Importance Of Web Accessibility For Your Law Firm’s Digital Marketing Strategy

As of 2010, one in every five Americans, or approximately 56.7 million, lives with a disability. So it’s not uncommon for people with disabilities to struggle with adapting to and using cutting-edge gadgetry. In addition, as more people look for legal professionals online, it has become more critical than ever to develop accessible websites for law firms.

So as a lawyer, your duties involve making technological resources accessible to people of all abilities and understanding what ADA for websites entails. Before reaching out to an ADA Compliance Company, learning all about it is a wise idea. To help you understand why web accessibility for law firms is critical, we will share everything there is to know about it.

What Exactly Is Web Content Accessibility?

People living with different disabilities process and interpret information differently. When a website is accessible, users with impairments can navigate it the same way as those who utilize keyboard-based or point-and-click methods.

It is vital to provide content that appeals to all the senses to make your website accessible to people with disabilities. All of your site’s features, including consultation requests and invoice payments, must be accessible to all users, with no exception. Web accessibility remediation may include –

Use “alt” text on photos or image files to help the visually impaired navigate your site.
Use of descriptive anchor text to facilitate site navigation.
Captions that appear in time with the audio in a video for the deaf and hard of hearing.

5 Reasons Why Web Content Accessibility Matters For Your Law Firm

When you become an attorney, you are responsible for representing individuals who cannot defend themselves in court. To offer equal service to everyone, you must also assist customers who may have disabilities by providing them with accessible, user-friendly technology.

There are numerous other reasons why the importance of web accessibility for your law firm is immeasurable. These include –

Web Accessibility Helps You Reach More People

Accessible websites increase your potential customer base. For example, the United States is home to 40 million disabled people. In addition, research by Pew Research reveals that twenty-five percent of American adults consider themselves disabled.

All of these people in the United States will need legal assistance at some point in their lives. Whether it’s to create a will, defend themselves against criminal charges, or file a lawsuit due to an injury. Put another way, almost everyone using Google may look for a lawyer someday in their lives. So why not expand your law firm’s reach?

Reduced Risk Of legal action

Legal action is something no company wants to deal with, and no company wants to chance to have to pay for legal bills. One accessibility complaint investigation can cost up to $10,000, while a lawsuit defense and settlement can cost up to $350,000. Additionally, The number of lawsuits involving disabilities has climbed by almost 1,100% since 2016.

This number should continue to rise in the future as well. Therefore, if you fail to comply with accessibility regulations, it could significantly harm your company.

Improve Your Brand’s Strength

Making your web content accessible to people with disabilities can only help your brand. A website may be the best way to demonstrate how much your company values and respects all of its clients. Making your web content accessible to people with disabilities also suggests you’ve done some research into industry standards.

Companies with solid ethical cultures tend to attract more loyal customers and reliable business allies. However, your company’s image may suffer if your website is challenging to use for people with disabilities.

Boost Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Websites that are easy for people to use will also improve your site’s visibility in search engine results. Why? Because accessibility is directly related to SEO (SEO).

Both search engine optimization and user-friendliness are interrelated. For example, websites that are easy to use and understand by individuals of all abilities have lower bounce rates.

Boost Usability

The goal of web content accessibility is to ensure that people with physical or mental impairments can fully take advantage of available resources. Therefore, it is reasonable to consider accessibility directly linked with usability, as it contributes to a positive user experience.

People who have issues using a mouse or keyboard will significantly benefit from this standard, but everyone will enjoy its advantages. By organizing your site’s navigational elements per this standard, visitors will have a simpler time finding the information they need.

Conclusion

Web accessibility remediation is a hot issue for law firms nowadays. If you don’t have a clear idea about what ADA for websites entails, web accessibility development for your law firm can become difficult. So we share the topic of accessible website development in this article.

We hope you understand how critical web accessibility for law firms is. Thanks for reading till now.

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