ADA WEBSITE COMPLIANCE SERVICES & ACCESSIBILITY FIXES

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) facilitates inclusion and accessibility in every area of public life. This includes digital content, like websites. An ADA-compliant website can be accessed and used by everyone easily. SEO Design Chicago offers comprehensive ADA website compliance services to keep your business in compliance with the law.

“Digital access is described as the ability for users, including those with disabilities, to easily navigate and understand content on websites, mobile applications, or other electronic-based information.” — ADA National Network

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Why ADA Website Compliance Matters Today

Our ADA compliance services ensure that your website meets the accessibility requirements set by federal, state, and local government laws.

For almost all businesses and organizations, an ADA-compliant website is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Since online content is now considered an integral part of the customer experience, making websites accessible is just as important as having a ramp in front of a grocery store or post office.

Achieving ADA compliance ensures that your website is usable by anyone who visits it, includes a variety of methods to address accessibility barriers, and reduces the risk of lawsuits.

The updates needed to meet ADA requirements mostly focus on practical fixes that, as it turns out, make websites usable for everyone, even those without disabilities. There are widely accepted ADA standards for accessible design that professional web designers use when creating a website.

We’ll explain how this works.

What Is ADA Website Compliance?

Title II of the ADA covers a wide range of accessibility issues that prevent people from fully accessing public services. An ADA-compliant website was further clarified by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, better known as the WCAG.

These ADA guidelines specifically list the elements that must work together to help individuals with disabilities fully access digital content through an ADA-compliant website.

This is a great help for website owners, since it outlines how to meet ADA requirements. In practice, web accessibility can be divided into three key elements:

Navigation
Readability
Usability

For example, your website’s navigation needs to be clear and logical for the screen-readers used by blind visitors to work correctly. Low-contrast text can interfere with readability for the visually impaired. And some visitors may be using alternative keyboards, so your website needs to be usable by those devices.

Is ADA Compliance Mandatory for Websites?

The ADA’s web accessibility requirements have evolved over the years, right along with the internet itself. This has led to some confusion — is ada compliance mandatory for websites?

The ADA was written before the internet was invented, but courts have consistently interpreted the law to include website accessibility.

The accessibility of web content is explicitly required for:

Any government-run or funded entity or organization under Section 508 compliance — more on that below
Businesses open to the public

Under Title III of the ADA, businesses that offer goods or services are referred to as “public accommodations.” This means these businesses need to take steps to make their offerings available to everyone; otherwise, they could be exposed to a civil rights violation lawsuit. This includes their web content and mobile apps.

ADA website compliance services are designed to determine which laws apply to your site and make sure you meet or exceed their guidelines.

ADA Guidelines, WCAG & Section 508 — How They Work Together

Don’t panic! There are guidelines to help businesses comply with ADA regulations.

Right now, the Department of Justice gives businesses leeway in how they make web content accessible. There are different sets of ADA guidelines that developers use when making websites and digital content to minimize website accessibility barriers.

WCAG

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are a globally accepted set of technical standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

WCAG isn’t a law or an article of the ADA. However, it is a useful set of specific technical standards that helps developers in many countries ensure full compliance with their local laws.

WCAG is widely used as an accessibility guide for the ADA in the United States.

Section 508

Government websites have stricter rules governing accessibility for people with disabilities. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 mandates that federal websites are accessible to people with disabilities.

Section 508 compliance is usually achieved by using the most recent WCAG guidelines, known as WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

There are some exceptions for archived content, but this is mostly to ensure that the most important pages are updated first — for example, a form on the Veterans Administration website is more important than the archived notes from a Department of Transportation meeting in 1992.

What about State & Local Governments and Education?

Do state and local governments have to comply with Section 508? No, but they do have obligations under the ADA.

In 2024, the Department of Justice issued a new rule requiring state and local governments, as well as publicly funded schools, to comply with Section II of the ADA and ensure digital accessibility.

Practical Framework for Ensuring ADA Compliance

So, what does this mean for you? To comply with ADA requirements for businesses, your website must be fully accessible.

Our team follows the internationally accepted WCAG framework when updating websites. This ensures that your website meets or exceeds what the ADA requires for a public business.

Common ADA Website Issues We Fix

Wondering how to fix ADA issues now that you know what the law requires? Don’t worry — ensuring accessibility usually means checking for the most common issues, then updating them to meet web accessibility standards.

Common issues include:

Missing or incorrect alt text
Poor color contrast
Keyboard navigation issues
Improper heading structure
Unlabeled form fields
Screen reader compatibility problems
Inaccessible PDFs or embedded media

By systematically removing these website accessibility barriers, we make sure that your ADA-compliant website operates smoothly for all visitors.

Our ADA Website Compliance Process

Our team updates websites and other digital properties for full ADA compliance. Just as ongoing security updates give your customers peace of mind, ADA website compliance services are one essential part of keeping your website running smoothly and accessible to all of your visitors.

