How to Ensure Your Law Firm Website Is ADA Compliant?

Are you concerned about your law firm website’s ADA compliance? Do you know what to do to make sure your website is accessible for all users?

In this blog post, we’ll discuss some tips on making your website ADA compliant.

We’ll also provide a few resources that can help you get started. So, if you’re ready to learn more, keep reading!

How to Ensure Your Law Firm Website Is ADA Compliant?

Here are three tips on How to Ensure Your Law Firm Website Is ADA Compliant:

Make Sure Your Site Is Fully Responsive

According to the US Department of Justice, it’s best if websites do not contain information that is only accessible through certain technologies.

For this reason, you should make sure your site is fully responsive, so it can be viewed on any platform using any device.

This means your site should support and adapt to different screen sizes, resolutions, and user interactions.

Use High-Quality Images With Captions

According to the US Department of Justice, for images that contain text, all information on the image should also appear in another form (e.g., as text (when possible), in captions, in the audio description of the video-based text, or sign language interpretation).

For this reason, you should make sure that your images are high-quality and contain descriptive captions. You can use some simple HTML to add a caption to an image.

Ensure All Forms and Buttons Are Easy to Use

According to the US Department of Justice, a form’s labels should be visually distinct from its input elements. For this reason, you should make sure all documents and buttons are easy to identify and use.

You can do this by using CSS styling for your form fields and ensuring they have enough spacing between them.

Resources on Making Your Site ADA Compliant

ADA Compliance checklist & guide by WA State – This checklist is intended to help businesses comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards.

It includes important compliance steps and examples of best business practices for website accessibility.

ADA Website Compliance Law

If you run a law firm, you are legally required to make sure your website is accessible to everyone, and this means ensuring that your website is ADA compliant.

You can do many things to make your site more ADA compliant, from making sure all images have alt text and adding captions to videos to ensuring all forms and buttons are easy to use. Make sure your site is fully compliant by following these tips!

Using Images with Alt Text

Make sure that any images on your site have alt text. Add descriptive text to the alt attribute of every image on your website, so screen reader users can get more information about what’s in each picture.

For example, if you have an image of a person doing yoga on your homepage, the alt text should be something like “woman performing tree pose.” You can write this yourself or use tools like FreeImageText.com to generate it automatically.

Alt-text is also important for SEO, as search engines pick up keywords from these descriptions and display them on their search results pages. This increases traffic to your website!

Video Captions and Descriptions

People who are blind or visually impaired cannot enjoy the whole experience of your new video content. Ensure that you add captions and descriptions to all videos on your website so that they can follow along with the dialogue in the clips.

Video captions should be 100% accurate; do not edit or paraphrase them unless necessary. You can use tools like CaptionTube to caption videos for free automatically!

This is important for SEO too!

Making Buttons and Links Accessible

All web forms must contain an email input field, as this is used by most contact forms out there. A contact form should never be a “Submit” button because some screen readers will read “Submit” when someone presses enter on it.

Instead, use a standard button element with a value attribute that links to your email address. It would help if you also labeled the button so screen reader users can tell what it’ll do.

An example of an accessible form with a custom label

All navigation menus must be keyboard-accessible, allowing people to navigate without using a mouse. This means that every item in the menu should have child items that are part of the same parent element, and each sub-menu or dropdown link should contain at least one h3 heading piece.

If you aren’t sure what this means, check out this guide. Each heading level represents a different section of your website content, useful for site visitors who cannot see the page’s visual design. This way, they know where they are on your site!

Make sure to add many “skip” links within your content, where possible. For example, if you have a blog post over 2000 words long, consider adding a “skip to navigation” link at the top and bottom.

This allows users who cannot scroll through your entire article to navigate directly to the parts they want to read!

These steps will ensure that anybody can access your site content and use it fully. You’ll also increase search engine traffic and improve the user experience for screen reader users – which is excellent for marketing and SEO!

Make sure you check out this guide on making your website ADA compliant. It has more detailed instructions about doing everything mentioned above, so you should check it out before launching new pages or video content!

FAQ:

Q. I have a law firm website. Does it have to be ADA compliant?

Yes, being ADA compliant is important for all businesses, especially for law firms, who are legally required to ensure that their website is accessible to everyone.

Q. What is the ADA Compliance Act?

The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 to protect people with disabilities from discrimination, and title III protects individuals from discrimination based on disability in public accommodations.

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that those who create, develop, maintain or use electronic, and information technology (EIT) must be compatible with assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Q. Does my website need to be ADA compliant?

Yes. If your website is available for public use, it should meet minimum standards set by Section 508. This means it must be accessible to blind or visually impaired individuals and others who have difficulty reading images and text on a screen due to a disability or cognitive impairment like dyslexia. You can check whether your site meets this standard using the Web Page Accessibility Checker.

Q. How do I make sure my law firm website is ADA compliant? You can do many things to make your site more ADA compliant, from ensuring that all images have alt text and adding captions to videos to making sure all forms and buttons are easy to use.

Q. What happens if your website is not ADA compliant?

You could face a lawsuit if a person with a disability claims they cannot access your website. You might endure legal fees, a possible settlement, a potential public relations problem, and the cost of rebuilding your website so that it complies with the ADA.

Conclusion:

That’s it for today. I hope you know How to Ensure Your Law Firm Website Is ADA Compliant. If you need help making your website ADA compliant, contact a web developer who specializes in creating accessible websites.

Thank you for reading this post! I hope you found these tips helpful, and don’t forget to share.

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