The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law to protect individuals with disabilities. 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101 to 12213. Title III addresses nondiscrimination on the basis of disability by public accommodations. The ADA originally provided the accessibility standards for physical locations. In recent years, the ADA has been applied to websites and mobile applications. Also see, What Can Happen If A Website Is Not ADA Compliant by clicking here.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a non-governmental organization that has provided international standards for the web. WCAG was developed in 1999. The WCAG has been updated now to WCAG 2.1 and WCAG 3.0 anticipated to be released in the coming years.
Courts have often relied on the WCAG standards for determining if a website violates Title III. Thus, the standard for compliance has been the WCAG.
Range of Disbilities
WCAG includes a wide range of people with disabilities, including those with:
- Blindness and low vision
- Deafness and hearing loss
- Learning disabilities
- Cognitive limitations
- Limited movement
- Speech disabilities
- Photosensitivity
WCAG: Four Principles of Accessible Design
- Perceivable: Users must be able to perceive the information being presented.
- Providing text alternatives for non-text content
- Making content easier for users to see and hear content
- Operable: Interface cannot require interaction that users cannot perform.
- Functionality accessible by keyboard only
- Assisting users to navigate and find content
- Understandable: Users must be able to understand the information and operation of the user interface.
- Text should be readable and understandable
- Making content appear and operate in predictable
- Robust: Users must be able to access the content as technologies advance
- Content should remain accessible as technologies evolve.
WCAG Levels of Conformance
There are three levels of conformance.
Level A is the minimum level of conformance. Level AA is generally relied on by the courts. Level AAA is the maximum level of conformance.
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