Your website may be at risk for a lawsuit! Find out what you need to know about ADA accessibility compliance.

Transcription:

[Roy] [00:00:00] Hey there, this is Roy with Real Marketing, your podcast for real Marketing Tips without the fluff and today we're gonna talk about the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act. You may be familiar with it, right? It's the reason businesses and public buildings have elevators and they have ramps and they're accessible to people with special needs or different needs and different mobilities. But what you may not be aware of is that ADA also impacts things like websites. We're gonna talk a little bit about that today and how it could potentially get you into legal trouble, lawsuits and what you can do to help solve that. So thanks for joining me today, Kat. Why don't you introduce us a little bit to what we're running into with some of our clients and how they're experiencing stuff with the ADA compliance?

[Kat] [00:00:49] Sure. So as you mentioned, when people think of ADA, they think of the physical. You know, handrails, elevators, ramps, but that also applies to websites, and the Department of Justice has confirmed that ADA compliance applies to websites. The main reason being is, because if a website is inaccessible, then that can exclude people just as much steps at an entrance to a physical location.

[Kat] [00:01:19] Making sure that your website is as accessible as possible to those who are visually impaired, hearing impaired or motion impaired, is critical, especially now. 

[Roy] [00:01:34] Right and that accessibility is something that, I mean, if people are doing Search Engine Optimization, they're probably familiar with a lot of the accessibility that's defined by Google for optimization for their spiders and for search engines. It's, you know, making it easier for those readers to actually read a website and tell somebody that might be visually impaired what it is on the website. 

[Kat] [00:02:01] The things to look for in a website particularly that you mentioned screen readers would be the alt texts, the alt tags, closed captioning in videos, labels, titles and headings.

[Kat] [00:02:15] Headings, you want to make sure that you're not just using them for font size. That heading one is an actual heading one. Heading two is heading two. If you do want to change the font size, you want to make sure to actually do a font size and not heading. What that does is that tells the screen reader exactly what information is on that webpage.

[Kat] [00:02:36] If a screen reader is going through explaining something about marketing it's gonna read the paragraph heading one, heading two, paragraph. read the entire thing. If there's an image in there, and you don't have that alt tag, it's just gonna say image.

[Roy] [00:02:59] Or the file name sometimes.

[Kat] [00:02:59] Yeah, or the file name, which is sometimes a bunch of numbers, bunch of words, and that doesn't provide the information that someone who is visually able to see that image. Someone who's visually impaired, won't be able to get that same information from the webpage. And, um, it has happened before where people have had issues with this.

[Kat] [00:03:27] They've emailed us, they've contacted them because when they're using a screen reader, it just doesn't give them the same information as it does to others. Another thing that you want to look for is color contrast. You want to make sure that your color contrast is not too high or too low. You don't want to put like a light font color on a light background.

[Kat] [00:03:52] Another thing is you don't want to use color alone to give information. A good example is if you have a button somewhere on your website and it's green and that indicates submit or go, you want to make sure that that's labeled as well because someone who's visually impaired isn't gonna know that.It's just gonna say button and that's it. 

[Kat] [00:04:23] Another thing is, like I mentioned, captions on videos. Even if it is third party, YouTube or Matterport, it is your responsibility as a business if it's on your website because you're the one that's putting that information out there. You want to make sure to work with your website developer to add those, that option of closed captioning or you know, just put them on there regardless.

[Roy] [00:04:47] Yep. Oh, and going back to the color thing, I know personally I'm colorblind and so, you know, color indicators on websites are difficult for me and it's always been a huge pet peeve of mine when there's a black background and red text on it; I often can't read that. I know that I just noticed not long ago that, if anybody's ever played around with it, Adobe has a really nice color tool that lets you select color palettes. It's called color.adobe.com. They recently rolled out usability checker that will actually look at the two colors and see if they contrast enough to be used, for instance, as a banner or a button or something like that. You can just go to there, click on the tab and check to see if colors are within that usability and accessibility bandwidth. It'll tell you whether that's a good combination. 

[Kat] [00:05:48]Yeah, and there's a lot of free resources out there for whoever is looking into this. I know that Accessibe has a free page scanner which that will crawl your entire web page. It is a little tedious, but it's free and what it'll do, it'll crawl the webpage that you're on and it'll tell you this heading is wrong. This image is missing an alt tag. It'll ding you for everything that you need to change and then you or your website developer can go in and have that checklist to just mark off as you complete it.

