ADA Compliance Checklist For Websites

ADA Compliance for websites states that all the information on your site should be accessible to people with disabilities.

The former United States president George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on the 26th of July, 1990. 

The act would ensure that persons living with disabilities are not discriminated in any way, and they are given a top priority with regards to accessing essential services from the local and federal government.

According to the ADA, any person, business, or organization found mistreating a disabled person is subject to punishment by law.

The government has come up with an ADA checklist that schools, public buildings, hospitals, and even websites must follow to ensure those with disabilities are on the same level with average individuals when accessing their services. 

According to ADA, all local governments are required or expected to ensure the digital content that they publish on their sites is easily accessible for persons with disabilities.

Therefore, failure to make your website ADA compliant can often result in serious consequences. 

In this article, I give you a full ADA checklist for websites and show you how you can make your site ADA compliant to avoid getting sued by the authorities.

1- Review Your Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) To Evaluate Your Website 

The first thing you have to do if you intend to ensure that your website is ADA compliant is evaluating it with the set WCAG guidelines. The WCAG specifies three different levels for sites to provide a higher degree of accessibility to those with disabilities.

Level A: This is the minimum level of compliance. At this level, the website should have all the necessary accessibility features. The level sets the minimum accessibility requirements but does not achieve broad accessibility.

Here is what level AAA requires for your website:

• All video content on your site must have captions.
• The images should have an alternative text for the reader.
• Headings in your site content should be presented in a logical order.
• Links and buttons must be named appropriately.
• The language used on each page must be identifiable in the code.
• Replace all the ‘b’ and ‘I’ tags with ‘strong’ and ‘em’ tags.

Level AA: This is the mid-range level requirements for sites to meet the set ADA compliance. It deals with all the most common barriers that individuals with disabilities may have when accessing a website.

For level AA, your website must meet the following:

• The user should be given suggestions on how to solve input errors when using the site.
• Minimized and reduced redundant links on the same page.
• The keyboard focus should be clear and visible.
• It should be possible to resize the text to up to 200% while still maintaining the original form.
• Where text is the most appropriate, images must not be used.
• All underlined texts that do not provide links are removed.

Level AAA: This is the highest website accessibility level. In most cases, it is not possible to meet all the requirements for this level.

ADA requires that all websites, especially those that are freely accessible by the public, must use the most appropriate technology that makes it easier for those living with disabilities to access them.

2- Make Your Website Friendly And Accessible To Screen Readers

The internet is not exclusively a visible medium. Blind people also use the internet to communicate and find information whenever they research. They achieve this by using assistive technologies like the screen reader.

A screen reader is a type of software that creates an interface that makes it more convenient for blind people to read the content that you publish on your website.

According to the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), website owners can make it more comfortable for blind people to access their sites by including a braille display or speech synthesizer on the site. 

Apart from helping those who are blind to read content on your website, screen readers can also help those with learning disabilities and illiteracy to still access your site.

When you use images or video content on your website, you should include ALT text that explains more about the images. Use WordPress to add alt text to all images before you post them.

Related: How To Create A Website With WordPress

This helps those who are blind or deaf to get the information. 

Screen readers can only use text content to convey the intended digital information to those who cannot read or see.

Apart from making your website easy to access by those with disabilities, including ALT text in your site also gives you an upper hand when it comes to SEO ranking. Search engines are more likely to rank your website at the top of SERP if you have an ALT text in all your pages.

3- Come Up With An Audio Description For All Video Content 

The WCAG specifies that if your site is going to use video content at any level, you must ensure you have an audio recording for the content. 

This will ensure that those users who cannot watch the video get the chance to listen and learn what you are trying to communicate. Also, there is a speech to text (transcription) software that they can use to convert the audio into readable content.

The sound presented in the video may not be enough if the visuals in the video also provide extra information. Blind people who have no problem with hearing can also listen to the alternative audio for the video and still get the message you are trying to communicate.  

4- Create Easy To Interpret Content 

When creating content that you want to publish on your site, you must take into account those with difficulty in reading the content. 

Ideally, some will take a lot of time before they can understand what it is you are trying to communicate on the page. People with problems in reading and understanding written information want easy-to-interpret content.

Try to get experimental with the content that you create. Adopt a simple and straightforward layout for your pages. Do not use complicated templates or structures for the content that you publish on your site. 

