The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ruled in the 1990s that every business or organization must make their organization accessible to people with disabilities. For a lot of buildings and organizations, this means making sure that people with hearing, visual, physical, emotional or mental disabilities must be able to access the organization and participate.
When traveling, you might not think about making sure that the hotel is ADA compliant if you don’t have a disability. A lot of hotels have basic accommodations for people using wheelchairs or hearing devices, but some things go unnoticed.
What do hotel owners overlook when considering ADA compliance?
Hotels might put a lot of money into making sure that their building is ADA compliant, but not a lot of people take the digital aspect into consideration. Lately, more and more people are talking about the consequences of having a website or using a website that’s not ADA compliant.
For websites, ADA compliance can come in many different forms. Images and videos that aren’t properly captioned can be a huge detriment to people with visual or hearing disabilities being able to reasonably book a hotel room.
Going beyond that, choosing to use a third-party website for booking rooms can also get hotel owners in hot water if that site isn’t ADA compliant. It might take a lot of work to go through your website and caption every image or video on the backend, but it’s necessary to avoid future lawsuits.
Why is ADA compliance a big deal?
Knowingly avoiding necessary updates to your physical and digital presence to be more accessible for people with disabilities is considered a form of discrimination and can open you up to lawsuits. If you have questions about ADA motel lawsuits, reach out to a lawyer today.