Many businesses know the importance of making physical locations accessible with ramps, elevators, or restrooms. But with the rise of e-commerce and digital services, ensuring websites are accessible for people with disabilities is just as crucial. Failing to do so excludes a large group of users and increases the risk of legal issues under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Website accessibility remediation addresses this by identifying and fixing website issues to make them usable for everyone, including those relying on assistive technologies like screen readers or keyboard navigation. This blog will explore what web accessibility remediation is, why it matters in today’s digital world, and the steps involved. Creating an inclusive digital presence can improve user experience, reach a wider audience, and meet legal and ethical responsibilities.
What is Accessibility Remediation?
Accessibility remediation involves identifying and fixing barriers on a website to meet ADA and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards. These standards ensure individuals with disabilities have equal access to online content and services, just as they do in physical spaces. Remediation includes updating a website’s content, design, and functionality to remove obstacles that prevent effective use.
Common accessibility barriers include:
Missing alt text for images: Alt text describes images for users who cannot see them. Without it, screen readers cannot convey the image’s content.
Lack of keyboard navigation: Many people with disabilities rely on keyboards instead of a mouse and websites that don’t support keyboard navigation restrict access.
Poor color contrast: The low contrast between text and background makes the content hard for individuals with visual impairments to read.
By addressing these barriers, businesses can ensure their websites are accessible to all and compliant with ADA and WCAG standards.
Why ADA Compliance and Accessibility Remediation Matter
Ensuring ADA compliance and accessibility remediation is a legal requirement and crucial for improving user experience and brand reputation. Over 61 million people in the U.S. have a disability, and globally, that number exceeds 1 billion. Accessing your website opens your business to a large, often excluded market.
Non-compliance with ADA regulations can lead to lawsuits, fines, and reputational damage—all of which can be avoided with proactive accessibility measures.
Beyond legal risks, ADA compliance enhances user experience by ensuring individuals of all abilities can use your site effectively. This improves usability and promotes inclusivity and diversity within your audience.
Key Elements of an Effective Website Accessibility Remediation
When addressing website accessibility remediation, three key elements must be tackled to ensure compliance with ADA and WCAG standards. These include visual content, design, and functionality.
Addressing these elements can help businesses create websites that are fully accessible and compliant with ADA and WCAG standards.
Website Accessibility Remediation for Visual Content
Visual content, such as images and videos, plays a key role in website design and user experience but can create accessibility challenges for people with visual impairments. Remediation ensures that all visual elements are accessible and usable for everyone.
One important step is addressing color contrast. To help users with low vision or color blindness, WCAG guidelines recommend a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for text against its background. Designers should select colors with sufficient contrast when creating or updating website visuals.
Another critical part of remediation is providing alt text for images. Alt text describes an image’s content for screen reader users. It should be concise yet informative, avoiding unnecessary details.
Lastly, all visual content must be perceivable to those with visual impairments. This includes adding audio descriptions or transcripts for videos and ensuring interactive elements don’t rely solely on color to convey information.
Web Accessibility Remediation for Navigation and Structure
Navigation and structure are key to website accessibility. During remediation, ensuring these elements are accessible helps all users, regardless of ability, navigate the site effectively.
Using semantic HTML improves navigation by clearly defining the purpose and structure of pages with appropriate tags. For example, tags for menus or tags for primary content areas. This aids assistive technology users and boosts SEO.
A logical heading structure is also essential. Headings should break content into sections and follow a clear hierarchy, making it easier for screen reader users to navigate and understand the content.
Finally, all navigation elements must be keyboard-accessible. Users should be able to navigate the site using only a keyboard, which is vital for those with mobility impairments.
Ensuring Accessible Forms and Interactive Elements
Forms and interactive elements, such as buttons and drop-down menus, are key for user interaction on a website. However, these elements can pose challenges for users with disabilities. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that they are accessible during remediation.
One critical aspect is using labels. Labels clearly describe what information is needed in a form field, helping users with assistive technology complete forms accurately. Labels should be placed near their corresponding fields and clearly explain what is required.
Clear instructions are also vital. They should be concise, easy to understand, and guide users on what information to provide and how to enter it correctly.
Another important factor is error messages. When users make mistakes, the website should provide clear, descriptive messages explaining how to fix the issue. This is especially important for users relying on screen readers, who may miss visual error cues.
Remediation of Video and Audio Content
Multimedia content like videos and audio is popular on websites but can create barriers for people with disabilities if not accessible.
Adding captions to videos is crucial. Captions provide a text version of audio, allowing individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to follow the content. Captions must be accurate and synced with the audio.
Audio recordings should include transcriptions, offering a written version of spoken words and non-verbal sounds like music or effects. This helps assistive technology users access the content.
Compatibility with assistive technologies is also essential. Screen reader users should be able to navigate multimedia easily, and features like keyboard shortcuts for play, pause, and volume must be included. By taking these steps, designers and developers can make multimedia accessible.
How Website Accessibility Remediation Works
Accessibility remediation is making a website usable for individuals with disabilities by identifying and fixing barriers that prevent easy navigation. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Initial Audit
Start by auditing the website for accessibility issues using software or a manual review. This identifies areas needing improvement, like missing alt text or inaccessible menus.
Step 2: Establish Priorities
Use the audit results to prioritize issues. Focus first on those with the biggest impact on user experience.
Step 3: Create an Accessibility Plan
Develop a plan to fix identified issues involving code, design, or content updates. Allocate enough resources and seek expert help if needed.
Step 4: Implement Changes
Make the necessary updates, such as adding alt text or adjusting design elements. Test changes thoroughly before moving forward.
