For many businesses, one of the biggest barriers to web accessibility is the fear of how much it might cost. However, most people are a bit cloudy about what it does cost to make a website accessible. Or even the steps involved.

In this post, we suggest a framework to help you determine how much it will cost to make your website accessible with 216digital, and discuss the role of compliance in web accessibility.

Why Does Web Accessibility Matter?

Before we get into the basics of web remediation, it’s worth clarifying why it matters.

There are some clear ethical reasons to make sure everyone can access your website, regardless of their abilities. In the United States alone, up to 1 in 4 adults have a disability. If your site is not accessible, you may be turning away a large portion of the population.

There’s also an element of compliance and risk mitigation.

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits private businesses and other places of public accommodation from discrimination based on disability. Moreover, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has continuously reiterated that the ADA does apply to websites.

If your website is not accessible, you may be exposing your business to the threat of legal action. In fact, more than 4,000 lawsuits were filed in the United States in 2022.

How Can I Make Sure My Website is ADA Compliant?

The ADA requires that businesses ensure equal access to their goods and services, including websites. One of the best ways to mitigate risk is to follow the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). WCAG is the set of guidelines created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. By complying with these guidelines, you can ensure your website is accessible to all users.

For more information on WCAG, check out our post What are the Levels of WCAG Compliance.

Determining the Cost of Compliance for Your Website

Imagine asking a mechanic for a quote without specifying what’s wrong with the vehicle. You probably wouldn’t get the answers you’re looking for.

Web accessibility usually works the same way. However, the cost of web accessibility can vary depending on the size and complexity of your website, the level of compliance you need to achieve, and the resources you have available. Factors that influence cost include:

• The number of pages on your site
• The complexity of the site’s features, including forms, interactive elements, or plugins
• The number and complexity of accessibility barriers
• The approach to manual remediation
• The complexity of the website’s environment or platform
• If there is a pending lawsuit, the number of listed barriers in the complaint

Why Do You Want Your Website to Be Accessible?

If remediation has no one-size-fits-all price, how do you determine its cost? Start by figuring out why you want your website or online application to be accessible / ADA-compliant.

Do you want to prevent an ADA web accessibility lawsuit?

Have you received an ADA web accessibility lawsuit?

Do you want to be fully inclusive?

Are you looking for ongoing ADA monitoring?

While you might think the focus for each of these goals would all be WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, it’s not. Instead, over a five-year period, our team of ADA experts analyzed and dissected the process of how 48 law firms select and target websites for ADA lawsuits. The results were surprising as it has little to do with real-world accessibility. But, sadly, even achieving WCAG 2.1 compliance can’t guarantee you won’t get hit with an ADA lawsuit because of the way law firms target websites for ADA lawsuits.

That’s why at 216digital, we have developed different services based on your ADA business objectives to put you in a position of strength.

Do You Want to Prevent an ADA Web Accessibility Lawsuit?

Our ADA Quick Audit is a fast and simple way to measure your website’s visibility to ADA non-compliance lawsuits. Through our years of experience in the trenches analyzing and studying these cases, we were able to develop internal monitoring processes and tools to determine their targeting process in which many of the prolific ADA non-compliance lawsuit firms identify their targets. As a result, we realized that the vast majority of cases are based on the results of automated scanning tools, so we developed ADA Quick Audit as a way for business owners to get ahead of the game and dramatically reduce their risk.

Have You Received an ADA Web Accessibility Lawsuit?

Our Phase I ADA Remediation project plans are custom developed to chart the steps you can take to quickly put your company in a position of strength to settle your ADA lawsuit and add the safeguards to ensure you’ll never have to waste another minute of your time on a frivolous ADA lawsuit. Each Phase I ADA remediation project includes an ADA Phase I remediation plan, timeline, staff training, and ongoing monitoring services.

Do You Want to be Fully Inclusive?

For individuals with disabilities or impairments, navigating online is a personalized and delicate process, as should the auditing process. However, more than half the work contributes nothing to ADA risk mitigation. So, why let real-world compliance hijack your development backlog with all the competing website enhancements that could add value to your business?

Real-World Accessibility on Your Terms means developing a strategy to integrate WCAG 2.1 compliance into your development roadmap as part of the development process. 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

Are You Looking for an ADA Monitoring Service

You’ve devoted countless hours and resources to making your website accessible. However, achieving WCAG 2.1 compliance can’t guarantee you won’t get hit with an ADA lawsuit.

We have found the majority of our clients had the same question – how can we make sure this doesn’t happen again, and who do we reach out to if we need further WCAG 2.1 AA expertise?

Whether you’ve already been served with an ADA non-compliance lawsuit or want to prevent being targeted, Accessibility Radar is a hands-off way to ensure you stay out of the crosshairs.

a11y.Radar ADA monitoring service reports on your ongoing accessibility efforts, whether conducted by your internal digital teams or an outside web agency. Access enhanced dashboards and receive updates to content, code, and user experience that could pose potential blocks to users or threaten your accessibility standards.

