Posted on October 28th, 2021
Below is a complete transcript of this video.
What’s up fellow entrepreneurs today. I want to talk about Americans with disabilities act and how your website could potentially be a liability. But first, um, I’m an attorney, but I’m not your attorney. So please seek out competent representation for your specific legal need or question.
So the ADA as it’s called is a, is a federal law that requires certain businesses to make accommodations for people with disabilities or face fines.
Under title one of the ADA businesses that operate 20 or more weeks per year with at least 15 full-time employees or under title three businesses that fall under the category of public accommodation are subject to the ADA.
As many California businesses are finding out, there are several lawyers out there looking to Sue for ADA violations.
Unfortunately, the ADA has created an industry for certain litigious individuals and unscrupulous attorneys. The ADA’s often associated with physical locations and accommodations.
Certain businesses must make for, uh, people with disabilities. These accommodations typically include for example, uh, wheelchair accessibility, uh, and the use of braille for customers who are visually impaired.
However, what people, a lot of people don’t know is that the ADA also extends to the digital realm requiring businesses to ensure web content is accessible to all users.
Failure to create an ADA compliant website, could open a business to lawsuits, financial liabilities, and other damages. The problem with ADA’s website compliance is that there are not any clear rules for, for websites.
There’s no federally qualified direction how to make websites complaint. So even without clear definitions, there are a few actions you can take that will clearly help with ADA compliance.
If you fall under the ADA rules, for example, web content should be presented at an easily perceivable manner, uh, with alternatives to texts such as audio and other assistive technology.
Second, navigation should be easy to operate, including offering keyboard accessibility. So users with disabilities can easily navigate your website and access content.
Third, content should be easy to understand, including making content readable and offering input assistance if needed.
Fourth, your website’s content should also be able to be interpreted by various devices and platforms and be compatible with user agents like assisted technologies.
These suggestions will not make you full-proof, but the upgrades are reasonable accommodations that will make for pretty good to offense considering there’s not any specific guidance.
So good luck and watch out for those landmines until next time be productive.
