously allows your law firm to connect with a much larger audience. It’s also socially responsible and openly demonstrates that your firm values inclusivity and cares about potential visitors to the site. But those are far from the only reasons to aim for a fully accessible website. In fact, there are numerous other ways your firm can benefit by prioritizing ADA compliance:
- Your SEO Will Improve
The WCAG emphasizes the use of accessible screen readers, which crawl a website in a way that’s very similar to search engine bots. Meeting other guidelines, such as adding ALT text to images, ensuring content is as clear and explicit as possible, and keeping pages free of clutter, will also improve your SEO.
- Your Website Will be More User-Friendly
ADA compliance makes a website easier to comprehend and navigate for everyone, not just people living with disabilities. If users can quickly find what they’re looking for, they’ll stay on your site longer, come to see your firm as a trusted source of information, and are more likely to return to your website and eventually convert.
- You’ll Avoid Penalties and Lawsuits
The ADA establishes three grades for website compliance:
• Level A: The website is only accessible to some users.
• Level AA: The website is accessible to almost all users.
• Level AAA: The website is accessible to all users.Any applicable website pages created or updated after July 18, 2018, must be at least grade AA compliant. Since that mandate went into effect, thousands of ADA lawsuits have been filed over website inaccessibility, and the U.S. Department of Justice even began targeting companies over non-compliant websites. Bringing its website into full compliance with the ADA will protect your firm from similar consequences.
- Your Firm Could Qualify for a Tax Credit
Small businesses and organizations can receive up to 50% of eligible expenses related to becoming ADA compliant, including the costs associated with website compliance, in the form of an IRS tax credit.
Ready to Talk ADA Compliance?
If your firm’s website wasn’t designed with accessibility in mind, our experts can convert it to an ADA-compliant website in just a matter of days and provide a monthly audit to ensure it remains in full compliance moving forward.
Reach out to us today to learn more.
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