I am screen-recording the silktide.com accessibility sales page. And specifically, I’m looking at the section titled How effective is automated web accessibility testing? And the reason I’m recording this video is because I want to highlight the difference between the perception that can be created from a sales page versus reality. So it starts- let’s … Read more
It’s important to differentiate making your website ADA compliant, preventing litigation and conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG. So full conformance with WCAG and the present version is 2.1. So full conformance with WCAG 2.1 AA is the best practice for making your website what would be considered ADA compliant and also … Read more
A common search in this space is ADA Compliance Checker and ADA Website Compliance Checker. And so the intent here is to find an automated scan that can instantly return accessibility issues on a website. So one thing that’s important, though, is that this isn’t determining- a scan isn’t going to determine whether your website … Read more
Welcome to my presentation titled Why Is The Market So Confusing? The subtitle is the ADA Book Buyer’s Guide to Website Accessibility Products and Services. I’m recording this as a PowerPoint, and I am on video in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. And you may also hear my dog snoring in the background. … Read more
Obviously there is training for accessibility and there are other courses on website accessibility, but what I anticipate will make website owners so excited about the ADA compliance course is I created to be an SOP or step by step instructions that you can give to your team and tell them to get started. And … Read more
I received a message on LinkedIn. And I thought the person asked a good question. And it’s one I’ve come across multiple times. So I’m going to read through the message. And this is just a slight- just slightly paraphrasing. Hey Kris, I am working with a client; we received a letter from their old … Read more
The ADA compliance course is predicated on preventing litigation. So the course was designed so that a website owner can take this course and give this course to their web team and start finding accessibility issues and fixing those issues and the accessibility issues being the most commonly claimed in litigation. But what is also … Read more
I am screen-recording the homepage of amazon.com. I’m in the bottom left. And I’m going to activate the WAVE browser extension in Firefox. And so instantly I get results on the accessibility issues that WAVE has flagged, and it’s showing 12 errors, two contrast errors, and 225 alerts. And so already that’s very intuitive and … Read more
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are not as bad as they may seem as you first encountered them. The documentation is extremely long. The terminology is very technical. And it’s difficult to extract plain English, meaning when you look through the official documentation, but as you learn more about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, they’re … Read more
A sequence I am all too familiar with is a company that receives a demand letter for a complaint is filed against them in court alleging that their website is inaccessible and therefore, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, that company procures a manual website accessibility audit, their team makes progress in remediating … Read more
Many people want to know if a particular website builder platform offers ADA-compliant websites. And so when I’m talking about the different website builders, I’m referring to platforms like GoDaddy, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, and the like any platform that offers a website builder so that someone can create a website. And so what you’re really … Read more
I am screen recording myself along with a snippet from the 2022 Accessibility.com Accessibility Lawsuit Report. And what I want to focus in on is where it says nearly 67% of all website accessibility lawsuits were filed by five law firms out of New York and California. Why is this so significant? Because what it … Read more
Just because a website has accessibility issues does not necessarily mean that that website is inaccessible. And this is an extremely important distinction because many plaintiffs’ law firms root their claims in technical accessibility issues. But we need to determine whether a significant degradation and experience or outright barrier to access have been created. And … Read more
What happens over and over again is there’s a sense of urgency around digital accessibility after litigation has been initiated. And by then it’s too late, you’ve already suffered a significant loss. That doesn’t mean that you can’t go in the right direction after that. But you really want to prevent litigation altogether. But that’s … Read more
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
The ADA Compliance Course is a cheatsheet that website owners can give to their developers to make their websites more accessible and significantly reduce risk of litigation. This course is comprised of 15 lessons and within these lessons there are- an accessibility issue is identified and then there are instructions on how you find that … Read more
The terms VPAT and ACR are commonly used interchangeably but they are different. So the difference lies in that we use the VPAT to create the ACR. So a VPAT is a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, the operative word being template. We use this template and once it’s filled out, we have an Accessibility Conformance … Read more
Accessibility training is extremely important. Once you have your personnel – so your employees, your staff, your contractors – once you have them trained in accessibility, it’s going to dramatically lower your costs and then, two, it’s going to enable you to produce much more accessible digital experiences out-of-the-box. And this will come relatively quickly … Read more
California has been the most litigious state when it comes to “ADA website” litigation and small businesses have been hit especially hard. Among the most active law firms are Potter Handy, Pacific Trial Attorneys, Wilshire Law Firm, and Manning Law Firm. And there are literally dozens of other plaintiffs law firms that have engaged in … Read more
When it comes to website accessibility litigation, something that both clients and defense attorneys need to pay close attention to are the non-money terms of the settlement. So the focus is usually on the settlement amount and of course the clients and the defense attorneys are trying to get this down as much as possible. … 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
Differentiating between website accessibility companies can be difficult so let’s run through a few of the categories. In one category we have the largest accessibility companies. We have Level Access, The Paciello Group, and we have Deque. And these are all legitimate providers. And at the core of their offering will be a manual audit … Read more
Behind me on the white board I have two watches drawn. And one watch is under street corner A and the other watch is under what is labeled street corner B. Now both watches are purported to be gold. Which one is better? They’re both fake. So that’s what it’s like when you’re debating whether … Read more