Do you know if your website is WCAG & ADA compliant and accessible to all users? If not, you’re not alone.
According to a study conducted by WebAIM of the world’s top 1,000,000 websites, 96% are not “accessible”.
This is a major problem. If your website is not accessible to people with disabilities, this opens your business up to lawsuits and legal risk.
Let’s explore the basics of WCAG & ADA website compliance, introduce a tool to manage website compliance (AccessiBe), and explain the benefits of using this website compliance tool to mitigate legal risk, ensuring your website is accessible for all.
Lasso Up provides AccessiBe as a website add-on for all website care plans.
Understanding WCAG & ADA Website Compliance
To ensure that your website is accessible to all users, it is important to understand the principles of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance. WCAG provides guidelines for making web content more accessible, while the ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities.
By following WCAG and ADA guidelines, you can ensure that your website is accessible to people with disabilities, including those with visual, auditory, physical, and cognitive impairments. This includes providing alternative text for images, ensuring proper color contrast, providing captions for videos, and making the website navigable using a keyboard.
Ensuring WCAG and ADA compliance is not only a legal requirement but also a way to create a more inclusive online environment for all users. By implementing the necessary accessibility features, you can make your website accessible to a wider audience and improve the overall user experience.
Challenges of Ensuring Website Compliance
Ensuring WCAG and ADA website compliance can be a challenging task, especially for websites with complex designs and functionalities. Some of the common challenges include:
– Identifying and addressing accessibility issues: It can be difficult to identify all the accessibility issues on a website, especially for non-experts. Manual testing and audits may be required to uncover the accessibility barriers and make the necessary changes.
– Keeping up with updates: WCAG guidelines are regularly updated to reflect the evolving needs of users with disabilities. Staying up to date with these changes and implementing them on your website can be a time-consuming process.
– Balancing accessibility with design: Accessibility requirements may sometimes conflict with the visual design and functionality of a website. Finding the right balance between accessibility and design can be a challenge.
Despite these challenges, it is important to prioritize accessibility and take the necessary steps to ensure WCAG and ADA website compliance. Accessibe can help simplify the process by providing automated accessibility solutions.
Introduction to Accessibe
Accessibe is an automated web accessibility solution that helps websites achieve WCAG and ADA website compliance. It uses AI and machine learning technologies to automatically scan and adjust websites, making them accessible to people with disabilities.
With Accessibe, you can ensure that your website meets the necessary accessibility requirements without the need for extensive manual coding or redesign. It provides a range of accessibility features, including text-to-speech functionality, keyboard navigation, and adjustable fonts and colors.
Accessibe also includes a robust accessibility panel that allows users to customize the website according to their specific needs. This panel can be accessed by clicking on the accessibility icon on the website, providing users with a seamless and personalized browsing experience.
By implementing Accessibe on your website, you can save time and resources while ensuring WCAG and ADA compliance.
Benefits of Using Accessibe for Website Accessibility
Using Accessibe for accessibility offers several benefits:
1. Mitigate legal risks: Accessibe helps ensure that your website meets WCAG and ADA compliance standards, reducing the risk of legal issues and penalties.
2. DEI Initiative: Support your company’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) by making your website accessible to all.
3. Earn tax credit: The ADA tax credit is available to business that employ 30 or fewer full-tim employees or generated $1,000,000 or less during the year prior to filing. Learn more here.
4. Time and cost savings: Accessibe automates the process of making a website accessible, saving you time and resources compared to manual coding or redesign.
5. Improved user experience: By providing accessibility features such as text-to-speech and keyboard navigation, Accessibe enhances the user experience for people with disabilities. This can lead to increased engagement and customer satisfaction.
6. Wider audience reach: By making your website accessible, you can reach a larger audience, including people with disabilities who rely on assistive technologies.
By using Accessibe, you can make your website more inclusive and accessible to all users, while also complying with WCAG and ADA guidelines.
Implementing Accessibe for WCAG & ADA Website Compliance
Implementing Accessibe on your website is a straightforward process. Here are the steps involved:
1. Sign up for an Accessibe account: Visit the Accessibe website and sign up for an account. You will need to provide some basic information about your website.
2. Install the Accessibe script: Accessibe provides a JavaScript snippet that needs to be added to your website’s code. This snippet allows Accessibe to scan and adjust your website for accessibility.
3. Customize the accessibility panel: Accessibe provides a range of customization options for the accessibility panel. You can choose the layout, colors, and functionalities that best suit your website and target audience.
4. Test and optimize: Once the Accessibe script is installed, it will automatically scan your website and make the necessary adjustments for accessibility. However, it is important to test the accessibility features and make any additional optimizations if needed.
By following these steps, you can easily implement Accessibe on your website and ensure WCAG and ADA compliance.
Make Your Website Compliant
With Lasso Up’s website care plans, we provide implementation and management of Accessibe as an add-on service for all WordPress websites.
Ready to take the first step toward making your website WCAG & ADA website compliant?
Visit our website care plan page to learn more or contact our team today!
