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            Handicap parking spots. Ramps. Wider doorways. We’ve all seen these items before that have been put into place in businesses across the globe to accommodate those with a handicap and a disability. Your website is no different than your physical location, and below we explain why and what you should do. What constitutes a disability? Some of those include but are not limited to: People who are blind, those with mobility issues, epilepsy, color-blindness, blurred vision, hearing loss and more.

            Believe it or not, your website also needs to be handicap accessible. The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires websites to be compliant for web-goers who might experience a disability in their everyday lives.  Additionally, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines provide instructions developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to standardize accommodations in websites in order to allow assistive technology to be developed.

            The WCAG has three different levels that websites can implement.

1.      Level A: Minimal Level 

“This is the most basic of accommodations, which can mostly be used for a simple business presence website.”

2.      Level AA: Acceptable Level 

            “This level of accommodations is generally accepted as showing compliance to legal and ethical obligations. Typically, this level can be met while still providing a great user experience for all users.” 

3.      Level AAA: Optimal Level 

“This level cannot be achieved for all content and is generally only applied to very specialized sites.”

So, how can your site benefit from being ADA compliant? Here are a few reasons.

For one, your site’s target audience will increase. Without being ADA compliant, you’re missing out on several users who won’t be able to access your site due to their disability.

Secondly, it increases your site’s usability and makes it easy for you to navigate through your site.

Third, search engines can recognize if your site is ADA compliant, and thus it will increase your SEO efforts.

Finally, you can avoid any legal penalties and costs from the ADA should they find out that your site is not complying with their rules.

Does your website need to implement one of these guidelines? Contact us, and we can help get you set up.