In today’s digital age, ensuring that your website is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, is not just a legal obligation but also a moral imperative. With the implementation of laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the European Accessibility Act (EAA), businesses must prioritize website accessibility to avoid potential legal repercussions and to foster an inclusive online environment. This guide will help you choose the right web accessibility solution for your organization, depending on your needs, goals, and budget. We will also highlight the ADA remediation services offered by 216digital, a leader in the field.

Understanding Website Accessibility and ADA Conformance

Website accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of ensuring that websites are usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. This includes making content perceivable, operable, and understandable, and robust for individuals with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments. ADA conformance means that a website meets the standards set by the ADA, which often align with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Assessing Your Needs and Goals

Before diving into the web accessibility solutions available, it’s crucial to assess your organization’s specific needs and goals. Here are some key considerations:

1. Legal Compliance: Determine the legal requirements applicable to your business. For U.S. companies, ADA compliance is mandatory, while European companies must adhere to the EAA. Understanding these requirements will guide your accessibility efforts.
2. Audience: Consider your target audience and their potential accessibility needs. For example, if your website serves a large population of elderly users, you may need to focus more on features that improve readability and navigation.
3. Current State of Accessibility: Conduct an accessibility audit to identify existing issues. This will help you understand the scope of work required and prioritize improvements.
4. Budget: Establish a budget for accessibility improvements. Costs can vary widely depending on the complexity of your website and the extent of remediation needed.
5. Internal Expertise: Assess whether your team has the necessary skills and knowledge to implement accessibility changes or if you need external support.

Choosing the Right Web Accessibility Solution

Once you have a clear understanding of your needs and goals, you can start exploring the available solutions. Here are some tips for choosing the right web accessibility solution for your organization:

Automated Accessibility Tools

Automated audits like Lighthouse, WAVE, and Firefox Inspector are a great starting point for identifying common accessibility issues. These tools quickly show potential problems, such as missing alt text, incorrect heading structures, and broken links. They give you a report with these findings, which you can use as a starting point to make your site more accessible. Some popular automated tools include:

• Google Lighthouse: An open-source tool that provides audits for performance, accessibility, SEO, and more, generating detailed reports and actionable insights to improve website accessibility and user experience.
• WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool): A web accessibility evaluation tool that highlights accessibility issues directly on the webpage, providing visual feedback and detailed reports to help identify and address barriers for users with disabilities.
• Firefox Inspector: A built-in tool in Firefox’s developer tools that allows users to inspect, modify, and debug HTML and CSS, including accessibility properties, helping developers ensure compliance with accessibility standards.

Pros of Automated Accessibility Tools

1. Speed: Automated tools can scan an entire website in minutes, providing a quick overview of accessibility issues.
2. Cost-Effective: These tools are generally less expensive than manual audits or professional services.
3. Convenience: useful for identifying widespread issues to ensure ongoing compliance.

Cons of Automated Accessibility Tools

1. Limited Scope: Automated tools cannot catch all accessibility issues, especially those involving user experience and context.
2. False Positives/Negatives: These tools can sometimes flag issues that aren’t actually problems or miss real issues, leading to incomplete compliance.
3. Lack of Detailed Guidance: While they provide suggestions, they often lack the detailed guidance needed to fix complex issues.

Manual Audits and User Testing

Manual audits and user testing provide a more in-depth analysis of your website’s accessibility. Accessibility experts will go through your site carefully, checking each part to make sure it follows WCAG’s guidelines. This is a detailed process where experts use different browsers and assistive tools, like screen readers or voice recognition software, to find and fix any small problems with accessibility.

Pros of Manual Audits and User Testing

1. Thoroughness: Human experts can identify complex issues that automated tools might miss.
2. Real-World Testing: User testing ensures that your site is usable for people with disabilities.
3. Detailed Reports: Manual audits provide in-depth reports and specific recommendations for improvement.

Cons Manual Audits and User Testing

1. Cost: Manual audits and user testing can be expensive, especially for large websites.
2. Time-Consuming: These processes take longer than automated scans, delaying the implementation of fixes.
3. Resource-Intensive: They require skilled professionals to coordinate with users with disabilities.

Accessibility Overlays and Plugins

Accessibility overlays and plugins offer quick fixes for improving accessibility. These solutions typically add features like screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, and color contrast adjustments by modifying a website’s code with a snippet of JavaScript.

Pros Accessibility Overlays and Plugins

1. Quick Implementation: Overlays can be added to your site quickly, offering an immediate boost in accessibility.
2. User Control: They often allow users to customize their experience, such as adjusting font sizes or contrast levels.
3. Cost-Effective: Generally cheaper than comprehensive manual audits or professional services.

