In 1990, the Government passed the American Disabilities Act (ADA); simply explained, The ADA states that a covered entity shall not discriminate against a qualified individual with a disability (^ 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a)).
When the ADA was signed into law, the Internet was a baby and specific provisions hadn’t been written to cover Web properties. However, over the past few years, there has been an increase in lawsuits where individuals have felt discriminated by the limited accessibility of a Website. For instance, both Expedia and Hotels.com were sued due to their online reservation system being extra-complicated for those with disabilities. Furthermore, Target was sued by “The National Federation For The Blind” for ADA violations on their site and was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Other sites that have felt the wrath of similar non-ADA compliance violations are AOL, Bank of America, and Priceline.com.
In 1998, the Government amended the 1973 Federal Rehabilitation Act with section 508; Section 508 requires all Government agencies to make their electronic and information technology available to individuals with disabilities.
While the American Disabilities Act and Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act are two separate laws, they are very complimentary in nature and compliance should be built in to a site’s architecture and design.
One of the major points that Section 508 outlines is the variety of Website issues that need to be addressed in order to be accessible to screen readers. For those who are visually impaired, screen readers crawl and read aloud the HTML content on a page. The interesting thing is that screen readers operate almost exactly like a search engine spider does.
For example, both search engines and screen readers:
- Cannot read JavaScript
- Cannot see anything in Flash (although Google is getting better at it)
- Can’t read content embedded within images
If a Website is fully optimized for organic search, it is typically about 95% ADA and 508 compliant. Additional ADA compliance tweaks may be required based on your site. Many of the adjustments that need to occur to have an ADA compliant site make sense for good user experience in general.
Here are some tips on making your site ADA compliant, search friendly and a good user-experience:
- For any pages with Flash or video content, provide an alternate “text-only” version where the full transcript is available
- Videos: ensure that closed captioning is enabled
- Ensure all images have ALT and Title attributes
- Ensure links are text based and any effects are created using CSS versus JavaScript
- Ensure your colors are contrasting enough so that those with color blindness can easily read
- Use CSS to create table like features
- Ensure labels on form fields are accurately descriptive
- Page ”time outs”: if using a time-out feature on a page, ensure that a user is given the option to extend the time to fill out an online form
- Audio: any audio on a page should have a text-only transcript
Each Website will have its own set of ADA obstacles and if you are not familiar with the law/topic, you should enlist the help of a Web designer or SEO professional who has an established background in this area.