[Kat] [00:06:25] Another good one is, Userway, which is a free accessibility widget. That actually helps with visually impaired users because they can actually change the color of the background, the contrast, the font size, the font color, and make it a little bit easier for them to read. You know, in your case, maybe not have red text on a black background.

[Roy] [00:06:54] Yeah. I know that the W3 consortium, which kind of dictates some of the standards for web development, they have a number of free tools. If folks are watching this on YouTube we will have a link to some of the resources that we've mentioned in the description so you can actually go and check out some of these tools. I know that there are a couple free website auditing tools too and we'll link to those. They all do varying levels of scanning and I don't know that we can really depend on any of them at this point to catch all of the potential issues. Have you run into that? 

[Kat] [00:07:17] Yes. That's one of the biggest things to remember when you're doing an ADA project is that you can never be a hundred percent compliant on the website because there's just so many things. The best way to catch those things is to just physically go through your website or to use a reliable page scanner. In the past we've used Monsido, which is a little bit more complex and provides a lot more reports and you have to pay for it.

[Kat] [00:08:08] Those tools let you see a lot of the things that can be fixed, but ultimately there's no way to be a hundred percent compliant. So what we recommend is to be at least over 85% compliant. You can do that just by the things that we mentioned; adding all tags, making sure there's close captioning, making sure that the headings are being used properly. Just little things like that. Adding that accessibility widget, that's a huge thing that anybody can do. And it's free, or you can pay for it. You can work with your website developer to find which widget works best for whatever platform your website is on. 

[Roy] [00:08:57] Right, right and like I said earlier, I think that, what we're seeing for compliance with ADA is also just best practices for SEO. A lot of the stuff that Google tells you about having site hierarchy, making it readable and having alt tags and naming links and tagging those links and that type of stuff, is all best practices with the SEO.

[Roy] [00:09:18] But don't think that just because you're doing SEO that is gonna protect you from ADA. I mean, obviously if you're a site owner, a company that has people coming to your website, you want to make it as accessible to everybody as possible. I think people have historically kind of not been super concerned about that because, you know, does it appeal or is it usable by the vast majority of people?

[Roy] [00:09:50] It's a huge process and investment to make some of those changes, especially if you're working with a, for instance, a site template or theme that isn't particularly compliant or you're on a platform that it's not easy to make some of these changes. But we're finding that it, it is behooving companies to do that from a financial perspective now because they're getting sued.

[Kat] [00:10:16] Yes, and no one is safe.

[Roy] [00:10:19] Yeah. Yea and if you think that you're complacent about this, I think that once you get that letter that is telling you that they're gonna sue you, I think that suddenly ignites some interest in making sure that you are compliant. 

[Kat] [00:10:12] Yes. A big lawsuit that I know when we started doing ADA projects was the Domino's lawsuit. They got sued because someone wasn't able to order a pizza online. Which is crazy because you would think that Domino’s, a multimillion company nationwide, some international, of course they would be ADA friendly, right? No. So they actually got sued and they lost that trial because someone who you had special needs couldn't, on the website, could not order a pizza alone. When they were placed, or transferred over to the call center they were placed on hold multiple times because they were using a certain type of text to speech system. Again, it wasn't easy as, you know, for you and I to just pick up the phone, say “Hey, I want to order a pepperoni large.” For them it had to be a lot more steps and that's a big thing because I think if Domino’s can get sued, it's fair game for everybody else. 

[Roy] [00:11:56] Yeah and it's not, you know, I think small businesses or smaller businesses than Domino’s shouldn't be complacent either, because I think that there are more now attorneys who are aware of this that are finding clients to use for lawsuits and it's a very lucrative business to get into because a lot of sites are not compliant. A lot of them may not even be aware that they need to be compliant. And if you were a company with a decent size revenue stream you've got a big target on your back for somebody to come in and at least threatened to sue. I would imagine most of these don't actually go to court. They probably get settled out of court because going to court is extremely expensive and these lawyers know that. They know they can start the lawsuit process or threaten it, and then say, Hey, we're willing to settle for X amount. So it never goes to court, but you just had to pay a bunch of money out of pocket.

