An Overview Of Website Accessibility Laws and Regulations 2022

May 31, 2022

Website accessibility refers to web design that accommodates disabled individuals. As per the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 4 US adults live with a disability. In an era where the internet is essential for day-to-day lives, the law ensures web accessibility for these 61 million Americans.

There are specific web accessibility laws outlined by the ADA (American Disabilities Act). Not complying with the regulations may make you lose millions of potential revenue generation and even land you a lawsuit.

Website accessibility is a civil right in America. Given that businesses’ digital presence is imperative for their expansion, it is essential to ensure that your website is ADA compliant.

Accessibility Spark can help build your website in accordance with the strict ADA guidelines. We have multiple features built-in to the software to help optimize your website as per the law.

In this article, we give you a comprehensive overview of website accessibility laws and the consequences you must bear lest you fail to comply.

What Is Website Accessibility?

Web accessibility deals with web design and ensures that the colors, elements, text font, format, alt text, etc., are inclusive and make digital content accessible for disabled individuals.

Following are some of the examples of crafting a website to accommodate people with auditory, visual, and cognitive challenges:

Alt-Text: Alt text refers to an alternative text for images. This enables visually impaired people to understand the image displayed using assistive devices.
Minimal Visual Effects: Bright colors can trigger epilepsy. Therefore websites use a clutter-free, minimal design to help prevent seizures.
Scalable Text: Enabling font expansion of the text is another measure to help through visual impairment.
Keyboard Navigation: Allowing keyboard use as an alternative to a mouse can help people with limited mobility.
Hyperlinking: Hyperlinking important information and enabling the compilation of the attached links is another way of ensuring that the website is easy to navigate for all the users.
Individual Customization: Some websites enable a personalized experience for each user with assistive technologies.

Why Is Website Accessibility Essential For Your Business?

Web accessibility is a defining factor for your site’s ranking and your business’s standing in the digital world, and here’s why:

SEO Optimization: Website accessibility is an essential aspect of SEO, and thus, it affects your site’s ranking on the search engine results. It improves organic search rankings, which eventually betters the clicks and revenue.
Enhances User Experience: Making your digital space accessible improves user experience. This helps you build a loyal viewership. Inclusivity in the digital space goes hand-in-hand with SEO compliance and increases your chances of ranking on the first page of search engines.
Revenue Generation: According to a report, websites lose almost $6.9 billion annually due to non-compliance with ADA guidelines. Nearly 15% of the global population comprises disabled individuals and failing to cater to this massive group of people heavily impacts revenue generation.
Business Expansion: Social media and digital platforms are an incredible opportunity to promote, expand and stabilize your business. As an intelligent business strategy, you should target maximum people with your marketing. Disabled individuals comprise a massive chunk of your potential customers, and therefore, making your website accessible for them is imperative.
Legal Compliance: Post-2006 era, there has been a rise in lawsuits alleging websites of being inaccessible to the disabled population. Reports suggest a 14% annual rise in cases due to web inaccessibility. Therefore, to avoid losing thousands of dollars due to litigation, it is paramount to ensure that your website is ADA compliant.

What Are The Standards Of W3C Website Accessibility?

In the following section, we walk you through W3C and its website accessibility standards:

W3C, or World Wide Web Consortium, is an international regulatory body for digital space. The organization designs protocols for web development and web designs. The quality of your digital content is gauged according to their regulations (also called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG).

Compliance with WCAG criteria essentially determines your website’s accessibility. Following are the WCAG standards set for a disability-inclusive website:

Design Principles And Guidelines

WCAG follows the POUR design principles, which stand for perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. All the guidelines are an expansion of these four main terms.

Perceivable

As per WCAG, your content must be perceivable despite visual or auditory impairment. This includes:

Providing alt text for images and other non-text content. People should be able to convert it into braille, speech, or symbols.
Enable a more straightforward layout without eliminating any helpful information.
Ensure that users can see and hear content to observe navigation, such as a click sound when switching pages.

Provide an alternative for time-based videos.

Operable

The website should be built to allow an easily navigable/operable user interface.

Enable complete keyboard functionality.
Do not use visual effects that can potentially trigger seizures.
Make it easy for people to browse the website with a clean, clutter-free design.

Understandable

WCAG suggests that people should be able to easily interpret the information.

Text font and content should be readable.
Ensure that users can correct mistakes during browsing the site.
The web design should be predictable.

Robust

The content should be optimized for assistive technologies:

The website design should be compatible with available assistive technologies.
Maximize compatibility with all kinds of users.

Recently, WCAG 2.1 has also been introduced. These guidelines have the following additional point:

Pointer Accessible

Websites should be accessible through various input devices.

Components

Website accessibility guidelines deal with the following primary components of a website:

Content

Content is the main element of websites. WCAG guidelines regulate everything ranging from text, media, and sounds and ensure that they are accessible.

User-Agents

User agents are built-in software that facilitates user interaction with the web content. WCAG ensures the availability of disability-friendly user agents such as assistive technologies, plug-ins, etc.

Authoring Tools

Authoring tools employ AI to generate content. In addition, WCAG has strict regulations to ensure that websites’ tools effectively accommodate disabilities.

