Is your website functioning within ADA compliance? If not, it should be. This allows your website accessibility to everyone, even those who have disabilities that affect their vision, hearing, or other physical limitations.
If you’re not sure if your website is ADA compliant or you’re wondering what its benefits are, keep reading. In this guide, we’ll go over some of the key points of making sure you have an ADA-compliant web design.
You Can Widen Your Audience
If your site is not ADA compliant, you are missing out on potential customers and clients that cannot access or navigate your site due to a disability. Those with disabilities may be interested in your product or service but they cannot buy a product or get in contact with you if your website is only accessible for those without disabilities. This can cause you to lose potential customers to your competitors who do have an accessible website.
For instance, if you have videos or images, without captions or alt text, not everyone can use these visuals. These tools allow those that are deaf or blind to still be able to gain information from your website features. Additionally, your website should be fully accessible without a mouse so that those with physical limitations can still use it.
Improves Your SEO
When you make ADA-compliant updates to your website, you can get SEO benefits. Search engines like Google will scan your page to see if you have these updates. If you do, this will put your search engine ranking above those that don’t. Google will favor your website because it’s one that can be used by more online visitors.
For this reason, alternative image text, meta-tagging, and video transcripts should all be taken seriously when making updates to your website.
Improve Your Reputation
Not only does ADA compliance open your website up to more visitors, but these visitors are also more likely to become loyal customers. They will know that you value their business and that you prioritize making your website accessible to everyone. This is a great way to create customer loyalty. Additionally, if someone has a great experience with the ADA compliant features on your site, they are more likely to share your website with others.
This is a great way to get some positive press for your business while also putting you ahead of competitors. Making your website more comprehensible to all users means overall improved website usability for all. This allows everyone – disabled or not – to find the information they are looking for on your site quickly and easily.
This will work to convert visitors across the board, as they know they can easily access the information they need.
Avoid Penalties
Now that websites are so widely used, they are included in ADA general guidelines. Now that most businesses have a website, it’s important that they are made accessible to everyone. ADA compliance works as a grading system.
All pages in your site need to be at least grade A compliant to qualify as an ADA compliant website. This grading system can go up to an AAA in compliance, which is the goal for all website hosts. Plenty of esteemed online brands have faced lawsuits and penalties for not making sure that their website is accessible to all.
If you want to avoid facing charges for not making your website ADA compliant, you should make all the necessary updates to your website now.
ADA Compliance: What Updates Need to Be Made?
Working to update your website to meet the ADA compliance guidelines can be a hefty process. However, with a team of experts, you can make sure your website is up to proper standards. These guidelines require that your website be perceivable, understandable, robust, and operable. To achieve the perceivable guideline, your website must be easy to access and process with no areas that are only available to those with hearing or sight.
This involves having alternative ways for people to enjoy your content, by using tools like alt text and audio transcripts. To make your site operable, you need to make sure your site is navigatable for all. This means that it should be able to be accessed without a keyboard or mouse while also making sure your site has no visual triggers, such as strobe lights that may cause seizures or migraines for some users.
To make your website understandable for all users, you need to make it easy for users to read the content. This means that you need an intuitive and predictable layout that makes it easy for website visitors to explore. A robust website will work with all browsers and assistive technologies.
As technologies update, your site will need to as well, as ADA compliance will continue to evolve.
Make ADA Compliant Updates to Your Site Today
To make sure your website is easy to use for all website visitors, you need to work with a professional to achieve ADA compliance. This is a no-brainer for any online business that wants to succeed, as it can help to widen your customer base while also avoiding costly fees.
Are you looking for a company that can make ADA-compliant updates to your website? Contact us today to get started.