[Kat] [00:13:00] Right and for a small business, that can be, you know, it can break them because if they're not aware of the ADA policies or guidelines that they need to be following, then all of a sudden they get hit with X customer couldn't order online. Then they're not only gonna have to, if they go to trial or if they go to fight it, they're not only paying their attorney fees, but they might have to pay the plaintiff's attorney fees and just goes into a whole can of worms. Because not only that, they also have to work on their own website to make sure that it is ADA compliant.

[Roy] [00:13:40] Yeah, for sure. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of people just assume that their site is probably compliant. There are a lot of popular platforms and themes and whatnot out there, content management systems that in fact are not compliant in that the onus falls on you, as the owner of that to make sure that it is in compliance. Those businesses wash their hands of it as soon as you take over hosting and or design it or touch it and whatnot, that falls on you as the company. 

[Kat] [00:14:20] Yeah, sometimes what we've seen as well is, like you just said, the template is ADA friendly, ADA compliant, so they'll give you an ADA compliant product but once you start customizing, adding those images, adding that content, adding those titles then like you said, they washed their hands and they're like that wasn't us, that's on you. That's your responsibility because you as the business are adding that content into that website.

[Roy] [00:14:53] Yeah and it's no different from SEO and in the fact that, you know, there's a balancing act between something that looks good and something that is compliant. SEO deals with that all the time; where a designer has a certain vision of the fonts that are being used and the colors that are being used and that might be the brand identity of the company but that doesn't work on the web and is not one either SEO for out friendly, or in this case ADA compliant. We see that a lot where, sure, it looks good, but it's not compliant. You need to kind of balance that out between users and looks. You mentioned alt tags and that kind of stuff and colors. What are some of the things that maybe people aren't looking for or they're not thinking about that aren't super obvious?

[Roy] [00:15:48] I think one of the least obvious one is forms, online forms. I'm sure you've seen it, whenever you type in on an online form, if you miss something or if something isn't as it should be, it'll pop up this form field is missing or it might be red. So that is actually not only for us, but that's also for those with special needs because again, the screen reader will catch that and it will tell them specifically as well as, again, we go back to the call to actions as well. The buttons on the website, some of those are missed because to us there, it's so obvious. We know green is Go red is stop, but someone who is visually impaired, they don't know that. They don't know what color it is. So again, buttons are very commonly missed because for us, again, very obvious, but to someone who's visually impaired, it's not obvious at all. So you want to make sure that every single call to action or button that has some kind of submission or links to somewhere else that you label what it is. If it's a submission form, submit. If it's a Got it. Okay. Got it. Anything that will describe what that button will do. I think another big one is that people, and it's so easy to do, is just adding an accessibility statement to your footer of your website. That will help a lot because that’s essentially just the business saying the ways that they're making their website more compliant and ADA friendly. As well as who a customer can contact if they run into any issues. 

[Roy] [00:17:50] I think, like I said, it's not something that a lot of companies are necessarily aware of. I mean until we started getting clients that were actually actively getting threatened with lawsuits and that type of thing, it was kind of on the radar, but not something that we would typically think about. But it is something that I think businesses of all sizes really need to start considering and taking action on so that they're not legally liable. 

[Kat] [00:18:39] And I would like to say that I saw several studies and cases that these ADA lawsuits are only on the rise because, like you mentioned, attorneys know about it and ultimately, besides the customer who is filing that lawsuit, they're the ones that are essentially gaining all that money because they're being paid. If a business does decide to take it or to fight it, they're the ones that are getting paid. Yes, it does help the customer, but ultimately it's just, for lack of better words, an ambulance chaser. Because they know large businesses like Domino's. I mean, they probably thought, Oh, the website developer has it. They should know this or other large businesses that they literally, how do I say this in a very nice way. As we started doing research on ADA and just dealing with more and more clients having the same issues, it's become very obvious that there are people who go out and look for websites with issues.

[Roy] [00:19:49] Yeah, I think a good way to put it would be there's kind of bad actor lawyers who are using this as a revenue stream rather than just as an  innate activist approach of helping with disabilities. So they're not really looking to help people, it's just purely a money play.

