DIY is a rage these days. We love finding tools and resources to do things on our own. Do a project out of repainting the living room or installing a new cabinet or faucet in the bathroom. But, have you noticed, we never take on DIY projects where the expertise takes a long time to acquire and where the consequences of failure can be catastrophic. So, we don’t buy surgical equipment and take our gallbladder out or perform a tooth extraction on a loved one. We do not frequently try our cases and certainly avoid cutting our hair.
Hiring ADA compliance consultants are right along with that same vein. We’ll discuss the advantages of hiring ADA compliance consultants and how they make financial and business sense.
Let’s first explore what ADA compliant website requirements are.
Unlike other governmental requirements, the ADA law does not state adherence to websites and digital solutions. However, the smart money is on being proactive and fulfilling ADA compliant website requirements by following W3C’s recommendations. Having an ADA compliant website will not only bring in more traffic to your site, but it will also alleviate the risk of lawsuits and litigations.
What Kind of Websites Need to be ADA Compliant?
Although the list is not exhaustive, for a general guideline, here is the list of types of businesses that need to comply with the ADA web compliance checklist:
- Educational institutions and educational services
- Workspace companies and employment services
- Public and private transportation companies
- Communication tools and services providers
- Food and beverage providers
- Retail outlets online and related services online
- Hospitality services locations
- Entertainment and recreation providers
- Healthcare locations and service providers
- State and local government service locations
What are the advantages of hiring an ADA Consultant?
An ADA consultant can help you get better market reach:
- With the help of a web accessibility consultant, you can make your page convenient to use for everyone, which will translate into a measurable increase in web traffic and better user retention.
- In turn, you can personalize the user interaction and support, resulting in a growing customer base and revenue.
- Improving and streamlining your online presence will also cut down costs related to website maintenance. While ADA standards also translate a clean and easily deployable code, it will also mean no need for refactoring, patching, and bug fixing.
Keeping you compliant also means legal protection from user lawsuits:
- Whatever the size of your business or the industry you are in, legal ignorance is not an excuse. Hiring an expert ADA consultant can help keep an intact reputation and lower legal bills.
- You can also save a fortune by avoiding expensive non-compliance fines & penalties that can add up in millions.
While fulfilling your social responsibility:
- An ADA compliance consultant believes that equal rights and opportunities are valuable to maintain
- By performing a comprehensive ADA audit, the consultant ensures to detect the hurdles to a satisfactory user experience and strives to make it look more welcoming to clients and partners
- The consultant also helps you discard useless and poorly organized elements that detract users from staying on your site.
How Do ADA Consultants Fulfill Their Role
By Thorough Testing of the Existing Solution:
- They do Requirements gathering & business case analysis of your business
- They provide Experienced Project management and accessibility experts
- Through thorough Manual, automated & hybrid ADA website compliance testing
- By Checking Cross-browser accessibility
- Provide for accessibility and SEO checks for Page speed testing & improvement
By Reporting and Fixing Bugs:
- Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) are produced on Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) to report on website accessibility
- Critical issue list (severity level based)
- Bug fixing, reshaping non-compliant UI elements
- Develop a maintenance guide for accessibility issues
- After completion audit to confirm the WCAG 2.1 standard compliance
By Providing Certification and Support:
- Providing you withWCAG compliance certification
- Providing a digital badge to show on your website to prove accessibility
- Providing a summary of what bugs were fixed and tested
- Doing post-launch support and updates as requested
In conclusion, the advantages of hiring an ADA compliance consultant are countless, and among those, the best reward is the ability to defend against litigation from parties seeking accessibility. Companies that value their customers and wish to retain their reputation as conscientious entrepreneurs, who want to provide equal access to all customers regardless of their accessibility needs, often earn more than mere dollars and consider investing in finding the best ADA compliance consultant. Companies grow and flourish through providing the best customer service, and providing accessibility is the fundamental requirement to attracting and engaging more customers.