Department of Justice Updates Website Accessibility Guidelines: What You Should Know

It’s important to make your website as accessible as possible to your audience. Obviously, you want to accommodate all the different customers and visitors you might have, and if you provide a poor experience for a person, they might not stick around and become a customer. This is nothing new, and over the years there have been discussions about ADA compliance and accessibility for websites. This blog is going to demystify this topic.

What is Web Accessibility?

The idea behind web accessibility is to provide a good user experience for as many people as possible. If your website isn’t accessible, it could mean that people with disabilities won’t be able to navigate it comfortably or safely. You could broaden this idea and blend it with mobile device compatibility and overall user-friendliness too, as a non-mobile-friendly site is definitely not accessible, and a site that is difficult to get around for a typical user definitely wouldn’t be considered accessible to someone with disabilities.

All in all, you want your website to be usable for as many people as possible, including those with visual impairment, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and people whose disabilities may affect their ability to use a mouse or trackpad. You also want to avoid doing harm or causing discomfort to a person with your website. Flashing images and certain patterns can cause discomfort or seizures for some people.

It may seem like a lot to think about, but it’s important, and if you follow some best practices, it’s pretty easy to maintain.

What is ADA Compliance?

ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Compliance is a civil rights law that protects the rights of all Americans by prohibiting discrimination based on disabilities. It basically means any public facility needs to meet a certain level of accessibility so people with disabilities can utilize it as well. Think wheelchair ramps where there used to be steps, and Braille text on elevator buttons. Obviously, this covers a lot more ground, but over the last few years, ADA has started to cover websites in a few different ways.

For the last several years, the Department of Justice has been pretty vague about what ADA Compliance will look like for websites. As of Friday, March 18th, 2022, the DoJ issued guidance for how state and local governments, as well as businesses opened to the public, can ensure that their website is accessible in line with the ADA’s requirements. These guidelines are still vague, and not very different than what we expected compliance standards to look like, which brings us to the next point:

What is WCAG 2.1 Level AA?

Other than being a mouthful, WCAG, which stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, is a long list of best practices to make your website more accessible. It was developed by a large group of individuals and organizations from around the world to be the evolving standard of web accessibility. These guidelines are likely going to be the standards that the DoJ leans to, and the recent guidelines the DoJ just published all but suggest this. The general consensus is that, eventually, ADA compliance for websites will more or less follow WCAG 2.1 Level AA, or at least something very similar.

It’s also worth noting that WCAG has been changing and evolving its standards over time. As more types of disabilities are classified and understood, or more technologies are produced to help people access the web, amendments will be made to WCAG. 

WCAG has two other levels beyond WCAG 2.1 Level AA. There’s Level A, and Level AAA. Level A contains the most basic accessibility guidelines, Level AA adds on additional guidelines, while Level AAA has the most stringent guidelines that are often very difficult and costly to implement.

WCAG and Section 508

It’s also worth noting that federal government agencies and the organizations that work for them DO have more official ADA requirements for their websites. According to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which affects state, county, and municipal authorities as well, the guidelines set out by WCAG need to be met by these types of organizations. As of right now, these guidelines follow WCAG 2.0, not WCAG 2.1 (WCAG 2.1 is simply a more up-to-date version of the guidelines, so if you adhere to 2.1, you are inherently complying with 2.0). 

You’ll also have to look into your state and local laws to see if there are any other requirements.

What Exactly Does the Department of Justice Consider ADA Compliant for Businesses?

As we said, it’s still pretty vague, but the DoJ did publish a pretty good set of guidelines. 

While we think they did a great job summarizing web accessibility, they don’t exactly set official standards. They suggest high-contrasting colors between the text and background but don’t go over exactly what that means or how high-contrast it should be. Clearly, black text on a white background is okay, but what about dark blue text on a light gray background? That’s why we feel that relying on WCAG 2.1 is a better alternative. WCAG does a better job defining these standards, although even then, there is always some room for interpretation. For instance, WCAG 2.1 states that text should have a contrast ratio of at least 7:1, but that large-scale text can be as low as 4.5:1, but it doesn’t define what large-scale text is.

