The Supreme Court decision has opened the floodgates for businesses to be sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Your website is better compliant or you could face legal consequences. Is your website a potential liability? Yes, it probably is. So how can you tell if your company's website is ADA compliant? It recommends that small businesses avoid using fonts and colors that don't have enough contrast to be distinguishable to users with low vision.
It also suggests including descriptions for important images, employing techniques to ensure that pop-ups are properly encoded so that they are inadmissible for users with screen readers, and having a logical tab order for buttons and headings. Regulations for physical spaces have been developed over the years, so companies can rely on them to achieve and maintain ADA compliance. If you are a public, private or third sector company, such as a non-profit organization, and you have a website, that website will need to be ADA compliant or else you are jeopardizing the future of your organization. American Express, Nissan North America, and Eventbrite have also been in legal trouble for ADA compliance.
Some courts have adopted WCAG 2.0 Level AA as the accessibility standard for compliance in the development of injunctions under the ADA. However, ADA compliance affects almost anyone who has a website for public, commercial, or charitable purposes in the United States. Over one million websites are currently compliant with compliance laws based on WCAG 2.1 AA requirements by relying on UserWay and defending against ADA-related litigation. Alternatively, you can ensure full compliance with the ADA & WCAG with the AI-powered accessibility widget from UserWay, the world's most comprehensive accessibility solution.
Because none of these laws or regulations refer specifically to websites or contain any standards for website accessibility, courts across the country have had to apply more general non-discrimination principles to website accessibility demands. As a result of this increase in filing compliance claims from the ADA website and the indication that such claims will continue to increase in the future, it is vital that lawyers understand the basics of this new type of lawsuit and advise their clients (and their own firms) on how to defend themselves against them. That's why web accessibility has become a priority for organizations concerned about the liability risk of non-ADA compliant websites. Just as ADA compliance in physical businesses may require wheelchair access, or similar accommodations, websites and online applications must be accessible, in your own way.
Until now, the general agreement is that a website belonging to a company with a public-facing physical presence is covered by the ADA. ADA demands for accessibility have been increasing in recent years, and most of these demands relate to website accessibility.