Step 5: Final Review
Conduct a final review to ensure all issues are resolved. Test the site with assistive technology or software to confirm accessibility.
Following these steps and getting expert help, you can complete accessibility remediation.
Conducting an Initial Accessibility Audit
An initial accessibility audit is essential in identifying barriers to a website’s use that may prevent individuals with disabilities from using it effectively.
During the audit, specialized software or an expert reviews the site for issues such as missing alt text, inaccessible links or buttons, and a lack of keyboard navigation. The software also identifies ADA compliance problems with standards like the WCAG that must be addressed to make the site accessible.
By pinpointing these issues, designers, and developers can prioritize fixes during the remediation process, creating a more inclusive online experience for all users.
Developing a Remediation Plan
Creating a remediation plan requires collaboration between businesses and professionals. Businesses, like website owners or organizations, provide resources and support, while professionals, such as web designers and developers, identify and fix accessibility barriers.
Together, they should create a tailored plan that addresses the website’s needs while staying within budget. This plan should include a timeline and allocated resources for tasks identified in the initial audit.
Professionals can recommend cost-effective, accessible designs or tools and train content creators and website managers to maintain accessibility standards.
Businesses and professionals can work together to address current accessibility issues and prevent future ones, promoting an inclusive online experience for all users.
Implementing Web Accessibility Remediation
The implementation phase involves implementing the changes from the remediation plan. This phase involves coding updates, design tweaks, and content revisions. Depending on the website’s complexity and resources, these tasks can be tackled simultaneously or one at a time.
Coding updates may include adding alt text to images, enabling keyboard navigation, or using ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) markup for interactive elements, ensuring users with disabilities can access the site with assistive technology.
Design tweaks might improve color contrast, resize buttons or links to facilitate navigation, or reorganize layouts to improve readability and usability.
Moreover, content updates could involve adding video captions, providing audio transcripts, or ensuring text works seamlessly with screen readers, making the site accessible to more users.
After these changes, thorough testing is essential before deploying the updates live. This can include manual testing with assistive technology or automated tools to catch any remaining issues.
Testing and Verifying Compliance
Testing and verifying compliance is a key step in the accessibility remediation process. Through manual and automated checks, this ensures that all changes meet ADA and WCAG standards.
Manual testing uses assistive technologies like screen readers and keyboard navigation to identify barriers or usability issues that may have been missed earlier. Automated tools quickly scan for coding errors, missing alt text, or other accessibility issues.
Using both methods ensures thorough testing and allows for final adjustments before deployment. Once all checks are passed, the website is ready for launch. Regular testing and monitoring are crucial to maintain ongoing compliance.
How to Maintain Compliance After Accessibility Remediation
Accessibility remediation is a continuous process, and it is essential to maintain compliance even after the initial changes have been implemented. This includes adopting ongoing accessibility practices, such as regular audits, employee training, and staying updated with WCAG changes.
Regular audits should be conducted to identify any new barriers on the website. These audits help catch issues early on and prevent them from becoming extensive and costly problems.
Benefits of Accessibility Remediation for Your Business
Investing in web accessibility offers many benefits for businesses. It promotes inclusivity while positively impacting your bottom line.
One key advantage is expanding your customer base. Making your website accessible allows individuals with disabilities to use your site, potentially increasing customers and revenue.
Accessibility also boosts search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google favor accessible, user-friendly sites, improving your rankings and visibility, which can drive more traffic and customers.
It also enhances the overall user experience, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty while strengthening your reputation.
Finally, addressing accessibility reduces legal risks. Non-compliance with ADA and WCAG guidelines can lead to lawsuits. By fixing accessibility barriers, businesses can avoid costly legal issues.
Accessibility Remediation Services: When and Why to Seek Help
Remediation can be overwhelming for complex websites without experience. Professionals can ensure thorough and efficient results. Limited internal resources or expertise may also make it more practical to outsource the task, saving time for other priorities. Strict compliance requirements can be challenging to meet without proper knowledge, but professional services can help ensure all standards are met, and legal risks are minimized.
If your business faces these challenges or wants efficient, comprehensive remediation, consider Oyova. Our experts specialize in web accessibility and can help you fully comply with ADA and WCAG guidelines. Contact us today to learn how we can make your website accessible for all users.
FAQs
What are the 3 website accessibility standards?The three primary web accessibility standards are the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), Section 508, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
WCAG provides international guidelines for making web content accessible and is maintained by the W3C.
Section 508 requires U.S. federal agencies to make digital tools accessible.
The ADA prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities and requires accessible websites for public-facing businesses.
Is WCAG 2.0 a legal requirement in the USA?Although WCAG 2.0 is not explicitly required by U.S. law, it is widely used as a standard for web accessibility. Courts often refer to WCAG in ADA cases. Newer versions, like WCAG 2.1 and 2.2, are also recommended for compliance.
What happens if your website is not ADA-compliant?Non-compliance with ADA standards can result in lawsuits, fines, and reputational damage. Inaccessible websites frustrate users and may lead to negative feedback, lost customers, and public backlash.
How to check if a website is ADA-compliant?Evaluate your website using WCAG guidelines and accessibility testing tools. Manual testing with assistive technologies ensures thorough compliance. Regular audits help identify and fix accessibility issues.
What are the 4 guidelines of WCAG?The four WCAG principles (POUR) ensure web content is accessible:
Perceivable: Content must be accessible through different senses (e.g., text alternatives).
Operable: Navigation must work for all users, including keyboard-only users.
Understandable: Content must be clear and easy to use.
Robust: Websites should work with assistive technologies like screen readers.
