Posts related to compliance

Does your website have to be ADA compliant? In most cases, the answer is yes. In this post, we'll explain ADA compliance and walk you through how to ensure your website fits the bill.

Compliance takes more than just adding an accessibility plugin to your website. Here's the best way to truly make your site ADA/WCAG-compliant.

A U.S. appeals court recently ruled that some websites don’t have to be accessible to people with disabilities. See how this decision affects businesses like yours.

The WCAG standards set out four key principles, which aim to provide a solid foundation for creating web content that is accessible and usable for everyone. Let’s go through those principles one by one.

The Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) comes into force on January 1, 2021, requiring all public-sector organizations in Ontario and companies with more than 50 employees in Ontario to comply with the best practices for digital accessibility laid out in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Is your online business ready?

The education industry is facing another challenge as the school year begins: a skyrocketing number of digital accessibility lawsuits. In July and the first week of August, we have tracked 35 federal lawsuits targeting the education industry filed in U.S. Federal District Court. To put that in perspective, there were just two federal lawsuits the entire first half of 2020. That’s a 1,750% increase, with new cases filed almost every day. If your institution doesn’t have a strong position on digital accessibility, there could be trouble ahead.

A lawsuit filed against Gimlet Media, a leading digital media company, recently garnered plenty of attention both within and beyond the website accessibility community. This lawsuit, among others, elevates the importance of digital accessibility being a core capability of any modern digital platform, especially as companies are required to comply with legislation such as Title III of the ADA and the California Unruh Civil Rights Act.

The explosion of web accessibility lawsuits has grabbed plenty of headlines in the United States. But if you also operate beyond American shores, you face a second set of digital accessibility challenges. You need to meet the requirements of every country where you conduct online business. Here’s what you need to know to navigate your way through the global accessibility landscape, and to ensure you achieve compliance and maximize your online reach.

The Americans with Disabilities Act was instrumental in breaking down barriers for individuals in the physical world. When it comes to the digital world, the vast majority of websites remain non-compliant. MItigate ADA digital accessibility compliance risk with AudioEye.

Lawsuits against companies suspected of flouting the online accessibility requirements related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) are now a regular feature of courtrooms in the US. From 2017 to 2018, the number of cases surged and they continued to increase throughout 2019. To help companies better understand the risk of litigation, we continuously track ADA-related proceedings. So, how is the picture changing as we start a new year?

An estimated one in four adults in the United States have some type of disability, and globally the annual disposable income of people with a disability, their friends and their families is a breathtaking $8 trillion. If somehow those numbers don’t convince you to take a closer look at website accessibility, you probably still want to avoid being one of the 2,300+ companies sued each year in the U.S. for accessibility infringements.[1]

Everyone knows that running a small business is tough. Between building up a customer base and establishing an efficient operating model, there’s not a lot of time or money for the support functions that larger companies take for granted. Early-stage business owners often end up wearing multiple hats – they need to be the CEO, the CIO, the CFO and the Head of HR, all rolled into one.

U.S. law guarantees the right of equal access for all people regardless of their ability. But what about access to online information? Although the relevant legislation – the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) – actually predates the first web browser, it was designed to keep pace with changing technology. In fact, in 2018, the Department of Justice confirmed that the ADA’s requirements, specifically what constitutes “places of public accommodations”, are applicable to websites – and have been for more than 20 years. Further, legal precedence supports the same notion that the websites should be considered a place of public accommodation.

An estimated 25 percent of adults in the United States are living with disabilities, and government organizations are mandated under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as well as Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to ensure that their online content is accessible to this large and growing population. For commercial organizations, the picture is less clear. Strictly speaking, Title III of the ADA mandates accessibility in the physical world but not the virtual world.

If the issue of digital accessibility is on your radar, you may be closely following the now-infamous Domino’s digital accessibility case. If not, let’s get you up to speed… Three years ago, Guillermo Robles, who is blind, filed suit against Domino’s claiming its website and mobile app are not accessible to those who rely on a screen reader to navigate online content. Robles claims inaccessible online content equates to a violation of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The Office of Civil Rights to Revisit Previously Abandoned Web Accessibility Complaints The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has updated its Case Processing Manual (CPM) to rescind a provision added earlier in the year (pursuant to Section 108(t)), which had the stifling effect of negating OCR complaints filed in mass by a person or group. Specifically, changes in the November 2018 version of the CPM directly address the following addition to the Spring 2018 version of the manual:

Fifteen percent of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. Seventy-five percent of that population uses computers or digital devices. Digital Accessibility is about people, a lot of people. It is about their right to access all of the information in the digital world and to use digital tools to lead a happier and more productive life. Websites that are not built accessibly are barriers that prevent people with disabilities from having equal access to information and tools they need. 

On June 5, 2018, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) officially released an update to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the technical standards for ensuring digital content is accessible. The release of WCAG 2.1 is an exciting progression because not only is it a massive step in making digital content more accessible for more people, but it is also the first “full-fledged dot-release” for the WCAG 2.0 framework since its release in 2008. Now that you have a little bit of background information, here are the 5 things that you need to know about WCAG 2.1: