Did you know that hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against businesses because their website is not accessible to people with disabilities?
Website accessibility is something almost everyone ignores or possibly doesn’t even know about. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulate this law and courts have ruled that it is unlawful to deny people the opportunity to participate in services offered by websites.
Although there is no technical standard for accessibility set by the ADA, there are some principles and guidelines that are considered a basic level of compliance.
The four principles of accessibility are:
Perceivable – Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. This means that users must be able to perceive the information being presented (it can’t be invisible to all their senses).
Operable – User interface components and navigation must be operable. This means that users must be able to operate the interface (the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform).
Understandable – information and the operations of user interface must be understandable. This means that users must be able to understand the information as well as the operations of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding).
Robust – Content must be robust enough that is can be interpreted reliably be a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. This means that users must be able to access the content as technologies advance (as technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible).
If any of these principles are not a part of your website, users with disabilities will not be able to use your site.
If you would like more information on this, go to https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/intro.html