Related: Best Website Builders

Those with difficulty in reading may not be in a position to understand your content, and this makes your site uncomfortable for them. If you want your site visitors or users to use their senses of sight, hearing, and vision, to understand the message in your content, then you must make the content simple for them.

Here are some ways you can make your layouts creative for your site visitors:

• Make it easy to identify the reading order for your page content.
• Provide an option for converting the page to a simple layout.
• Use sense-related features in your content that can guide the audience into reading the pages.
• Use simple language when creating the content.
• To ensure there is clarity in your pages, create content with short sentences. Maintain a minimum of 20 words in all your sentences.

Apart from making it possible for people living with disabilities to access your website and understand the information you are communicating to them, clarity in your site also improves your ranking and accessibility. 

You can retain your visitors for long if they create easy to read and comprehend content for your website.

5- Help Users To Navigate And Make The Right Inputs 

People with disabilities may find it a bit challenging to input the right information on your site. Therefore your website should cater to those with problems to input information. 

A simple way of achieving this is by including an auto-complete feature on your site search tab. The auto-complete feature will help the user to easily write their search query and access whatever information they want on your site.

Ensure there is clear identification of your search features. The search tab must be easy to notice. In most cases, you should position the search icon somewhere every user can see. 

Ensure you provide instruction on what users should do if they want to search for any information on the site. Label all the spaces on your site that users need to input information.

The software you use on your website should be able to spot errors when users make them and provide an alternative description of the error so that your users can learn how to fix them and enjoy accessing your site.

6- Provide An Alternative Mouse Control For The Website 

Not everyone accessing your site can use a mouse to navigate it comfortably. Therefore, when creating your site, you must ensure you provide an alternative for mouse and keyboard control. 

Today, there are alternative options that you can opt for, such as assistive technology, voice control, and touchscreen options. Always ensure that your website designer makes your site compatible with such controls.

According to the WCAG Guideline 2.1.1, for your website to attain the ADA compliance, it must have the basic keyboard control feature. It should be easier to navigate your website at any point with a keyboard interface.

Also, you should give people an alternative for using a keyboard to access the site. Those with disabilities may find it a bit challenging to keep hitting on the keyboard every time they want to access information from your website.

However, in some cases, you may be exempted from providing an alternative for the keyboard interface. For instance, if the underlying function requires that the user makes some movement using the keyboard.

7- Consider People With Difficulty In Hearing When Designing Your Site 

The deaf or those people that may be having problems with hearing can find it a bit difficult to use your site. When creating content for your website or adding any elements on the site, you must be considerate of those with hearing problems. 

For instance, you can ensure that any audio content that you publish on your website has an alternative transcript for people who can read. This makes it easier for the deaf to get the information you intend to communicate in the audio content.

In the case of video content, you can include subtitles so that those who cannot hear or auditory learners will still follow the message and enjoy viewing. 

Captioning the video is also another simple way of making your audio content more useful for those with hearing difficulty. Always ensure you follow the set guidelines for captioning your audio and video content for the target audience.

8- Consider How You Use Color In Your Graphics 

About O.5% of all women and 8% of all men are color blind. That means, in every 12 males that visit your site, at least 1 of them is color blind, and in every 200 women visiting your website, one of them is color blind. You should come up with a site that considers this situation.

When designing your site or publishing any content on the website, you must ensure that you consider the color-blindness condition. Reason from the users’ perspective when viewing the colors you select for your site. 

Ask yourself what color the user is likely to conclude by looking at the images you’ve posted on the site. 

View every color that you use in your site graphics from the color-blind perspective if you want your website to be more appropriate for every user with color blindness condition.

You quickly boost your WCAG grade and website accessibility if you take all the types of color blindness in men and women into account. Be careful with your color selection, especially when doing some graphic design for your site. 

The contrast in the images should make the colors you pick more visible to those users with vision problems. Also, apply the least palette to make your images more clear to the user.

Here is a summary of how to use colors on your site:

• Use a color contrast ratio of 4:5:1 against the site background.
• Apply contrasting colors to make the text more visible to your users.
• Differentiate text from the site background using appropriate colors to help color-blind users.
• Color is not the only element you can use to communicate. You can mix color with symbols to communicate easily with disabled users.
• To show contrast on your site, you can use textures and patterns.
• Use text instead of colors where you can.
• Chose a ‘safe’ color when designing your website.

