7 Reasons for your Website to Be ADA Compliant
There are many design trends to be aware of when building your brand’s website. Most people ask questions about how it should look, or how to make it convert visitors into customers, clients, or donors. At Design Positive, we always add one important concern to your design checklist: ADA compliance standards found in Section 508.
In our opinion, the ADA standards for web accessibility are overlooked far too often. In the United States alone, 1 in 5 people have some sort of disability. And yet, only 10% of the internet is web accessible. This is not only a form of social exclusion, it’s also bad for business. With the growing number of non-compliant accessibility lawsuits, it is imperative that brands make their websites accessible.
Large brands like Apple have been aware of this trend for years and have doubled down to be a leading force for making their products accessible for all. We’re glad to observe brands like Apple leading in this space, because it is an issue that is very important to us.
At Design Positive we design and develop accessible websites for all types of brands, even for accessibility leaders like Assistive Technology Industry Association, LEAD Center, Interactive Accessibility, and the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. This experience has given us a 360 degree view of the advantages of designing for web accessibility.
Top 7 Advantages of Designing for ADA Compliance
1. Increase Your Audience: Today’s marketplace is digital, and people with disabilities want to participate with your brand’s offerings like everyone else.
2. Remove Possible Litigation: More and more brands have come under legal attack for not having accessible websites. Don’t be one of them.
3. Improve SEO: Many accessibility standards, like alternative text for images, contribute to better SEO results.
4. Future-Forward Brand Positioning: Be a leader, like Apple, and get noticed.
5. Be Seen as Socially Responsible: 81% of millennials expect brands to make public declarations of their corporate citizenship.
6. Better Conversion Potential: Accessibility standards like creating text with good color contrast help everyone read your content more easily, keeping them engaged longer.
7. Save Money: Designing your website for accessibility from the beginning is more budget friendly than rethinking and re-designing down the road.
We invite you to visit our website for further examples of accessible design. We’re always pushing our design practices forward to provide the optimal user experience for everyone in the digital marketplace. Digital inclusion benefits everyone.
