The world of web accessibility is ever-changing. As the guidelines and legal landscape of web accessibility evolve, it’s important as a website owner to keep up-to-date.
In addition to potentially losing business, ADA Title III federal lawsuits are still a concern. New decisions in various courts continue to keep businesses with websites on their toes and adapt to the changing ways.
Web Accessibility Refresher
According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), web accessibility “means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them”. Simply put, some users need certain accommodations in order to access the information on your website.
Most computer users navigate web pages using a mouse and keyboard. However, some users require the use of additional tools to gather the same information. For example, someone who is blind might be using a screen reader instead of a mouse. A user with motor skill impairments may not be able to use a mouse and might rely on their keyboard to navigate through your site. A color blind user or someone with low visibility may not be able to read your content unless certain color contrast ratios are met.
Web accessibility is a wholly human challenge. Some criteria can be tested with automatic tools, however, manual testing is also required since AI can not mimic all human patterns. It’s important to review a website manually to be sure it’s functional for the variety of tools some users may be using.
Latest Updates in the Legal Arena
A growing concern for website owners over the last few years has been the ever increasing wave of ADA Title III lawsuits due to inaccessible websites. Although there are widely accepted guidelines for web accessibility, the lack of any official laws makes the legal landscape a bit of a gray area.
While some of the lawsuits are brought about by legitimate plaintiffs who were unable to access a website, a large number of the lawsuits are being filed by unsavory law firms looking to take advantage of the system. However, recently in California, law enforcement has begun to crack down on these fraudulent filers with threats of civil lawsuits and felony charges.
The Department of Justice also recently announced that they have begun the process of creating web accessibility guidelines and procedures for all government websites, which falls under Title II of the ADA. Updates will supposedly come in the Spring 2023 and it’s likely these decisions and guidelines will have a large impact on how private companies are expected to handle web accessibility for their websites as well.
New Accessibility Guidelines on the Horizon
Published by the W3C, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 are a collection of web accessibility recommendations that is now considered to be the standard for best practices. The long awaited WCAG 2.2 is expected to be completed and released December 2022 with expanded explanations of previous guidelines and some entirely new guidelines as well.
The Bottom Line
The importance of web accessibility cannot be overstated. In the US, 1 out of 4 people have some type of disability that requires them to adapt. 96.8% of the top 1 million website homepages had WCAG failures in 2021, according to an evaluation by WebAim.
At TinyFrog Technologies, we value the user experience for all visitors and are committed to providing web accessibility services to our clients. Feel free to reach out to us if you’d like to learn more.
