The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design was introduced by The Department of Justice (DOJ) in September 2010 and over the past few years more and more businesses have worked to make their websites compliant. You’ll see this compliance, or at least an attempt to be compliant, reflected on websites with a disability icon.
While this recent focus on compliance is partially motivated by the need to make websites more accessible to those with certain disabilities and impairments, a huge driving force behind this push is the threat of a lawsuit. Quite a few large corporations have been successfully sued for having non-compliant websites in the past five years.
Why You Should Make Your Website WCGA and ADA Compliant
The first and most obvious reason is that making your site compliant will mean it’s easier for those with disabilities to navigate and interact. These complaint tools can easily help people with vision impairments, dyslexia, and other disabilities:
- alter text size
- pause animations
- enhance spacing
- modify color contrasts
- highlight links
- and much more
By having a compliant website, you can also minimize the liability and threat of a lawsuit, as well as experience some peace of mind knowing you’re protected.
But you may also experience some additional benefits.
Will Having a More Accessible or Compliant Website Improve SEO?
Yes, but not directly. Your website’s accessibility will not directly signal to Google or any other search engine that you’re “legitimate” or even credible, even if it does signal that to the end-user. However, having the tools in place to allow people to more easily navigate and find what they’re looking for will likely:
- increase on-page engagement
- decrease bounce rates
- improve conversion rates
These benefits are direct ranking factors, which is why being compliant or having a more accessible website can help improve your SEO.
Many of the best practices for SEO, such as proper use of h tags, alt text, responsive design, and title tags help those with disabilities already, so you may have some of the pieces in place for compliance, but…
How Do I Know if My Website is Complaint?
The rise in lawsuits for lack of compliance has left the door open for many charlatans to enter. I’ve seen many “compliance experts” who send out reports with an exponential number of non-compliant errors they promise to fix for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars! Some even threatening with legal action themselves if you don’t pay them to fix your website!
Do not fall for this ruse.
TRBO has partnered with the #1 provider for ADA and WCAG Compliance. We can help run a scan on your website to confirm your weak points and then provide a solution for as little as $49/month!
Don’t Get Cheap and Settle for Any Plugin
There are free tools available that promise compliance, and these sound much more appealing than the scammers peddling compliance for tens of thousands of dollars, but be careful. If these tools cannot generate a report proving compliance then you cannot be certain you’re actually protected.
Can this report protect you from a lawsuit? No. We live in a country where anyone can sue anyone for any reason. However, with a detailed report showing full compliance, you can be sure that any legal threat will quickly be addressed with these reports as well as a litigation support package.
Take the Next Step and Protect Your Aesthetic Practice Today
If you’d like to learn more about how to help get your website ADA and WCAG complaint then talk to TRBO today. To learn more, drop us a line here or call us directly at 877-673-7096 x2.
