ADA Website Compliance is still one of the most important things a business needs to worry about and take control of in 2022. Even with everyone still coming out of the COVID Crisis, ADA Website Compliance keeps you out of trouble with the courts while making your site SEO friendly. Here are some common questions we get asked when discussing ADA Compliance with prospective clients. 1.) Why do I need to worry about the ADA for a website? You need to worry about being ADA compliant for 2 very important reasons. One is to keep your business out of trouble for violating federal guidelines The second reason primarily deals with SEO as most major search engines (besides just Google) look to ADA guidelines as best practices for on-site S.EO. 2.) How do I know if my site is ADA compliant? There are over 50 different guidelines and requirements within the world-wide web consortium's (W3C) evaluation criteria. This is considered the gold standard...
As we mentioned on our page about our SEO services ADA compliance is something that has been a growing issue and something that web developers and owners of websites have to come to terms with. A couple of quick refreshers if you haven't seen our other blog posts about ADA Compliance. What is ADA Compliance for Websites This refers to the process of making your website accessible for people with certain disabilities covered under federal law. The rules laid out to be considered compliant have to do with some of the following things: Making sure the text is readable compared to the background color.
Making sure images have been tagged so visually impaired people can have image descriptions read to them
Making sure the site is navigable by other methods besides a mouse So What Does This Mean?
If any of these things sound familiar to you it's because some of these have been the cornerstone of on-site SEO for years. So there...
In the ever-changing world of SEO one thing remains very consistent. As it is in real estate, there are three things you must take into account: content, content, content. In the old days (2012 in the digital marketing world) the black hats could try to get away with keyword stuffing (see below on some great articles about these practices) and you could find your way to the top of a Google results page. However after Google inevitably caught up, there was hell to pay for those that did not pay attention. Sites disappeared, were de-indexed, SEO shops even had to shut down. The sites and marketing firms that rose from the ashes quickly realized what the search engines were telling them. We will only reward those that follow our rules, and the new number one rule is you must have fresh, relevant content on your website to perform. This revolutionized the online marketing industry. Entire firms specializing in "content marketing" appeared out...
Recently you might have heard about "ADA Compliance" within the digital space. What is that, you have probably asked. For starters ADA refers to the American's with Disabilities Act. It was enacted in 1990 to prevent people with disabilities from being discriminated in all aspects of public life. This includes ramps at entrances of buildings, accessibility for the hearing impaired, etc. Lately this has started to cause a stir in regards to people's websites. The landmark legal case was GIl vs Winn-Dixie Stores (PDF) when a man sued Winn-Dixie Stores because he was not able to navigate their website as a blind man. He argued, and won, that they needed to make their site accessible to him under the ADA. The courts found that Winn-Dixie is a "public accommodation" and needed to be compliant with ADA guidelines. Since this time over 61 guidelines have been released and updated to make websites ADA compliant. What does this mean for you, dear reader? The biggest question...
There are some very static principles when it comes to web design and we adhere to all of them. We did an entire series earlier this year regarding web design and not a whole lot has changed since then. So when we look ahead to strategies for web design in 2020 there are some nuances that come into play. ADA Compliance ADA compliance from an SEO perspective is becoming much more of an important component of web design. Since the search engines are going to start viewing ADA compliant guidelines as best practices you will need a partner who can stay in front of the changes and updates to these guidelines. Coming into ADA compliance can sometimes seem impossible and while yes, it is a lot of work, there are experts ready to speak with you about how to do it, and it isn’t as expensive as you may think. Some of the things we're seeing more of include plugins...
