What Is ADA Compliance: Why Is It Important For Your Website?

Whether your consumer buys products online or from the store, your website plays a crucial role and helps smoothen the buyer’s journey. 

– From brand research to product comparison.

– From building trust to product at their convenience.

Your website helps consumers to find key information and makes purchase decisions. But to serve all your audiences, even the people with disabilities, you need to make your website ADA compliant.

In this article, we take a close look at what ADA compliance for a website looks like and why it is important for eCommerce companies.

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What Is ADA Compliance?

ADA stands for the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is the basic standard for any website that is going for accessible design. In a simple world, your website will be designed in such a way that it is easily accessible to people with disabilities.

The reason why we are talking about ADA compliance here is that, most often, ADA compliance is confused with 508 compliance. However, there is a clear difference between the two. ADA compliance is a civil law that mandates the inclusion of all people. This also includes people with disabilities.

The two compliance measures also work alongside the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG). WCAG focused primarily on HTML accessibility while visitors were on the platform. 

So, here is a recap – ADA compliance is the civil law. It guarantees equal opportunity to the diable individual in the sphere of accommodation.

Importance Of ADA Compliance For eCommerce Websites

The ADA act of 1990 is a civil law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It consists of five titles that cover the five areas of public life. 

• Government.
• Public accommodation.
• Employment.
• Telecommunication.
• Miscellaneous category.

While the law particularly doesn’t provide any specific type of guidance, if disabled people find it hard to access a website, it falls in the public accommodation category.

In the last couple of years, there has been a 50% rise in ADA-compliant lawsuits that have forced companies to take necessary action to become ADA Compliant to avoid any legal action.

Furthermore, making your website ADA compliant helps you increase reach among your consumers and ultimately helps your business get more conversions.

Reasons You Websites needs To Be ADA Compliant

According to the ADA act 1990, businesses need to mandate their access policies to ensure that no individual is restricted from accessing their website under public accommodation.

If you are not sure whether your business is ADA compliant or how it will benefit your business, the following reason will be enough to convince you.

1. Improve Your SEO Effort

Search engines are upgrading themselves to move beyond the keywords and focus on the intention of searchers. This is where a key element of WCAG to the screen readers can help make your website reach more readers.

If your website meets the WCAG guidelines, it will likely appeal to users, search engines, and other screen readers. This will help you improve your SEO performance.

To further reach, you can add the element of meta tags, alternative image text, video transcripts, and other similar practices to get better results.

2. Increase Your Target audience

If your website is not ADA compliant, you are already missing out on many audiences. In fact, there are nearly 50 million users with disabilities, which means that almost 19% of the total American people have a disability. 

You are missing these audiences. Many people from these 50 million individuals might be interested in your product and services. But, just because your website is not ADA Compliant, you are losing potential customers.

Thus, it is important that your website is fully accessible – even without a mouse so that people can easily access and navigate through your website.

3. Better Website Usability

With ADA compliance, you can make your website more accessible, operable, and navigable. This significantly benefits the website and offers a better user experience to visitors. 

Making web pages that are easier to comprehend allows your visitors to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. If you decide to create or upgrade your website following ADA compliance, your website will likely start converting more leads across the board.

4. Boost Your Reputation

The fact that ADA compliant websites can reach millions more consumers is a good reason enough to upgrade your website. But, here is another benefit for you. If you upgrade your website for ADA compliance, you will reach more customers and let your audience know how valuable your company is.

After all, some audiences might have experienced where they visited a website, but because of non-ADA compliance, they were not able to access the website. They were disappointed until they went to your website.

The fact that you are putting extra effort into making your website available for everyone out there will set you apart from your competitors and win your audience’s trust.

5. Avoid Any Legal Action

When the ADA act 1990 was passed, the text website was not mentioned in the act since dot com technology was not widely used in 1990. But, now that most businesses have a website, they need to ensure that it is accessible to everyone.

Over the last decade, there have been dozens of big companies that have been sued for not having ADA compliant websites. When ADA compliance for website needs occurred, a safe harbor clause was passed. That means existing content can remain as it is unless they are being altered after January 18, 2018.

So, if you are opening a new website and or have published new content after 18th January 2018, ensure that they are ADA compliant.

Become ADA Compliant

For some business owners, ADA compliance means overhauling their website completely to ensure accessibility is built in HTML coding. While this is costly and tedious, it is an important factor for your website to perform.

Think of ADA compliance as a good thing. It makes your business more inclusive, which means more business and a better reputation. If you need any help to get started with ADA compliance, contact us today.