The DoJ’s focus, according to their newly published guidelines, are the following:

Strong Color Contrast - People with color blindness or limited vision require high-contrast differences between the text and the background behind the text. Overlaying gray text over a light-colored background or an image that has light areas will make the text harder to read.

Don’t Use Color to Convey Information - While color can be used to convey significance on your website, don’t assume that a visitor can tell the difference between a red icon and a green icon without some other context, such as text. For example, if you make a word or phrase clickable as a link, the text either needs to convey that it is clickable or a link, or it needs to be clearly indicated in some other way, that isn’t just making that text a different color. Color-coding references should also include text to convey your intention.

Most Images Need Alt Text - This isn’t defined very well on the DoJ site, so we’re going to explain it better based on WCAG’s guidelines. When images are displayed on a webpage, there is a small line of text that can be added to the code called alternative text or alt text. For the longest time, folks used this to try to stick in keywords for the search engines, which was never really the intention or how that was supposed to work (although alt text is somewhat important for search engines, it’s less about shoving keywords into it and more about showing that you know how to use them correctly). Text alternatives convey the purpose of an image, or back in the day when it was standard to put text in an image, the alt text would convey that text. That way, when a screen reader tried to interpret the image, it would simply read the alt text. 

Not all images need alt texts, just images that are important to the content or the user interface of the website. All other images, like backgrounds and decorations, need to have blank alt text. Of course, there are still ancient SEO auditing tools that will give users red flags for blank alt text entries, which sort of exacerbate the problem.

It’s worth mentioning that sometimes, the software or plugins you are using for a particular feature on your website might not allow alt text for images, and if that’s the case, something else needs to be installed in its place, or the developer needs to be pressed to update their software.

Video Content Should Have Captions - This one should be easy for most. We’ve always recommended that video content be hosted on YouTube, and YouTube has the ability to caption content, and as long as your audio is clear, it should do a pretty good job on its own. If you don’t want to use YouTube, or the audio isn’t very good on your video content, you’ll need to manually add captions and reupload/replace the videos.

Forms Need to Be Accessible - Your forms need to be as user-friendly as possible. The Department of Justice recommends that your form fields have filled-out labels, clear instructions, and error indicators (for when a required field isn’t filled out, etc.).

Keyboard Navigation - A user should be able to get around your website without the use of a mouse or trackpad.

Many of These Guidelines Have Been Common Sense for a While Now

We’ve been pushing clients to focus on the user experience for a long, long time now. That includes everything from accessibility to forgoing distracting animations and on-page gimmicks. Your users didn’t come to your website to solve a puzzle or play a game—they want information or a means to contact you. Don’t let your vision of an amazing website get in the way of that.

Elements like alternate text and proper header hierarchy are important for SEO, as well as making your content easier to read. We try to have clients avoid using complex images for showcase and banner backgrounds that overlay text over top of them. The same goes for putting a bunch of slides on your homepage. That used to be the trend, but as it turns out, most users ignore them and they aren’t very valuable.

Where things get difficult is when that logo you’ve had for the last decade has light green, and you want to use that color throughout your website for headings. In cases like this, the light green could be used for other accents, or used only when put against a dark background.

Accessibility is more important than branding, and it’s more important than providing a totally unique or overly complicated experience (that would probably confuse most users anyway).

Some Additional Guidelines in WCAG 2.1 Level AAA

It’s worth mentioning some of the key recommendations of WCAG 2.1 Level AAA, just as a reference. These guidelines tend to be even more aggressive and expensive to maintain, as they may require a lot of custom development or rewriting of your marketing content:

