An ADA website audit is an accessibility audit that is conducted specifically to help a website owner follow best practices for ADA compliance and reduce risk of a lawsuit.
During the audit, a technical accessibility expert will use diverse methodologies (e.g., screen reader testing, keyboard testing,etc.) to uncover all accessibility issues (per a given standard of WCAG) and compile those issues in a report that is delivered to the website owner.
Once the owner has the report, they can begin making the fixes necessary to make their website WCAG conformant.
WCAG
WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These are technical standards for web accessibility that are consist of multiple versions. We recommend website owners strive for conformance with WCAG 2.1 AA.
So the audit is where we find the issues and then the second phase is remediation where the website owner’s contractor or team works through and addresses the issues.
Serial Litigation
Of course, the demand for website accessibility audits has risen sharply in recent years because of the abusive litigation that has taken place over the last several years.
Although Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) doesn’t explicitly state how to make a website ADA compliant, plaintiffs’ law firms initiating serial litigation have nevertheless filed tens of thousands of complaints and sent even more demand letters over the last several years.
Best Practices
The best practices to prevent a lawsuit are:
- WCAG 2.1 AA conformance
- publishing an accessibility statement
However, there is difficulty in WCAG 2.1 AA conformance as some accessibility issues are very technical complex and require a development background to fix. Also, some content accessibility issues can be handled by beginners to accessibility, but may take hours to finish.
Course
For DIY website owners, we recommend our ADA Compliance Course. This tells you exactly what accessibility issues are most likely to lead to a lawsuit (based on real lawsuit data) and how to fix them.
Help
Do you need help auditing your website for ADA compliance?
We’re happy to help. Just send us a message and we’ll reply ASAP.
