Why You Need an ADA Accessible Law Firm Website

Web accessibility for law firms is a commonly overlooked aspect for many law firms across the world. Accessible websites for law firms are an important tool as well as an asset to serve the common people. It is essential for law firms to ensure that their websites and the contents thereof are easily accessible by people who are disabled or impaired.

ADA-accessible websites are websites that follow the ADA guidelines and checklists. ADA compliance refers to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a law put into motion in 1990. This law is intended to ensure that disabled and impaired people have equal access to the same services and facilities available on websites as the general public.

The Necessity Of ADA Accessible Law Firm Website

The need for an ADA-accessible law firm website acts from both the firm’s and the clients’ perspectives. That is, an ADA accessible website is equally necessary for the law firm as it is for the clients of the firm. Following these accessibility guidelines ensures a two-way solution for both the firm and its clientele. There are many needs for an ADA-accessible law firm website.

Accessing A Larger Audience

With the rapid growth of digitalization and digital services by many firms around the world, websites are now an important asset for any firm. In the same way, law firms need an ADA-accessible website to ensure targeting and accessing a large audience.

By ensuring ADA accessibility, law firms can significantly increase their target audience and clients. This is because the law firm uses an ADA-compliant website to target not only the general public but also the disabled and impaired. In this way, disabled people can access the website easily. So, the firm can access a larger audience.

Ensuring A Disability Friendly Brand Presence

ADA-accessible websites ensure overall inclusiveness and equal service for everyone. When the website is not ADA accessible, it hinders the visually impaired, and disabled people from enjoying its content and features. As a result, it limits equality and inclusivity in the law firm.

Similarly, when law firms implement the feature of ADA accessibility on their websites, they allow every user to enjoy the same service. Regardless of their disability or physical constraints, they can access the services and contents of the website. So, it creates a notion of inclusion and a disability-friendly presence for the law firm. It is an essential element for every law firm.

Enhancing Overall Usability

ADA accessibility can increase the overall usability of your law firm’s websites. It is common for many people to think ADA accessibility is specially designed for disabled people. However, that is not entirely accurate. ADA accessibility can enhance the overall user experience of the website. It is crucial for law firm websites to follow.
Simply put, ADA accessibility allows your audience and clients to understand, perceive, and interact with the website easily. It allows a better performance by the website to meet the demands of its audience. At the same time, ADA accessibility attains all the features that are necessary to improve and refine the website. Thus, you can enhance the overall usability.

Avoiding Penalties

Following the ADA accessibility guidelines is more than just a feature of making the website more accessible. It also ensures that you are complying with the civil law of the country. According to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, all websites operated by federal agencies must be ADA accessible.
Law firms can face lawsuits against their websites if they are not ADA accessible. So, to ensure ADA accessibility is more than just a tool. It is a court-mandated order that is obligatory for all companies, organizations, and firms, including law firms. Hence, it is necessary for law firm websites to be ADA accessible. In this way, they can avoid penalties against their website.

How Can You Ensure An ADA Accessible Law Firm Website?

You can ensure ADA accessibility for your law firm’s websites by following multiple steps. You need to ensure that your website design complies with the ADA accessibility checklist. It includes using appropriate titles, headings, and subheadings for the contents of your website, havingalt text, using fonts and texts to benefit the general users, and many more.

Many companies provide services to make your websites ADA accessible. With their help, you can ensure that your law firm’s websites comply with all the necessary criteria to be ADA accessible. You can also run web accessibility audits to see how accessible it is by the audience. Thus, you can ensure a user-friendly and ADA-accessible website for your law firm.

Conclusion

Web accessibility is vital when it comes to designing a firm’s websites. Law firm websites must make ADA compliance for their websites a priority. It is important for addressing clients’ needs. Simultaneously, ADA accessibility is an obligatory practice for law firm websites.

So, ADA-accessible websites are immensely necessary for law firms.

Working on a website can be difficult. Adding new media and updating pages is chore, even though you know your company website needs to evolve and become more accessible to the many users you are trying to reach. Maybe when you first built it, accessibility wasn’t even really discussed. But now you’ve taken a step back, looked at your customer base with a desire to include everyone and you’ve realized just how important it is to make your site accessible. However, the thought of building a robust site that can do all the things you want it to do is overwhelming.

