Is Your Website Accessible?
By Douglas H. Duerr
I
2016 Issue 2 |
THE
SCORE
20
n the 26 years since the Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA) became law, business owners have been
required to make sure their buildings and public spaces
were accessible to those with disabilities. This has resulted in
the installation of wheelchair ramps, grab bars in restrooms,
lowered counters and other physical changes. As many businesses are learning, however, the requirements do not end
there. Instead, they are getting hit with enforcement actions
by the government and private individuals on claims that their
websites are not accessible to those with disabilities.
In this instance,“accessible” does equate to how easy it is
to find your website, although hopefully it is. Instead,“accessibility” relates to whether people with disabilities can use the
website. More specifically, accessible in this instance means
that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the website. It encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the web, including vision and hearing
impairments, physical difficulty using keyboards or pointers
such as a mouse, cognitive and neurological disabilities, and
so forth.
Background
When the ADA was enacted in 1990,
no one was thinking about how it would
apply to internet websites … probably
because most people at the time had never heard of such
things nor had any idea that 26 years later most individuals
in the United States would get much of their information on
the internet or make transaction online. Now that things have
changed, however, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ)
and others are applying the ADA to websites, and some courts
are going along.
Title III of the ADA requires businesses to make their
services accessible to those with disabilities. Until relatively
recently, it was assumed that so long as there were alternative ways for individuals to obtain services provided on the
internet, including hours the business is open, location, job
applications, and other information and services from a business that had a website inaccessible to those with disabilities,
then they were in compliance with the law. (Think of it as