Cons Accessibility Overlays and Plugins

1. Superficial Fixes: Overlays may not address the root causes of accessibility issues, leading to only superficial compliance.
2. User Frustration: Some users with disabilities find overlays intrusive or ineffective.
3. Potential Legal Risks: Reliance on overlays alone may not meet legal accessibility standards, potentially exposing your site to legal action.

Check out our guide on web accessibility overlays for more details on how they might make your website a target for a frivolous ADA lawsuit.

Consulting and Professional Services

For organizations seeking a thorough and sustainable approach to accessibility, consulting, and professional services are ideal. These provide customized solutions based on your specific needs, including expert guidance, comprehensive audits, remediation, and ongoing support.

Pros Consulting and Professional Services

1. Expert Guidance: Professionals bring a wealth of experience and expertise to ensure comprehensive accessibility.
2. Custom Solutions: Services are tailored to your website’s unique needs and requirements.
3. Ongoing Support: Many consulting firms offer ongoing support and training to maintain accessibility.

Cons Consulting and Professional Services

1. High Cost: Professional services are typically the most expensive option.
2. Dependency: Relying on external consultants can create dependency, potentially slowing down internal development processes.
3. Implementation Time: Custom solutions take time to develop and implement, potentially delaying compliance.

216digital’s ADA Remediation Services

When it comes to professional web accessibility solutions, 216digital stands out as a trusted provider of ADA remediation services. Here’s why 216digital is a top choice for ensuring your website meets ADA conformance:

Risk Mitigation

Through our extensive experience and collaboration with key legal players, 216digital has determined the metrics and red flags that cause companies to get hit with ADA non-compliance lawsuits. We know exactly how to take the target off of your back so that you can forget about the ambulance chasers and focus on growing your business.

Our goal through this service is to get the best possible settlement through the improvement of your automated scan results. Identifying and removing web accessibility errors detected with scanning tools and those addressed in the lawsuit. Providing an Accessibility Statement, Skip Link, and Focus Outlines as window dressing to further prevent copycats. Ensure you don’t fall victim to copycat legislation by getting your metrics below internally established risk tolerance thresholds.

Real-World Accessibility

While automated accessibility scans are functional and convenient, they only curate about 30% of issues, leaving your website exposed to a lawsuit and your customers with a poor user experience.

WCAG 2.1 Professional Audits provide insight that accessibility software can’t, which is essential to ensuring that disabled users can access your website to their fullest extent. Only through professional auditing, page-by-page click-throughs, and testing assistive technology such as screen readers and keyboard-only commands can your website reach full accessibility compliance.

Our Web Accessibility Professionals will evaluate and examine the accessibility level of your website’s UI, source code, usability, and design. Then, they will implement solutions focused on three key areas:

• Screen reader and assistive technology compatibility
• Keyboard-only navigation, operation, and orientation
• UI and design

Ongoing Support and Monitoring

Accessibility monitoring is an ongoing and proactive process that regularly checks online content for accessibility violations. Think of it as an early warning system, allowing developers and content creators to identify and fix potential barriers quickly.

216digital’s a11y. Radar is an automated tool that regularly checks your website for ADA compliance. It tracks your ongoing efforts, whether they’re done by your in-house team or an outside agency. You’ll get access to detailed dashboards and updates on any content, code, or user experience issues that might affect your website’s accessibility. Plus, our easy-to-use interface lets your team see current problems and manage any changes that need to be made.

Here are some of a11y. Radar’s key features:

• Dynamic Dashboard Display
• Compliance Scans
• Detailed Issue Reports
• Issue Tracking Over Time
• Manual Testing Reports
• Email Alerts
• Current Web Compliance Status

Conclusion

Choosing the right web accessibility solution is crucial for ensuring that your website is inclusive, usable, and conforms to legal standards. By assessing your needs, goals, and budget, you can determine the most appropriate approach, whether it’s using automated tools, conducting manual audits, implementing accessibility overlays, or partnering with professional services like 216digital.

216digital‘s ADA remediation services offer a comprehensive, customized, and user-centered solution to web accessibility. By leveraging their expertise, you can achieve ADA conformance and provide a better online experience for all users, ultimately fostering an inclusive digital environment and protecting your organization from potential legal challenges.

Investing in web accessibility is not just about compliance; it’s about creating a web that works for everyone. Take the first step today and choose the right accessibility solution for your organization.