Digital Accessibility For Law Firms: Why Lawyers Need To Prioritize Accessibility

Law firm websites are some of the most common service websites for the more significant population. When these websites are inaccessible to a large population, the firms are bound to face the consequences. If your law firm has an inaccessible website, you may face website accessibility or ADA-compliant website lawsuits.

Since law firm websites give help-seekers a chance to get information regarding the law – everyone would visit them. But having your website be inaccessible to disabled people can violate ADA regulations. Not only that – having an accessible website can help your firm in many ways other than avoiding lawsuits. So, let’s check out why accessibility should be a priority.

How Does Website Accessibility Help Law Firms?

An accessible website can improve the experience for any website visitor by a wide margin. Since law firm websites are public service sites, they should be accessible to everybody. Since making your website accessible can give you legal and financial benefits, law firms also have something to gain from website accessibility.
Improved User Experience For All Users
Whether your user base requires additional aid to use law firm sites, accessibility can ensure they have a better experience. Your website should be able to cater to most of the population, including people with disabilities. Only about one in five people in the USA have a disability.

Fortunately, adding accessibility tools such as alt text can also help abled users in times of need. Overall, ensuring your website is accessible can bring in more visitors crediting to its easy user experience.
Complying With ADA Regulations – Avoid Lawsuits
Website accessibility lawsuits are more common than you think. In 2017, the USA saw around 814 cases directed toward websites that the masses could not access. The suits result from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)’s Title III.

The ADA’s Title III protects people with disabilities from discrimination in a place of public accommodation. Since law firm websites are a place of help and information, one could easily consider them a place of public accommodation – even a court judge.

Therefore, per the ADA regulations, your website requires tools for accessibility. Not only does it ensure upholding civil rights, but it also helps your firm avoid any additional legal battles.
Boosting SEO Advantages
When you make your website more accessible, search engines pick up on it. Leading search engines like Google are more likely to put accessible websites to the forefront – boosting SEO for your firm.

The programs that decide which websites get more hits tend to pick up on better visual information and accessibility options. So, as you improve user experience – you can ultimately enjoy SEO benefits for the site.
Financial Returns
Accessible websites do not directly benefit financially from accessibility tools. It is more of a result of all the efforts. Since your website’s accessibility options bring in more visitors, you can earn better from the website over time.

Additionally, lawsuits are common for accessibility concerns on law firm websites. By providing users with an accessible experience, you can avoid the legal expenses of handling a case. Therefore, accessibility will also favor you financially.

What Is An ADA Compliant Website Accessibility Lawsuit – And How Can It Affect You?

The ADA-compliant website accessibility lawsuit holds websites accountable for not complying with ADA guidelines. Suppose your law firm’s website does not provide accessibility tools for every user. In that case, a disadvantaged user can issue a lawsuit against you. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)’s Title III protects the right to accessibility in spaces like public info websites.

Title III protects the right of people with disabilities to have proper access to any public domain as an able-bodied person. While the grounds are unclear whether it is okay to consider a public domain website, perspectives are changing. It is more than likely that a civil judge will consider a law firm’s website as public domain.

Therefore, if your website does not employ tools to help every user equally, it can risk a lawsuit. From then on, not only will your law firm website be liable for losing a part of your client demographic – you can potentially lose money as well.

Ways To Prioritize Website Accessibility For Your Law Firm

As a lawyer, there are methods to ensure your law firm’s website passes accessibility checks on all grounds. It must follow accessibility guidelines – and then you can make sure to check it using evaluation tools.

Comply With Accessibility Guidelines
The existing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) can make your job more manageable.

1. The user interface must be designed so that every user can perceive the components of the website.
2. Every user should be able to navigate parts of the site, and every feature should be operable universally.
3. The information on the site should be presented in a way that every user can understand.
4. The website should be dynamic and well-built with accessibility tools. Assistive technology should complement the website’s structure so users can have the whole experience.

Within WCAG standards, there are levels to ensure how well your website can help the overall population. The classes are named A through AAA, where AAA is the highest standard of digital accessibility.
Evaluate Your Website
Currently, it is easy to check whether your website follows ADA-approved guidelines. Online tools are less reliable but easy to use in the evaluation process. And in case you want a more reliable evaluation, you can look up services built by experts to check your site.

Make Your Website More Disability Inclusive

At ADAforweb, we have created an informed solution to make digital accessibility more manageable than ever. We can evaluate your website to look for digital accessibility compliance, deliver accessibility statements, and provide remediation services.

Our goal is to create a more disability-friendly digital space. If your website needs some touch-up on accessibility – or you are simply worried about it being accessible enough, schedule a call with us.

Conclusion

If not for simply avoiding ADA-compliant website accessibility lawsuits, an accessible site can open the door of information for many of the population. So while you build a public service website, check all the boxes to ensure everyone can receive help from it.

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