How can you tell if a website is ADA compliant? Well, the quick answer is you can’t. And the reason you can’t is because there is no law or regulation that explicitly states what you need to do to make a website ADA compliant. The Department of Justice, or DOJ, is the regulatory and enforcement … Read more
I was recently interviewed by Sanjay Sabarwal of Sabarwal Law and he has a YouTube channel. And the interview went really well and he asked a lot of questions that people want to know the answers to. And so some of the topics we talked about were: how much a compliant costs per website, … Read more
Accessibility overlays do not make your website accessible. Also, they are discriminatory if you read through Title III of the ADA. So I will summarize two subsections now. Participation in Unequal Benefit: It shall be discriminatory to afford, on the basis of disability, and accommodation that is not equal to that afforded to other individuals. … Read more
There will be notable updates to the ADA website compliance legal landscape in 2023. And one very important update is there will be less litigation. There has already been a decline in the second half of 2022 and I expect that to continue into 2023. And the reason why is because there have been adverse … Read more
Does the ADA apply to every website? Well this question, the answer to this question has multiple layers from different angles. So let’s start off with the law itself: the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990 and it did not contemplate modern digital technology such as websites and mobile apps. So … 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 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
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
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
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
The ADA Book is a great place to start when you are trying to understand ADA compliance and digital accessibility. What The ADA Book amounts to is it’s a succinct overview of the legal landscape complemented by information on practical implementation and approach. And really understanding the industry and the different terms that are used. … Read more