What is Web Accessibility

A practice of designing and coding the website in order to provide complete compatibility in accessing it by people with disabilities. In addition, it is a way to improve search engine optimization only an ADA Compliant Web Designer will help you to make your website Compliant. Is your website compatible? By going through the checklist below, you can get the answer.

Assessing Current Web Pages and Content

The website must include a feature like a navigation link at the top of the page. These links have a bypass mechanism such as a “skip navigation” link. This feature directs screen readers to bypass the row of navigation links and start at the web page content. It is beneficial for people who use screen readers to avoid to listen to all the links each time they jump to a new page.
All the links should be understandable when taken out of the context. For example, images without alternative text and links without worded as “click here”.
All the graphics, maps, images, and other non-text content must provide text alternatives through the alt attribute, a hidden/visible long description.
All the documents posted on the website should available in HTML or another accessible text-based format. It is also applicable to other formats like Portable Document Format (PDF).
The online forms on the website should be structured so assistive technology can identify, describe and operate the controls and inputs. By doing this, people with disabilities can review and submit the forms.
If the website has online forms, the drop-down list should describe the information instead of displaying a response option. For instance, “Your Age” instead of “18-25”.
If the website has data charts and tables, they should be structured so that all data cells are associated with column and row identifiers.
All the video files on the website must have audio descriptions (if necessary). This is for the convenience of blind people or for having a visual impairment disability.
All the video files on the website must have synchronized captions. People with hearing problems or deaf can access these files conveniently.
All the audio files on the website should have synchronized captions to provide access to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
All web pages should be designed so that they can be viewed using visitors’ web browser and operating system settings for color and font.

About Website Accessibility Policy and Procedures

One must have a written policy on website accessibility.
The website accessibility policy must be posted on the website at a location where it can be easily found.
The procedure should be developed to ensure that content is not added to the website until it has been made accessible.
It should be confirmed that the website manager has checked the code and structure of all new web pages before they are posted.
While adding the PDFs to the website, these should be accessible. Also, the text-based versions of the documents should be accessible at the same time as PDF versions.
Make sure that the in-house and contractor staff has received the information about the website accessibility policy and procedure to confirm the website accessibility.
It should be confirmed that in-house and contractor staff has received appropriate training on how to ensure the accessibility of the website.
The website should have a specific written plan if it contains inaccessible content. Also, it should include timeframes in place to make all of the existing web content accessible.
A complete plan to improve website accessibility should be posted along with invited suggestions for improvement.
The homepage should include easily locatable information that includes contact details like telephone number and email address. This is useful for reporting website accessibility problems and requesting accessibility services with information.
A website should have procedures in place to assure a quick response to the visitors with disabilities who have difficulty in accessing information or services available on the website.
Feedback from people who use a variety of assistive technologies is helpful in ensuring website accessibility. So make sure to ask disability groups representing people to provide feedback on the accessibility of your website.
Testing the website using a product available on the internet is helpful, These tools are of free cost and check the accessibility of a website. They may not identify all accessibility issues and flag issues that are not accessibility problems. However, these are, nonetheless, a helpful way to improve website accessibility.

Checklist of Action Items for Improving the Accessibility of a Website

In addition, while considering the above suggestions, the following checklist initially prepared by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for Federal Agencies provides further guidelines on ways to make websites more accessible for persons with disabilities.

This practical advice, as well as another checklist, are available at:

Satisfying all of these items does not necessarily mean that a website complies with ADA, but it will improve the website’s accessibility and decrease the risk of litigation. Again, an Expert or Web Accessibility Consulting & Services provider should be engaged to conduct a comprehensive review of your website.

Nothing brings you closer to reality than actually facing it. This is the premise of my latest attempt to spread awareness about Web Accessibility.

For better understand, here is a link in which a practical example is shown to make the websites’ user experience better by following the guidelines. Also, it tells the issues affecting various users on the internet with solutions.

You can make your website ADA compliant in an easy way by consulting the professionals, who can do this job effortlessly. Also, you can get a quick website audit from To Be ADA Compliant that offers complete web accessibility consulting & services in California, USA.

Resource: https://dev.to/chinchang/an-interactive-and-practical-introduction-to-web-accessibility-22o1