As a business owner, you have enough to worry about. So leave it 216digital to ensure you remain compliant.

Why Partner with 216digital?

Most web accessibility remediation agencies go straight for WCAG 2.1 AA compliance. Often, delivering automated audits identify accessibility barriers with little to no help in fixing them or maintaining your accessibility.

216digital intentionally focuses on identifying and remediating just the barriers that got you sued in the first place, putting you in a position of strength to settle your case sooner and prevent copycat lawsuits. To learn more about how the ADA experts at 216digital can help build an ADA WCAG 2.1 compliance strategy to achieve ongoing, real-world accessibility on your terms,  schedule a complimentary 15-minute ADA Strategy Briefing with our experts.

Imagine surfing the internet and being unable to read the text due to size. Or not being able to enjoy video content because it has low volume and lacks closed captions. That’s where web usability and accessibility come into play. These two concepts might seem the same at first, but usable content isn’t always accessible. So, what exactly do these terms mean, and how do they affect your online experience?

In this post, we’ll explore the differences between web usability and accessibility and how they work together to create an optimal user experience. Let’s look at each concept in more detail.

Understanding Usability

Website usability helps us understand the user’s needs. It applies a user-centric design process to make sure that websites are efficient, easy to use, and satisfy users. In other words, a website should be easy to navigate, have a clear layout, and include a responsive design.

For example, a website with excellent usability will make it simple for users to find information, complete tasks, and engage with the site’s content.

Some key principles of web usability include:

• Ease of learning: How easily can users accomplish basic tasks when encountering a website for the first time?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the workings of a website, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Recognition: When previous users return to a website, how easily can they remember what and how to do something?
• Errors: How often do users make errors, and how easily can they recover from them?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is the website in terms of design and layout?

While usability is based on user experience, it doesn’t focus on users with disabilities. Web accessibility, on the other hand, does.

What is Web Accessibility?

Web accessibility is the practice of making websites usable by people with disabilities. It aims to remove barriers preventing these users from accessing, navigating, and interacting with the content. Allowing them to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with websites and tools equally.

Some key principles of web accessibility include:

• Providing all non-text content (images, form fields, video, audio, etc.) with a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose
• Making sure everything on the website can be done through keyboard navigation
• Using webpage titles that describe each page’s topic or purpose.
• Ensure the site’s navigational elements are consistent and predictable across every page.
• Allowing users with visual impairments to adjust the text size and contrast on a website.

Web Accessibility is a Part of Usability

While web accessibility focuses on ensuring that people with disabilities can use websites, web usability is about making a website easy to use for everyone. Although these concepts have different goals, they do share some similarities. For instance, both require clear navigation, readable text, and a logical structure.

However, it’s important to remember that a usable site and an accessible site are not always the same, and vice versa. For example, a website can be usable if it works well for everyone. Still, it could be inaccessible if it creates barriers for those with disabilities. On the other hand, a website can be accessible but not usable if it is designed for people with disabilities but lacks user-friendly features.

The goal is to create a website or tool that is both web accessible and usable, benefiting the widest range of users possible.

Web Accessible Design

There are guidelines and techniques for web accessibility. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a set of recommendations created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to ensure web accessibility. These guidelines are organized under four main principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (POUR).

However, designers, developers, and business owners often only approach web accessibility as a checklist of standards to meet. As a result, the user’s interaction is often lost, and accessibility is not achieved.

Only by combining the accessibility standards and usability process can we make sure a website is technically and functionally usable by people with disabilities. This process is often referred to as usable accessibility or accessible user experience.

Testing for Web Accessibility and Usability

Testing is an essential step in making sure that your website is accessible and usable. For web accessibility, you can use automated testing tools like Lighthouse, WAVE, and Firefox Inspector. Automated audits scan your website for accessibility barriers, such as missing alt text, improper header structures, and broken links. These tools provide quick insights into potential problems, such as missing alt text, improper heading structures, and broken links. However, automated testing is not enough. 

For web usability, it’s helpful to conduct a manual audit. Manual reviews are more thorough, providing a more accurate assessment of how people with disabilities experience and engage your website. A web accessibility expert assesses your website using tools and human judgment. This includes screen readers, keyboard navigation, and magnifiers.

Web Accessibility and Usability

Web accessibility and web usability are two different yet interconnected concepts that help create a better online experience for all users. By understanding and implementing both, you can create a website that is inclusive, user-friendly, and compliant with accessibility standards.

As you become aware of the importance of web accessibility and its impact on your users, it is important to know you are not alone. 216digital is here to help regardless of where you are in your web accessibility journey.  Schedule a complementary ADA Strategy Briefing today to find out how we can help.

In today’s digital age, having an accessible website is more important than ever. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to provide equal access to goods and services, including online content. Failure to comply with these regulations can impact your brand and result in costly lawsuits.

