Screen recording the home page of AccessiBe.com. What I want to focus in on is the bottom of the page that is currently displayed and it says, trusted by 158,988 small businesses and industry leaders alike. And then there are logos that are showing on this carousel and there’s Johnson’s, there’s Panasonic, there’s Tupperware, there’s … Read more
The Americans with Disabilities Act absolutely applies to small businesses. And so let’s look at the general rule first. The general rule under Title III of the ADA states, no individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations … Read more
I received an email and I thought it asked a good question and I’ll read from the email: Is there a set of objective criteria we could use to evaluate and choose the correct service that can do a good accessibility audit and issue what would be widely considered as a legitimate certificate of conformance? … Read more
For at least a year there was a rumor / myth going around in Facebook communities and Shopify forums and Reddit that if you had less than 15 employees the ADA did not apply to you, you fell under an exception in the ADA. And so many people thought that website accessibility didn’t apply to … Read more
What happens if your website isn’t ADA compliant? Well the first layer to this question is, does the Americans with Disabilities Act even apply to websites? And when the ADA was signed into a law it didn’t contemplate modern digital technology. And there has been- there have been no regulations and no amendments to the … Read more
The California Consumer Privacy Act gives consumers more control over their personal information. So, specifically, in California, consumers have the right to know the personal information that is being collected from them, the right to delete that personal information, they r- the right to opt out of the sale of their personal information, and the … Read more
With complaints filed in New York what you will commonly see is a cause of action for 1) A violation of the New York State Human Rights Law and then 2) a violation of the New York City Human Rights Law and so as the names indicate the difference is negligible. The difference is one … Read more
In New York you will commonly see a violation of the New York State Human Rights Law as a cause of action for a complaint centered around website inaccessibility. So what is the New York State Human Rights Law? Well this is just this is just a law that prevents or prohibits discrimination based on … Read more
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to make their technology accessible to people with disabilities. And that applies to whether they’re- they work for the federal government or not. So, specifically, Section 508 requires federal agencies to develop, procure, maintain, and use information and communications technology (ICT) that is accessible to people … Read more
The terms policy and statement are often used interchangeably when referring to the notice that we provide on our website regarding accessibility, but they are different. There is a difference between a statement and a policy. And so with a statement, this is going to be that notice that is available on your website, it’s … Read more
When you are purchasing accessibility services it’s very important to understand what you are being sold and what you actually need. So keep the focus in on we want to make our digital asset accessible, how do we do that? Well first you have to find the accessibility issues that exist and then you have … Read more
if a vendor does not offer any manual services for website accessibility, then they are only going to offer marginal benefit in making your website accessible. And I’ve seen this happen too many times where people pay for these vendors and they think that they’re getting a service, a professional service but they’re not. What … Read more
Another way in which the federal government accessibility standards apply to private organizations is through Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. So let’s start with Section 508. Section 508 generally requires that federal agencies make sure their information communications technology are accessible. And so 508 also involves procurement and dealing with vendors and so vendors … Read more
Certification for ADA compliance as it relates to websites and digital assets is unavailable because there are no governing bodies or entities licensed by governing bodies that are able to issue that certification. So what we have to look to is a different type of certification and there are two primary ways to do this. … Read more
The difference between section 508 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act as it relates to private entities and website accessibility is that under Section 508 if- 508 deals with contractors or vendors and the procurement process. So under 508, if you are a vendor, they’re going to evaluate your product or service based on accessibility … Read more
$12,500 if I had to name one price for both an audit and remediation under WCAG 2.1 conformance level AA. Now what goes into this price quote? Well we first arere going to look at the type of digital asset. In this case it’s a website so then we’re going to look at the complexity … Read more
So you have a website you want to make sure that you’re “ADA compliant” and you want to make sure that anytime there are any accessibility issues that come up that you get an alert. That sounds fine but let’s start with this. So monitoring is going to be based on an automated scan and … Read more
As you’re initially remediating your digital assets for accessibility there is a significant cost associated with accessibility. And that is because you have to hire professionals to perform an audit and to remediate your website for accessibility. And that cost is there because you’re unfamiliar with accessibility and you have to outsource that manual work … Read more
Oftentimes we are reliant upon third-party integrations to offer features or abilities on our websites or mobile apps or whatever the digital asset is and we don’t have complete control over these third-party integrations. So in these scenarios we can only do so much customizations, right. Like we have access to settings, we can … Read more
One important distinction to make is that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG are not the law. And they never are. They may be adopted or incorporated into the law but they are not the law itself. And specifically when it comes to the American Disabilities Act, compliance- the compliance standard is meaningful access, … Read more
The Americans with Disabilities Act is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability – this is a federal law. The Unruh Civil Rights Act is a state law, the California State law that prohibits discrimination generally. And one of the demographics predict protected is people with disabilities. So you can’t discriminate against … Read more
A great way to reduce your risk – and this is something I recommend in The ADA Book – but a great starting point to reducing your risk of website accessibility litigation is to run a WAVE scan on all of the most important pages on your website. So whether that’s five or seven, maybe … Read more
There are plugins that can be helpful in making your website accessible. And some can even add benefit as options- having accessibility options available on your website, but they don’t make your website accessible or what many people are looking, for ADA compliant. Although we don’t know what ADA compliance exactly is when it comes … Read more
Many people ask to see examples of accessible websites. And the reason why examples aren’t relevant is because an accessible website can look like any other. You can go to Walmart.com, Target.com, many of these main all of these different retail websites are already accessible. There might be a few issues but for the most … Read more