• All functionality can be managed with just a keyboard without requiring specific timing for individual keystrokes
• Users are warned of the duration of any inactivity that could result in the loss of information, such as forms that are partially filled out, or that data needs to be preserved for 20 hours if the user does not take action.
• Webpages can’t contain anything that flashes more than 3 times in any one second (We think this one is really important regardless of what level you are trying to comply with).
• Animations or motion can be totally disabled or don’t exist in the first place.
• Nothing can restrict the use of input modalities available, always respecting user settings.
• Words in the content that are considered jargon or unusual need to be defined.
• Abbreviations in the content need to be expanded or the meaning of the abbreviation needs to be made available in the content.
• The content on the page needs to strictly follow a lower secondary education reading level.
• Context-sensitive help is available as needed.
• Submissions on forms are reversible or the user is given an opportunity to check and confirm and correct information before finalizing the submission.
• Sign-language content is provided for all prerecorded audio content.
• Alternatives for time-based media are provided for all audio/video and other media.
• Foreground and background colors can be selected by the user.
• Text is not justified.
• Line spacing is at least a space and a half, and paragraph spacing is at least 1.5 times larger than the line spacing.
• The width of content blocks is no more than 80 characters.

That’s not even a full list. As you can see, Level AAA can get pretty strict, but there are some guidelines in there that are definitely worth adopting when you can.

How do I Get My Website to Follow ADA/WCAG 2.1 Guidelines?

Chances are, if we built your website for you over the last couple of years, a lot of the major pieces are covered, simply because they are common best practices. We don’t guarantee ADA compliance for every website we build, however, and a big part of these guidelines are that you maintain them as you add and edit the content on your site.

That being said, there are a few different paths you can take to comply with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines.

Get an Audit - We can run multiple tools and review your website and determine how much work needs to be done to reach a level of compliance with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines. Depending on your existing website, that might mean a few hours of adjustments to what you already have, or it might mean rebuilding things from the ground up. It typically depends on the complexity of your site, the software your website is using, and how close you are to following the WCAG best practices in general.

Install a Plugin/Component - We’re going to mention this, simply because it’s usually the first shortcut someone might take. While there are ADA and WCAG components and plugins for Joomla and WordPress, they probably aren’t going to ensure that you are following every guideline. They might cover some elements, or might include a front-end widget to adjust the font color and size, but that is only a tiny portion of what the guidelines suggest. Don’t think a free or low-cost plugin is going to do the heavy lifting for you, especially if your organization is required to meet a certain level of compliance.

Build an ADA-Compliant/508 Compliant Website from Scratch - In many situations, this is the way to go. There are ADA/508-ready website templates and themes that are built with all of the code required by screen readers and other accessibility tools, and then we can ensure that the rest of the work strictly follows the WCAG guidelines that you need to meet. For projects like this, we usually need to quote out a lot more than just the website as well—any documents available for download, media (audio and video), and other elements need to be reviewed and altered to meet compliance standards as well.

It’s also important not to put all of your stock in a single tool. There are plenty of ADA compliance checkers out there, and plenty of companies that offer a “free” report in exchange for getting you to meet with them. Be a little wary of the hype, as some of them might use scare tactics to try to get you to open up your wallet. 

Is Your Website Going to Get You Sued?

Don’t get us wrong, accessibility is important, but don’t shell out a ton of money without looking at your options. We can’t stress enough that the Department of Justice has said that noncompliance with WCAG does not necessarily indicate noncompliance with the ADA, although digital accessibility lawsuits tend to result in WCAG-standards as the settlement. 

There are plenty of aggressive law firms out there that are eager to kick in the doors of any business that hasn’t updated their website in a few years and doesn’t completely comply with standards so they can make a few bucks off of your pain. It’s horrible, really, because we think website accessibility is so much more important than being turned into a trope for ambulance chasers, but that’s the reality of the world.

It’s important to mention that we’re not lawyers, and not providing any legal advice. We do think your website should be as accessible to as many people as possible, and in the past, we’ve helped businesses increase their accessibility and have helped organizations that have had to meet and maintain specific WCAG 2.1 compliance standards.

Other Resources

Here are some other websites and official resources to learn more about website accessibility.

• Department of Justice’s New ADA Web Guidelines
• W3.org’s Web Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• W3.org’s Quick Reference Guide on WCAG
• Section508.gov

Let’s start with a conversation. If you want to learn more, or want to discuss the process and what it will take to make your website comply with all of the WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines, give us a call at 607.433.2200 or set up a meeting with us.