9- Have A Simple Website Layout 

Before you can publish any content on your site or enforce any slight changes, you must ensure you consider those users with disabilities. 

Have a simple site layout – something that you can easily adjust or maneuver. The website should not be too complex for the user. 

For instance, if the users have a problem reading the content on your website, they should be able to zoom or resize the site pages without the layout or form changing. Your site should have a resizable ability of up to 200%.  

Ensure that your site users can easily resize the images, text, and colors that you have used on the site without losing the page originality. Your website should have the same layout and graphics even when viewed on a different layout or screen.

Lastly, you should ensure that at the top of your pages, you have included the ‘skip navigation’ element for your website. This will help users with difficulties in navigating your site to jump straight to the information they are looking for on the site. 

Note that most individuals using screen readers normally prefer to get directly to the content they want.

10 – Design Text That Is Easy To Notice 

The type of text that you use on your site may also determine its visibility. People with vision impairment may sometimes have issues reading your site if the kind of text font you have used on the content is too small.

Always prefer to use bigger or extra-large banners, headings, titles, and menus for your site. It makes it easier for those with vision problems to navigate your site without straining a lot. 

Remove any text that you have underlined on the content to remove the impression that you’ve hyperlinked it to another website.

Lastly, when selecting a background color for the text, you should ensure it does not consume the text or make it difficult for people to read. Always ensure the text fonts and color is easy to notice for those with vision impairment.

11- Provide HTML Format For Your Site 

According to ADA guidelines, every website should have an HTML format to make it more reliable for those using text to speech applications. With an HTML format, it is very easy for those with hearing impairment to access your site.

Always avoid having PDF files on your site. Most optical character recognition devices cannot recognize this type of file, which makes it difficult for users with vision impairment to access or read the content you publish on your site.

12- Revise and Audit The Website’s Code 

If your website has one of the oldest domain names, then its time you revise or audit its code to ensure it meets the ADA compliance. 

Reach out to your web developer and ask them to review the website code and remove anything that looks outdated on the site.

The CSS code that your developer uses for the site should meet the set ADA guidelines. Since meeting ADA requirements takes a lot of time, you must always ensure your web developer only includes the required elements on the site and audits it if you realize any issues that prevent your site from being compliant to ADA.

13- Give Your Site Users A Helping Hand 

People with disabilities need a helping hand with access to information, especially on digital platforms. Therefore, another way of ensuring your site is ADA compliant is by applying the right assistive technology for the website and having a standby support team to help disabled users.

If you have a support team for your site, they can collect information from people with disabilities whenever they visit your site and act accordingly. 

Also, with a support team in place, you learn from users’ feedback and make all changes that you believe will transform your site and make it more compliant for those with disabilities.

Always inform your web developer of any changes that you want them to make on the site as soon as you can. The ADA conditions that you have enforced on your website must be working correctly.

Respond to complaints and requests from your users. Support disabled users through emails, phone calls, or by writing them letters. When any questions arise from your users, you should always be around to reply and help them access your website more conveniently.

14- Test The Site For Accessibility 

Forget about making your site visible on search engines. You must first ensure your website is accessible by all users. 

The only way to ensure your site is accessible is by carrying out an accessibility test. Test the site to ensure it meets all the WCAG levels (A, AA, and AAA) that I have mentioned earlier.

You can use several third party and in-browser applications to test if your site is accessible to those with disabilities. Use WebAIM tool for a text-to-background check. WAVE Evaluation Tool can also help you to verify whether your website is accessible or not.

Final Thoughts 

Being ADA compliant is necessary for any website. Even if improving website accessibility for disabled users is not in your list of priorities, it can still help you to rank at the top of most search engines. 

Your website is more visible on search engines if you meet all the requirements to achieve ADA compliance.

By taking all the measures to make your website navigable and accessible for those with vision and hearing problems, you are increasing your audience. 

If you have an e-commerce website or one that provides essential services to the public, you improve your deliverability rate and drive more traffic to your site by making it ADA compliant. 

By following the 14 tips I have shared here, you are on the way to meeting level AAA and making your site ADA compliant.