Only 3 percent of today’s websites are compliant the Americans with Disabilities Act. Yet that low percentage doesn’t necessarily safeguard your organization from potentially being sued for ADA noncompliance. Packerland Websites believes that following ADA guidelines doesn’t just avert messy court cases; it’s also the right thing to do. (Read our blog, ADA Compliance for Websites: Stay Accessible and Out of Court.) ADA guidelines give people with disabilities the same opportunity as everyone else to engage with your website.

Accessibility Guidelines & Common ADA Errors

Businesses and nonprofits have four essential tools to make their websites better comply with ADA guidelines. The first resource gives website owners a directory of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to follow. The quick reference lists WCAG 2 requirements and gives advisory techniques, examples of usage situations and examples where the website failed to meet the guidelines. Unless you are a website developer, this quick reference probably seems daunting. So, we’ll simplify this list and name the most common issues we see on websites that aren’t ADA compliant. Most commonly found ADA errors:

• Low color contrast ratio of text, so text blends into the background, making it difficult to read
• Alternative (alt) tags are missing for images. Alt tags are needed because screen reader software reads alt tags aloud, so users know what the image shows.
• No announcement when the user navigates away from a website
• A website isn’t navigable with keyboard only
• Nondescript buttons like “Read More” or “Learn More” don’t include background code to tell the user where the button will take them
• No Accessibility Statement which states the website owner’s efforts to be ADA compliant and a process to follow if a user experiences an ADA issue

Real-Time Evaluation & Feedback

The second resource is a browser extension to add an ADA guideline tool to a website. One extension we find helpful is the WAVE Evaluation Tool browser extension (link for Chrome users). This ADA tool evaluates web accessibility and provides feedback regarding accessibility issues. Additionally, WordPress plugins are sometimes added to a website for accessibility. Although they help a lot, WordPress Plugins are NOT a silver bullet for becoming ADA compliant.

Another online FREE option with nothing to download is https://www.experte.com/accessibility. We rarely endorse many third-party websites. With the EXPERTE.com Accessibility Test you can determine the accessibility your website. The tool crawls your website and checks for each subpage if it can be correctly displayed by screen readers. We really like that it will check multiple pages one scan and give screen shot results

Brand-Specific Accessibility Statements

The third resource is an Accessibility Statement Generator. An accessibility statement is an official, written commitment to support accommodations for all individuals with disabilities. The statement includes contact information for accommodation requests and remediation. The accessibility statement should be placed in the footer of every page of your website. We recommend using the Web Accessibility Initiative resource as an Accessibility Statement Generator tool.

Packerland Websites Offers ADA Services

Are the first three ADA-compliant website tools a bit over your head? We get it! The fourth and final resource is the Packerland Websites team. Packerland Websites created an ADA Compliance Report Card, so we can evaluate our clients’ websites and recommend ADA-accessibility updates. Because our team uses industry-leading practices to build websites on WordPress, our websites adapt well for people with disabilities. However, only a thorough evaluation of a website can show ADA accessibility for certain.

Websites that Engage People of All Abilities

These ADA-compliance resources are the Top 4 accessibility checking and standards tools that we recommend. The fourth resource, the Packerland Websites’ team, is the best of the four. Contact us link regarding a website review and ADA-accessibility report card for your website. We look forward to assuring that your organization meets ADA-compliance standards, so your website engages people of all abilities.

A man wearing dark glasses walks into an optometrist’s office and says to the doctor, “Doc, I’m blind.” The doctor looks at him and says, “I see that,” to which the blind man responds, “Gee, you don’t have to rub it in!” This little joke innocently introduces you to a topic that’s no laughing matter. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ensures individuals with disabilities have access to public services and public places. In addition to the obvious ADA features like ramps, elevators, and closed captioning, ADA regulations also cover websites. Our clients, as the owners of their websites, are ultimately responsible for making sure their website is accessible under the ADA guidelines, and therefore not vulnerable to legal action.

ADA Compliance: The Ethical and Business Benefits

Our team at Packerland Websites believes that following ADA guidelines doesn’t just help website owners avoid costly, cumbersome court cases. ADA compliance also is the right thing to do, ethically and business-wise. Complying with ADA guidelines gives people with disabilities the same opportunities as everyone else to engage with your website. Isn’t that what you want for your business or nonprofit?

Real-Life Consequences: Messy Legal Trouble

The following story really drives home this point. Recently, an Upper Michigan e-commerce company contacted us for advice. A New York attorney took advantage of an opportunity to sue the company for having an ADA-noncompliant website. Basically, the attorney argued that the website’s owner refused to work with people with sight impairments. However, the e-commerce company would have been willing to work with individuals who are sight-impaired and correct the noncompliance issues on the website, but they were unaware of these issues until the lawsuit was filed. By then, it was too late, and the UP company was required to pay a legal settlement and legal fees.

