0
0
0
0
Website accessibility is now a necessity under the Americans with Disabilities Act 1990. Many websites, including the industry giants like Amazon, are now facing a lawsuit against them for not being compliant with some of the accessibility requirements. The non-compliant websites, in light of ADA regulations, are vulnerable to facing lawsuits. Good web developers and SEO specialists can help you with being compliant with the accessibility needs. Being compliant will serve both the purposes of being accessible to people with disabilities and also to meet your business goals by reaching more prospective customers.
Consequences of ignoring accessibility needs – AccessiBe
Even though the immediate gains from ensuring accessibility of your website will not be obvious, it is a necessity for your growth over time. AccessiBe is a renowned provider offering accessibility tools for website compliance with ADA and other regulations. The experts at the end of the provider can offer you insights and support for making your business and public information websites to be compliant with the ADA regulations.
You can see the consequences of not being compliant with ADA as many such businesses were sued for the same over the last several years. There is a huge community of people with disabilities who are using assistive technologies to read through the web content. Even on not considering the mandates of the law, it is essential to make your web pages accessible for humanitarian considerations.
Penalties for noncompliance with ADA
There are five titles under ADA, which cover various entities in terms of accessibility. For example, the Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act demands public accommodation and commercial entities to meet the accessibility standards put forth by ADA. Even though it is not specifically mentioned as a website, the Department of Judiciary can interpret that the websites also come under the public information entity. Based on this, there are different rulings also, and legal experts also interpret it the same way. With such noncompliance, there can be a civil penalty for violation, which may be equivalent to $75,000 for the first time, and then the subsequent violations may be penalized at a higher rate.
The businesses owning a website may also assume that the end-users may be filing these legal suits. Still, accessibility lawsuits are running with business motives by law firms and industry competitors. Considering all the factors, the business owners are now largely in a rush to make their websites compliant with the accessibility needs.
In fact, it is also a notable fact that ADA has no clear definition when it comes to accessible sites, and that is one ambiguity that the plaintiffs sometimes leverage for their benefit. On the other hand, W3C had published some common guidelines for accessibility in the name of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, which is now being widely used for reference by business marketers and website owners.
So, the advice by AccessiBe experts is that you follow the accessibility guidelines in order to avoid any penalties or lawsuits against your business portal. Ensuring accessibility in its true sense can also make your website more user-friendly by reaching more and more potential users across the globe.
