I wanted to give you a head’s up… a newi’sh issue of website accessibility has been growing rapidly, affecting an increasing number of websites, and therefore, our clients.
What’s going on? In short, we've heard that attorneys have been threatening companies with lawsuits if their website is not "accessible", with settlements ranging from $5,000 to $75,000 per instance if the company doesn't "fix" their site.
The American Disabilities Act of 1990 has been extended by the DOJ to include all business websites. Since 2017 there has been a 300% year over year increase in lawsuits and demand letters hitting businesses of all sizes and industries.
What is Accessible? Technically speaking, accessibility is defined by the requirements laid out by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and it's often conflated with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Non-technically, it's giving someone with a disability, like limited or no sight or hearing, the ability to experience all elements of your website. For example, someone without sight is not able to see images or form fields on your website, so they need alternative text to inform as to the content of each image. Someone without hearing cannot listen to a narrated video, so they need captions.
How We Evaluate Accessibility To determine whether a site is accessible, they use a checklist called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, or WCAG, created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They have three levels: A, AA, and AAA. As of this writing, to be considered accessible, a website has to meet WCAG 2.1 AA.
How Bad is it? Most non-governmental websites are *not* completely accessible. In a sense, any website that does not meet the criteria for a compliant website could be a target. In fact, in most cases, unless "Section 508 compliance" was listed as a project requirement, most websites out there are not compliant, and therefore a potential target.
Solving Accessibility Issues We have found a really great website drop-in that practically instantly brings a site into compliance with Section 508. Where we used to have to manually monitor a site, then manually fix all issues, then manually recheck a site periodically, we can now use this drop-in to handle it all.
If you remember, we put an accessibility app on your website but due to a recent increase in layers looking for lawsuits that it is not robust enough.
Fortunately, we also have found a different great solution that is also very affordable, and quick to implement.
The new program is $490/year or $49 a month and we can have it installed in minutes. If you want to check it out for yourself, [insert your affiliate link here]. Please let me know if you are interested in implementing this plugin. Ensuring your site is in compliance, and not a target, is extremely important.
I think this is reasonable as it will give you peace of mind and avoid expensive and time-consuming lawsuits.
The US, Canada, Israel and most of Europe now have some type of ADA compliance required for websites. These are similar to building code rules as the ADA says that websites have the same requirements as public places.
Let me know if you want me to install this on your site.