Whether you’re just at the beginning of the research process and trying to determine your exposure to an ADA lawsuit, responding to a recently received demand letter, or actively defending yourself against an ADA web accessibility lawsuit, you will need to know what you’re up against. In this post, we’ll explore what ADA compliance means, examine some high-profile lawsuits, and provide tips on protecting your website from ADA compliance lawsuits.

What is ADA Compliance?

When talking about ADA website compliance lawsuits, it’s important to understand that the ADA isn’t just any kind of law. It’s a civil rights law to ensure fairness and equality for all Americans. By prohibiting discrimination based on disability across five distinct parts of modern American life:

• Employment
• Government
• Places of public accommodation
• Telephones
• Other U.S. laws and regulations

The ADA is a “strict liability” law because it violates a person’s civil rights, inflicting inherent harm. Strict liability means that damage is possible without fault, and there is no defense against violations. In other words, you can’t say you didn’t know which requirements to follow or did not intend to cause any harm.

Losing an ADA accessibility lawsuit can be costly and result in an order to comply with the law and make your website compliant. 

How Does ADA Compliance Relate to Websites?

Website accessibility enables individuals with disabilities to access and navigate websites using assistive technologies, such as screen readers or keyboard-only navigation. However, websites with barriers can limit the ability to access information and services online.

While the ADA does not explicitly mention digital content, the courts have interpreted the law to also apply to websites — specifically, Title III. Title III prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation, including businesses and organizations that are open to the public. In 2010, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued that websites are considered public places subject to the ADA’s requirements.

In recent years, a number of lawsuits have been filed against businesses and organizations failing to make their websites accessible. Unfortunately, these lawsuits can result in high financial costs, negative publicity, and reputational damage.

Examples of ADA Web Accessibility Lawsuits

ADA website compliance lawsuits can drag on for years, draining your time and resources. To give you an idea of what can happen, we will look at three notable ADA website accessibility lawsuits.

ADA Website Lawsuit #1: Netflix

In 2012, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) filed a lawsuit against Netflix for denying equal access to deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in the United States. The underlying lawsuit claimed that Netflix violated the Title III of the ADA by failing to provide closed captioning for “Watch Instantly” content streamed on its website.

The consent decree compelled Netflix to provide closed captioning to their online content within two years, along with all future content. In addition, Netflix had to pay $755,000 in legal costs and $40,000 to the National Association of the Deaf for monitoring.

ADA Website Lawsuit #2: H&R Block

Just one year later, in 2013, the DOJ joined the National Federation of the Blind, Mika Pyyhkala, and Lindsay Yazzolino in a suit against tax services firm H&R Block.

The suit required H&R Block to conform to WCAG 2.0 level-AA standards for their website and mobile app. The other terms of the agreement were:

• Provisions for designating a full-time website accessibility coordinator.
• Providing annual accessibility training to employees.
• Retaining an independent consultant.

H&R Block was also required to pay $22,500 to both Pyyhkala and Yazzolino, as well as a $55,000 civil penalty.

ADA Website Lawsuit #3: Domino’s Pizza

In 2016, Guillermo Robles claimed that Domino’s Pizza violated Title III of the ADA because their website and mobile app were not accessible to screen readers. A district court dismissed the initial case, but Robles appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which came to a much different conclusion. The court opined the ADA does apply to websites and that Domino’s “had received fair notice” that its digital content must conform to the ADA.

In October 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Domino’s petition to overrule the Ninth Circuit Court’s opinion. In fact, in June 2021, California federal court found that Domino’s had violated both Title III of the ADA and California’s Unruh Act, showing they still did not have an accessible website or mobile app for ordering. In the settlement summary, Robles was entitled to a mere $4,000 in statutory damages and Domino’s was required to bring its website into compliance with WCAG 2.0 guidelines. 

How to Protect Your Site Against ADA Website Compliance Lawsuits

To limit your legal risk, you should endeavor to adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA. WCAG is a set of internationally shared guidelines necessary for improving web accessibility. These guidelines are put together by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), athe defacto source for ensuring your website is accessible to all users.

To protect your website from ADA website compliance lawsuits, here are a few ideas of what the criteria require:

• Add alternative text descriptions for all non-text content (images, form fields, video, audio, etc.)
• Do not rely on only color as a visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, or prompting a response.
• Make sure everything on the site can interact through a keyboard interface.
• Navigational elements on the website are consistent and predictable across each page.

Team up with 216digital for ADA Web Compliance

ADA website compliance is no longer optional; it’s a legal requirement. If you need clarification on whether your site complies with the ADA’s WCAG 2.1 level-AA criteria, reach out to 216digital for a complementary ADA Strategy Briefing. We can help determine if your website is at risk of a lawsuit and offer fast and effective ADA compliance solutions that ensure your site is accessible to everyone and reduce your risk of litigation — letting you focus on what you do best.