[Roy] [00:20:10] Now that being said, obviously websites and the internet is more and more the only way you can do some things like banking and stuff like that. So obviously businesses, it makes sense for them to make it as accessible as possible so that all of their clients can use it. It really does kind of, one of the things is we started to get involved with more of the ADA compliance and lawsuits and the scanning tools and that kind of stuff is just how few agencies and web design firms and even content management systems are really good at.

[Roy] [00:20:49] You know, there's not that many people that really have a good base in this. There's a lot of companies I think that say they know or say that they've addressed it and that we've seen holes in what they've done. It's not dissimilar from people who claim to be an SEO expert and then when you really start to look into it, they really don't know that much. I think we see the same thing with the ADA compliance; is that a lot of, you know, if you just go get your website designed by a company who claims to be a web design company, they're not necessarily even familiar with this or know how they need to design the site. It might look okay, but those inexpensive web design firms that are cranking these out are probably not that concerned about it.

[Kat] [00:21:39] Yeah. They probably, like you said, they probably don't even know about it and that that's one thing, there are agencies out there that can say, Oh, we will get your website up to a hundred percent. Again, even the ADA has said for the website it is nearly impossible to reach a hundred percent because there is so many things on a website that as long as you are one, actively working towards making your website ADA friendly, and two have certain levels, which are the ones that we mentioned, which would be the double A, I think it's the 2.0 WCAG 2.0, as long as you have those, then you are in a good standing with ADA compliance. That would be the goal for any business to be at least somewhat compliant, but always actively trying to improve their website. Again, this isn't something that you can do in one day. This will take time, set up a project, task, a project list. Start with one part of the project, divide it up in two different sections, because if you do look at it as a whole, it can get overwhelming. Whereas you take it, maybe this month we're just gonna work on the alt tags. Next month we're gonna work on the captions to see what's going on there. Next week we're gonna do the titles, the headings, the html in the background. Take it one day at a time and make sure that you're not trying to get everything done in one go cause you're gonna make yourself crazy if you do that.

[Roy] [00:23:35] Yeah and especially for websites that are gigantic websites.  I mean there's lots of images, there's lots of content, there’s a lot of moving parts and the code that people aren't even necessarily aware of. Depending on the platform you're on and how the website was developed and programmed there's all sorts of nuances that, one, it can take a huge amount of time and be a large project like you said, but also it could be very expensive.

[Roy] [00:24:04]  I mean, you may in some cases have to redesign your website to make sure that it's compliant. Also don't take for granted or don't take some of these CMSs claims to face value because they know some of them will say that they are ADA compliant and then when you start digging into it maybe some of their stuff is, but others isn't. Like if you go with some of their newer themes or newer platforms, that kind of thing, that might be compliant, but some of the old stuff that they have available may not be.

[Kat] [00:24:43] Yeah, no, I agree with that and again, it's the defense that some website developers have is you're putting out that information, and that's what the ADA is saying and the Department of Justice is saying as well; you're putting out this information, so you're responsible for it. It's your responsibility because it's on your website and it's published by you. It just goes back to making sure or just taking your time. The best way to do it is, like I said, going through your website. One way that is a really great way to do that is just download a screen reader and use it on your website. As well as for people or users who have trouble using certain movements or using their hands and can't grab a mouse, you want to make sure that you can navigate your website thoroughly on your keyboard using the arrows up and down, left to right, enter, backspace, all of that. You want to make sure that your website can do that or that someone can do that strictly just using the keyboard and that's a big thing. Ultimately that's probably the best way to do it, to audit your website. But again, it's like you said, that can get expensive, it can get time consuming. There’s lots of different options that a business can do. Whether it's, if they just want to kind of start it out, we mentioned a few things that they can do now to just bump up their compliance percentage, or use a page scanner. So there's, there's a lot of different options.

[Roy] [00:26:40] And then you can also bring in an old person like me who says, Hey, that little tiny font that you're using is way too small for old eyes and I need better colors and that faded gray that you are using for your text doesn't have enough contrast. Thank you very much. As I squint at your website. So it's not just for Americans with disabilities. I think it's also, you know, we have an aging population and we have people with different needs. So it's always best to try to take usability as well as accessibility into consideration. Make sure you're, you know, not trading looks and design themes and not taking away from people actually being able to use your site thoroughly. And obviously, you know, we're talking about websites, but if companies are developing apps, I'm sure much of the same stuff is gonna impact app development as well.

