Ada Compliance Checklist For Websites

By Author: Rosario Berry
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Ensuring website accessibility is an important step toward avoiding potential lawsuits and penalties. It will also help you demonstrate your business’ social responsibility while promoting inclusivity. ADA compliance for websites allows you to deliver a good user experience (UX) to all kinds of users, no matter what their disabilities.

What is ADA Website Compliance?

ADA compliance for websites means that all digital content must be accessible to people with any kind of physical disabilities or limitations. As a business that serves people, it is important that you have a website that is accessible to everyone. It should provide equitable access to the intended information and function.

ADA Compliance Checklist

The first step to ensuring ADA website compliance is to assess your website under the WCAG guidelines. There are three levels of this criteria, covering progressively greater levels of accessibility.

Level A: This level sets the standards for the minimum required level of accessibility, but it doesn’t achieve accessibility for a lot of situations.
Level AA: This is a mid-range ...
... level and addresses the biggest and most commonly encountered barriers for disabled users.
Level AAA: This is the highest level of accessibility. Typically, it is impossible to meet all the criteria of this level for certain types of content.

Here, we at Mystic Web Designn would like to share the ADA website compliance checklist for level A and level AA requirements.

Level A Website Compliance Checklist

The key requirements for this level of compliance are as follows:

The images on your website must have alt text that can be translated by screen readers
Audio or video content must have an audio description or text transcript. Videos must have text captions.
All heading/titles must be readable and follow a logical order
Links on media players are essential for viewing content
There should be no empty heading tags or links
Avoid autoplay audio and there should be an option to stop them
Presentations should clearly convey the intended information
Your website should be fully navigable with only a keyboard
Avoid the use of strobing light or lights/colors that flash multiple times
There should be an option to stop automatic scrolling/blinking content
The content should be clearly described with the help of page titles
There should be a skip navigation link to allow keyboard users to readily access content
The language on all the webpages must be identifiable in code
The buttons and links should be clearly named and labeled in a logical way
The forms should be labeled and must have legends readable for screen reader software
Any incorrect form input should be instantly notified to the user
The elements in focus must not alter the website content
The website design should not have any major validation errors

Level AA Website Compliance Checklist

Level AA ADA compliance requirements are more complex but are essential for ensuring your website’s content is accessible. These requirements are more difficult to follow:

All live audio/video content must have text captions
Text should be resizable to 200% without losing its form
The color contrast ratio must be pleasing to the eye of anyone with visual impairment
There should be at least a 4.5 to 1 contrast ratio between page background and text
Avoid the use of images wherever text can be used to achieve the same effect
Pages on your website must be accessible in different ways
There should be consistency in buttons, menus, and navigation systems no matter where users are on your website
If there are input errors, users should be provided with suggestions to resolve them
There should be ways to prevent errors

So, it is recommended to follow this checklist to comply with ADA guidelines. Whether you want to revamp your existing website to ensure compliance or create a new website, you can rely on Mystic Web Designn. Feel free to get in touch with us at 1-760-216-4589 or write to us.

About the Author:

Rosario Berry is a professional freelance writer, like to introduce Website Design in Oceanside, CA. When designing an ADA-compliant website , it is recommended to follow the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.

Rosario Berry is an eminent author writing and publishing articles on various topics.