Quick Check: Is Your Website Required to be ADA Compliant?

Because of this ADA-noncompliance legal action, Packerland Websites is stepping up its messaging about ADA-compliant websites. So, you’re probably wondering, “Does my website need to be ADA compliant?” Most likely, the answer is Yes. Websites that are required to be ADA compliant:

• Government websites and any organization receiving government money
• Websites connected to businesses of public accommodation (hotels, stores, movie theaters, etc.)
• Websites that sell goods or services
• Websites intended for us by the general public

Taking Action: Bringing Your Website Up to ADA Standards

Your website probably falls into at least one of these categories. Surprisingly, less than 3 percent of today’s websites are ADA compliant. However, this statistic isn’t a strong defense in the event of an ADA lawsuit. Thus, we strongly encourage website owners, including our clients, to bring their websites up to ADA compliance levels. One primary goal of website design is to ensure that individuals with sight impairments and other disabilities have access to the material on a website in a way they can understand. Read about the four tools we recommend to check website accessibility and ADA compliance, then contact us to request ADA services.

Packerland Websites: Offering ADA Services

The Packerland Websites team can evaluate your website using our ADA-accessibility Report Card and recommend any remediation.

ADA Compliance: A Matter of Equality and Rights

The Americans with Disabilities Act isn’t a laughing matter. The ADA is serious protection, granting people with disabilities the same opportunities and rights as everyone else.

By Alexa Haferkorn, Web Design Specialist at Packerland Websites
Have you ever opened a website and felt like you were walking into a maze? You may have an idea of what you need to find, but getting there is a challenge. Between buttons, hamburger menus, drop-down lists, and image links, the many ways to navigate a website can be overwhelming when not implemented correctly. Not only is this frustrating for the visitor, but as a business owner, you never want your potential customers to get lost on their way to the checkout!

Organize Web Pages like a Supermarket

Whether or not your website is an online store, organizing your web pages can be a lot like setting up a supermarket. You want visitors to be able to walk in, follow clear signs, and narrow down the area where they’ll find the right product. At Packerland Websites, we aim to make finding information on your site as easy as grabbing a jar of peanut butter from your local Piggly Wiggly.

Create an Intuitive User Journey

As web developers, we have many tools at our disposal to build this customer journey. You may have heard of the terms “UI” or “UX” which stand for “user interface” and “user experience” respectively. These terms refer to the way users interact with a product (in this case, the product is your website) and how they feel, think, and act based on the way the product is designed. A good UI uses text, colors, and other visual cues to clearly direct users to different areas of the site. This creates a high-quality UX in which users feel confident navigating the site and satisfied with how quickly they can find what they’re looking for.

Design the Optimal Website Traffic Flow

Before we dive into designing the look of the website experience, we need to make sure we have a solid structure to build on. After all, a skillfully designed “Dairy” sign won’t do much good in your supermarket if you keep cheese in the cracker aisle and butter with the baking ingredients. This is where our website traffic design comes in. We look at ALL of the information on your site, analyze how visitors are meant to use this information, and design the quickest and easiest paths for your customer to get from the home page to their final destination. This requires not only organizational skills, but also empathy and understanding for the typical website user.

Direct Users with Call-to-Action

Many websites have one primary goal, or Call-to-Action (CTA), along with several secondary goals or information. The CTA is our starting point for how we direct traffic through the site. It might be something like “Shop,” “Donate,” or “Call Us”. We want the path to this action to be as quick and easy as possible for the user so they don’t get confused or frustrated and leave before the action is completed. A good CTA is on the front page in clear, bold text or with an eye-catching visual to make it the most important item on the page.

Map out Goals with Website Navigation Menu

Mapping out the secondary (and even tertiary!) goals of your website is where things can get a little hairy, because we have multiple goals that need to be equally available to users. To achieve this, almost every website has a navigation menu at the top of the page with a list of page links to visit. Many of our sites start with 4-7 page links in the main website navigation menu. If there are more than 7 pages on the website, we start grouping the links under larger topics. For instance, if your website has a page for Window Installation and another page for Door Installation, it would make sense to group these two pages under one item called Installation Services in the main menu. Sure, this adds another step for the user who will need to click on Installation Services before seeing the Door Installation page they want to view. But by narrowing down their options in the main menu and using clear labels to direct their next click, we’ve actually made it simpler for them to find the page they need.

Present Clear Website Navigation Options

As your website company, we serve you best by designing a product that your customers will enjoy using. Attractive visuals and unique features are great, but often overlooked is the importance of designing the flow of traffic through a website. As UI Engineer Jared Spool once said, “Good design, when done well, should be invisible.” Our goal is to make navigating your website so intuitive that the user will barely think about it, allowing them to focus on what really matters: your business!