[Kat] [00:27:45] Yeah and, you know, for a while ADA compliance was a huge gray area for websites.

[Roy] [00:27:56] Cause there was no standard, there was just it needs to be accessible. Nobody had actually gone through, the act itself doesn't define those details. 

[Kat] [00:28:07] Yea, so for the longest time it was just guidelines and then I believe in 2018, that's when they hit those standards of the alt tags, so everything that we've mentioned,  and I do believe that later this year, I think it's in December, they're actually gonna come out with a new, WCAG 2.2 draft. So that's something that if you have already been looking into ADA standards, that's something that you definitely want to make sure to look at next in the future. If you're already ADA compliant, it might just be a few little things here and there, but if you're not, you definitely want to start with that because 2.2 covers everything that 2.1 and 2.0 have.

[Kat] [00:28:57] You don't want to start at WCA 2.0 because then you're just gonna have to keep adding. You want to start at either 2.1 or if you're gonna start at next year, 2.2.

[Roy] [00:29:12] Great points and again for those watching on YouTube, we'll put a lot of these resources in the description and we'll also have them on our website where you can reference them for making sure that you get links to the resources that you need for making sure you're compliant. And you know, again, just to kind of reiterate, it's not something people should ignore because we are seeing an increase in our own clients getting lawsuits from this and this isn't an inexpensive proposition. So not only, you know, obviously if you've got a lawsuit pending or somebody threatening a lawsuit there's the legal fees and the court fees, but now you're forced to make these changes and you have to do it quickly. Which is gonna take more resources and take more effort and investment than if you were just kind of plugging away at this making sure that you're getting to it because now there's a time crunch. You've got a bigger target on you that people or other attorneys and their clients will if you haven't fixed it, they know.

[Kat] [00:30:23] Yes, they will. They will know. They will go back to your website in a year or two and say, oh, it's still not fixed.

[Roy] [00:30:28] And it's a big project.

[Kat] [00:30:33]Yeah. It's a big project. So definitely time management and project management is gonna be huge for anything ADA related.

[Roy] [00:30:43]Any other ADA stuff that we should be aware of?

[Kat] [00:30:48] I think that's a good summary of ADA compliance and what you can do. If you took away anything from this podcast, definitely remember easy things that you can do right now is add an accessibility statement, add an accessibility widget, and add alt tags to anything that is non text content. So images, logos, pngs, all of that. Those are three things that you can do right now to boost your compliance level.

[Roy] [00:31:23] Right. Great point and obviously if they need help or have questions our team is experienced with doing this and can help you not only do an audit, but also help you manage the project to improve your site and to make sure that your ADA compliant. We do have the experience with doing that and if people are looking for help, they can contact us at any time and we're happy to help them do that.

[Roy] [00:31:50] Kat as always, it's a pleasure talking to you. I'm glad you could join me for this. I know that this has been something you've been working on with a number of clients for a while now. Appreciate when you can share your knowledge and expertise.

[Roy] [00:32:08] Well thank you for joining me and again, if you have a website, you need to take a look at this because you are not protected. Just because you're a small company, you're definitely not protected. If you are making any kind of money because you have a bunch of targets on your back.

[Roy] [00:32:28] And another issue that we'll be talking about in the future is GDPR compliance because that is coming up and if you're not familiar with that, that is a European standard for data privacy and tracking and a lot of companies are not paying attention to that if they're US based. So we'll talk about that in the future because that can get you sued as well. Even if you don't do any marketing or anything in Europe, your website is still available in Europe. You have Europeans living in the United States, and if they are, they can sue you. There's a lot of lawyers out there that are happy to help them do that.

[Roy] 00:33:09] We'll be talking about that in the future, so stay tuned. And obviously, if you find this helpful we'd love if you give it a thumbs up and like, and obviously subscribe if you want more content like this. We are gonna be doing more like this and hopefully you find it useful and want to come back and join us.

[Roy] [00:33:30] Kat will talk to you soon. And as always, much appreciated.

[Kat] [00:33:35] All right, talk to you later. Bye.