We follow a clear, documented process modeled on internationally accepted WCAG guidelines.

Accessibility Audit

First, we conduct a complete audit of your website using industry-standard automated tools and human reviews. This shows us exactly what we have to work on to make your website and apps accessible.

Issue Prioritization

Next, we create a game plan. We prioritize accessibility issues according to their impact and severity when deciding what to update first.

Some issues have a greater impact than others. For example, low-contrast text throughout your entire site will have a high impact on visually impaired visitors and should be corrected right away. Lower-priority violations, like missing video captions, are still important, but expose you to less legal risk.

Remediation and Code/Content Fixes

Time to start fixing your website! Many ADA fixes require updates to the background elements in your site’s code. Our programmers fix these problems at the deepest levels of your site’s infrastructure and ensure that future updates follow these compliance templates.

Validation and Testing

Any update to a website should be thoroughly tested to ensure that the changes actually do what they are supposed to. Our team uses W3C-approved web accessibility evaluation tools to ensure your website is fully functional.

Optional Ongoing Monitoring

Two things are constantly changing — technology and legal guidelines!

SEO Design Chicago offers optional ongoing monitoring to ensure that your website continues to stay compliant with ADA requirements. This might be the right choice for you if you frequently add a lot of new content or features to your website.

How ADA Compliance Improves Usability, SEO & Performance

Making digital content accessible to people isn’t just legally necessary — it’s also a smart business move.

An ADA-compliant website features several best practices that make it easier for everyone to access your site, including:

Logical headings and subheadings
Clean HTML and semantic markup
Better navigation, helping users find what they want
Clear alt text descriptions for images
Better user experience
Alignment with SEO best practices

Picture a nicely organized brick-and-mortar store. Tidy displays and logical organization will make it easier for any customer to navigate — not just those with disabilities. Accessibility performs the same function for websites — making it more likely that visitors will remain on your website and return again.

Accessibility Updates Boost SEO

Even better, search engines love clear, organized websites. The same improvements that make it easier for disabled people to use your website make it easier for search engine crawlers to find and index your site. This makes it more likely that you will appear at the top of search engine results pages, which is essentially free advertising for your business.

Who Should Invest in ADA Website Compliance Services?

Accessibility is an essential component of modern web design. The most recent ADA rules state that every website available to the public — which is almost all of them — needs to be accessible. This includes:

All government entities, especially federal sites covered under Section 508
Healthcare, education, and finance sites
Government-adjacent sites
E-commerce sites
Public-facing sites, even if not directly selling anything
Professional services — mental health, tax, legal, etc.

SEO Design Chicago provides comprehensive ADA compliance services that ensure your website fully complies with ADA standards.

Frequently Asked Questions

Understanding ADA compliance can be complicated. At its most basic level, you want to ensure that everyone can equally access your digital content, and you want to avoid possible legal vulnerabilities. Thanks to comprehensive WCAG guidelines, our developers can make sure that your site is fully accessible.

What is ADA website compliance?

ADA website compliance means that your site offers full accessibility for people with disabilities. This means making technical, design, and navigational updates to ensure that people can interact with your digital content, especially when using accessibility aids like alternative keyboards or screen readers.

SEO Design Chicago provides comprehensive ADA compliance services to ensure that your website meets all legal requirements.

Is ADA compliance mandatory for websites?

In short, yes. Businesses that are open to the public are required to be ADA-compliant. Often called “public accommodations,” this means that if you offer a good or service for sale, you must offer it to everyone equally. This ensures that disabled people can use your website. Any website owned, maintained, or used by government bodies is also required to be ADA compliant.

Is ADA compliance mandatory for websites that are only for personal use? There are extremely limited exceptions to ADA compliance rules, which apply to any website that interfaces with the public in any way. For example, a personal website with examples of your artwork must be accessible if you plan to use it as a portfolio.

What ADA issues do you typically fix on websites?

Our team uses the internationally recognized standard Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a framework for addressing ADA issues. This includes a number of technical, design, and content fixes, including but not limited to:

Form fields and labeling
Headers and subheaders
HTML updates
Alt text for images
Clear labeling of buttons and controls on interactive elements, like media players and photo galleries
Identifying and fixing keyboard traps

Do you provide ADA audits as well as fixes?

Yes. Our team uses WCAG guidelines to ensure that your website fully adheres to ADA requirements. We provide a full report on your current accessibility status and clear prioritization on what can be improved.

Will fixing ADA issues impact my SEO or website performance?

An ADA-compliant website improves your website’s SEO performance, benefiting all visitors, not only those with disabilities!

Accessibility best practices like clear site structure and alt text make it easier for search engine crawlers to find and index your site, which improves your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) and brings more organic traffic to your website.

Furthermore, an organized and logical website improves the user experience for everyone. This makes it more likely that visitors will remain on your page and take the action you want them to — whether that’s making a purchase or completing a form.

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