Evaluation Tools

WCAG has designed many evaluation tools to determine your website’s compliance with the accessibility guidelines.

Success Criteria

Unfortunately, there are no absolute criteria to gauge your website’s accessibility. However, theoretically, there are three levels of conformance with the WCAG principles; level A, AA, and AAA:

Level A

Level A is the most essential criteria, and failure to comply with the minimum standards will instantly render your site inaccessible. As per WCAG, disabled individuals find it impossible to access level A websites.

Level AA

Level AA conforming websites are accessible by the majority of the disabled population. However, one or two groups find it difficult to access digital information on these sites.

Level AAA

Level AAA content complies with maximum WCAG standards, enabling the best user experience for people with disabilities.

What Are ADA Regulations for Website Accessibility?

Although ADA is not very particular about web accessibility regulations, the following are some of the rules as per WCAG that ADA suggests:

Mandatory alt texts on media and maps
Descriptive HTML tags
Elaborate anchor text for hyperlinks
Skip navigation links
Heading tags
Accessible pdf files
Subtitles and audio descriptions in videos
Appropriate color contrast
Accessible fonts
HTML tables with column headers and cell information
CTA button with an ARIA label (ARIA is a technology that provides labels to websites to optimize them for assisted technologies
Policy page on the website

What Are the Legislations Associated With Website Accessibility?

The American definition of public accommodation has been expanded to include digital space, and since then, websites have been mandated to adhere to accessibility guidelines. WCAG and ADA have outlined specific instructions regarding website accessibility, and failure to conform to the rules can land you a lawsuit.

Following are some of the legislations associated with website accessibility:

ADA Violation

American Disabilities Act is a 1990 civil rights law that protects disabled individuals from any and all forms of discrimination. Violation of the law can result in a severe penalty of up to $75,000 as per federal law and additional fees under the state and local governments.

Title III of ADA mandates all public accommodation areas to provide secure access to disabled individuals. Since digital space is also considered a public accommodation, any failure to conform to the ADA guidelines violates Title III and makes you liable for a hefty compensation fee.

In 2020 alone, more than 2500 cases were filed against websites in violation of Title III.

Section 508

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 also prohibits discrimination due to disability. Under section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, it is compulsory for federal agencies to ensure adequate access to information technology for all individuals regardless of their abilities.

In 2018, section 508 was updated in accordance with the WCAG guidelines. Therefore, violation of WCAG guidelines is considered a violation of section 508.

WCAG Non-Conforming Website

Although WCAG guidelines are not enforced by law, they are the foundation of section 508. Therefore, failure to comply with WCAG regulations can be challenged in court.

How To Know If My Website Is WCAG-Compliant?

According to the 2020 Web Accessibility Annual Report, 98% of websites based in the US are not accessible to the disabled community. Here’s how you can ensure yours is not one of them:

Accessibility Evaluation Tools: There is a range of online tools that can help evaluate your website accessibility status. This software can be free or paid and is widely used by web developers to assess WCAG compliance of a website. However, it is essential to mention that this software can only detect 20-30% of issues, and therefore, you cannot entirely rely on them.
Manual Audit: Another great way of assessing your website’s accessibility is a manual audit. This implies going through each aspect of UX interface and web design to ensure that it complies with ADA and WGCA regulations. To be sure of a thorough and efficient audit, we recommend hiring professionals like Accessibility Spark to do the task.

How Does Accessibility Spark Help With Website Accessibility?

Accessibility Spark is a small team of highly competent individuals who are equipped with the digital space and WCAG laws. Here’s why as a website owner, you should contact us:

ADA and WCAG Compliance: Accessibility Spark offers consultation and guidance to ensure that your website is compliant with ADA and WCAG. What’s more, is that we also help you design the website in accordance with other global accessibility legislations.
Protection Against Lawsuits: Accessibility Spark is precisely what you need to prevent a lawsuit due to accessibility issues. We deeply care about our clients and make sure that your website adheres to mandatory outlines of web design.
High Website Traction and Better Conversions: Accessibility Spark ensures that your web design is in accordance with SEO and WCAG. Following SEO enables higher site ranking on the search engine and consequently leads to higher traction and improved conversion rates.
Accessibility Interface: Accessibility Spark provides your website with a complete interface that scans the site and analyzes it for website compliance. The software is capable of identifying maximum issues with web design within 48 hours.
Automated Adjustments: After identifying the issues, our software automatically adjusts the text, images, and other elements to make your site accessible for disabled communities.
Automatic Daily Scan: Running Accessibility Spark alongside your web page gets you daily automated scans for website accessibility.

Takeaway

We hope this article proves helpful for everyone looking to understand website accessibility laws and regulations in 2022. Adhering to ADA and WCAG guidelines is imperative for websites, and failure to do so can land you in hefty fees and dire consequences.

Given that web accessibility is still new and there’s a lack of proper means to check through it, compliance with the standards can be challenging. This is where Accessibility Spark comes in. We design your website, mark its flaws as per the guidelines and help fix the issues to prevent the devaluation of the website.

Online website accessibility assessment tools and manual audits of the various UX interface aspects can make for a good evaluation of your site as per the accessibility guidelines.