Developing ADA-compliant web sites

The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) is a civil rights law in the United States of America that prohibits discrimination based on disability. Following a US Supreme Court ruling in 2019, private businesses and corporations can be sued if they do not comply with the ADA. Part of ensuring ADA compliance means websites and apps must be accessible to those with disabilities.

There are many issues to consider when you are developing a website with ADA compliance in mind. The following list describes some of the features an ADA-compliant website must implement:

• Text alternatives for any non-text content. For example, all image tags (<img>) should have corresponding “alt” attributes.
• The ability to navigate the website using only a keyboard.
• Usage of standard HTML tags that are universally recognized by browsers. Additionally, web pages should properly validate to ensure assistive technologies can render the content (for example, text-to-speech software).
• The ability to make font sizes larger or smaller without any loss of functionality.
• Subtitles for any video content.

Additionally, the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide an in-depth discussion of accessibility-related features:

• To view a quick reference of the WCAG guidelines, please visit https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref.
• To view the complete WCAG guidelines, please visit https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21.