As more of our world goes online, it’s becoming more important than ever to make sure that websites are accessible for people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) says that businesses need to be accessible for people with disabilities to use.
We see ADA accommodations in person all the time in the form of ramps, braille on signs and subtitles in movies. It can be hard to think of a website as being inaccessible to people with disabilities, but the truth is many websites are opening themselves to ADA website lawsuits.
How are websites not ADA compliant?
Companies that post images and videos without captions or subtitles are opening themselves to ADA website lawsuits. When a person who is visually or hearing impaired access a website, they use other senses to process the website.
When videos don’t have descriptions or subtitles, then a person who is hearing impaired can’t fully experience the video. A person who is blind or visually impaired will be using assisted reading devices that depend on captioning in order to describe the video to them and share information.
How do websites become ADA compliant?
All images and videos need to be accurately captioned, using a lot of descriptive detail whenever possible. Not only do the images and videos have to be captioned in an area that people can see, but they should be captioned in the metadata description boxes on the back end of the website when an image is uploaded.
This can take some time to get right for a lot of websites, but ADA website lawsuits are on the rise as webmasters refuse to caption their images and videos. If a website owner has repeatedly refused to put captions on their website, a visitor might be able to file a lawsuit.