What Is ADA and Why All the Buzz About Websites?

In recent months, the hospitality industry has heard a lot of buzz and rumors about ADA compliant websites. This has left many businesses unsure about their current website and wondering how much money it will take to solve the problem.


What is ADA compliance?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a civil rights law that was enacted in the early 1990's to protect individuals with disabilities from discrimination. In 2010 it was updated to include website accessibility.


How does ADA compliance affect my business?

The law applies to many aspects of your business—some of which are building codes for renovations, parking, employment, and websites.

The Wall Street Journal reported February 17, 2019 that many businesses are being hit with lawsuits regarding their websites not being ADA compliant. It went on to report that, "The number of website-access lawsuits filed in federal court reached 2,250 in 2018, almost three times the 814 filed in 2017, according to law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP." Most of the lawsuits have been filed in New York and Florida, with California joining the ranks.

The majority of complaints revolve around visually impaired individuals and their ability to use "screen reader" tools to read the website details out loud.

In 2010, the Justice Department said that it would create website-access guidelines. It then delayed the rule-making and has yet to make any definitive rules.

The clearest set of guidelines from the DOJ came in an August 2016 case in which the Department of Justice ruled that University of California Berkley should use WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) as the standard for accessibility. Currently all government websites are required to have and follow WCAG AA requirements.

As of February 2019, there are no officially set requirements on non-government websites from congress or the DOJ.


What are WCAG AA Guidelines?

Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is a set of technical standards that use 12 guidelines under the following four categories:

1. Perceivable Content: Information and user interface components must be presented to users in ways they can perceive. This means that users must be able to comprehend the information being depicted—It can't be invisible to all their senses.

2. Operable Content and Interface: User interface components and navigation must be operable (variable as needed): The interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform.

3. Understandable: Users must be able to understand the information as well as the required operation of the user.

4. Robust: Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies: As technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible.

If you would like to learn more about the individual guidelines, an easy to understand resource is found at SEJ (Search Engine Journal) or for the official technical guidelines you can find them here

How does ResNexus Websites help my business with ADA compliance?

As accessibility issues are reported, the ResNexus Website Team works to resolve them for you—at no extra cost. We currently have the Chrome Accessibility audit, the WAVE extension audit, and the AChecker tools all passing the WCAG AA level of compliance on the majority of pages built using the ResNexus Website builder. The ResNexus Websites Team actively checks for and passes ADA compliance audits while building new websites. In addition, we actively develop fixes for any other issues that we find on our own or that get reported to us by our clients.

ResNexus also checks for ADA compliance on your booking engine. In the last half of 2018, the development team did a full review of all pages on the booking engine and fixed all the issues they discovered. The support team also reviewed the customized colors for every customer to ensure they were compliant.

ADA compliance is an ongoing program at ResNexus and for all properties with websites, regardless of whether they are using a ResNexus Website. Any change to any website may change compliance based on color selections or failing to provide alt text for a picture. ResNexus will be introducing an ADA section in the website builder that will make it easier to review and edit accessibility compliance.


How can I make sure that my business website is ADA compliant?

It is important that every business take the time to review their website regularly for ADA compliance using the WCAG AA guidelines. Google Chrome Accessibility Audit is a tool we recommend. For color contrast testing WebAim works well. Other automated tools we recommend are AChecker and WAVE.

Keep in mind there are dozens of automated tools that check for WCAG AA compliance. Many of them have variations in how loosely or strictly they interpret the requirements. Automated tools also vary in quality and many do not have mechanisms for identifying false positives. Some items that are reported by these automated tools are actually acceptable after manual review. With this in mind, ADA compliance will always be a "best effort" program, and the quality of any individual property's or application's compliance will reflect the investment of the property or application in compliance.

For large corporations and governments, accessibility programs often include inviting people with disabilities to actually use the site and observe how easy or frustrating their experiences are. This can be a significant investment for individual properties or application providers, which results in them usually relying on the automated testing and manual reviews of accessibility. Again, until congress or the DOJ officially set the rules, WCAG AA is the current and most used guideline.


What can I do if I get a legal request to update my website?

For legal responses, it is important that the property provide an ADA statement on their website. As long as they've declared their intent to be compliant, and have made efforts to confirm that compliance (for example, by running the WAVE tool against various pages on their site), they should be able to respond to accessibility complaints effectively. Ultimately, the responsibility for ADA compliance rests on the property, but if they are actively checking for and reporting issues to ResNexus then we help to resolve those issues as well. That reporting process provides evidence that all parties are aware of potential issues and engaged in resolving them. The legal process allows a reasonable amount of time for issues to be resolved.

It is also useful to request specific information from the plaintiff or their lawyer in regards to which items on your website they feel are not ADA compliant. This helps protect your business from frivolous lawsuits and let's your business know the specific changes that need to be made.

While the current and recent lawsuits have a valid basis for their claims and cannot be ignored, many marketing and website companies are using them for "scare marketing." As long as everyone involved is making an effort to achieve accessibility compliance, the impact of lawsuits in most cases should be low.

Sources
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ada-compliant-website/200106/
https://www.powermapper.com/blog/government-accessibility-standards/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lawsuits-surge-over-websites-access-for-the-blind-11550415600?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-face-lawsuits-over-website-accessibility-for-blind-users-1478005201?mod=article_inline
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/