The craft beer industry has been rocked by ADA website lawsuits and recently Kyle C. Rheiner reached out to Accessible.org founder, Kris Rivenburgh to get to the bottom of what’s happening.
Kyle, a beverage industry insurance leader, hosts The Beer Mighty Things Podcast, a craft beverage business library in podcast format. And today, the episode was published. Kyle shared a preview to the episode on LinkedIn:
In this episode, the discussion revolves around ADA website compliance and web accessibility. Kris shares insights on the importance of making websites accessible for individuals with disabilities, the pitfalls of overlay widgets, and the common misconceptions about ADA compliance.
Kris also explains the role of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and how businesses can lower the risk of litigation by ensuring their websites are accessible. The episode provides practical advice for business owners on how to audit and remediate their websites to meet accessibility standards, emphasizing the necessity of proactive measures to avoid lawsuits. Kris also touches on his personal journey and motivations for becoming an advocate for web accessibility.
You can listen to this episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Additionally, here is a transcript for this episode.
5 Takeaways
Proactive Measures: Being proactive in making fixes right away can help businesses avoid costly lawsuits and improve user experience.
Importance of Accessibility: Ensuring accessibility is crucial not only for compliance and preventing lawsuits, but in ensuring equal access for all users.
Role of WCAG: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the technical standards that provide a reference for how to make websites accessible.
Overlay Widgets are Bad: Overlay widgets should never be used. They don’t make websites accessible, they don’t stop lawsuits, and they don’t make websites ADA compliant.
Manual Services: Audit and remediation services are essential to reaching full WCAG 2.1 AA conformance.
Beer Note
This isn’t the first time Accessible.org has intersected with the beer industry. In a 2021 post titled, ADA and the Internet, Accessible.org was cited by the Colorado Brewers Guild.
