Over the last few years, many businesses have received letters from attorneys advising them that their website is not ADA compliant. 

If you receive one of these letters, make sure that those reaching out to you include a REPORT showing: 

• Which tool they used to audit your website on?
• What score your website received as well as recommendations on what to fix in order to get your site a higher score?
  (Without a report, there is no way to know what they found and what they are requiring to make your website compliant.)

There are three levels for WCAG 2.1 Guidelines and each one meets the needs of different groups and different situations:

A – lowest with 25 criteria your website must reach
AA – mid range – in addition to the level A criteria, your website needs to meet 13 more criteria
AAA – highest – all of A and AA plus an additional 23 criteria that your site needs to meet

The standard recommended level of compliance, and the level most often legally required for websites, is AA. The AAA level is required for government and banking institutions. As web developers, we aim to get our clients to 90+ at the AA level using Google’s Lighthouse Tool which covers many WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirements.
[ https://www.boia.org/blog/googles-lighthouse-accessibility-tests-are-helpful-but-not-perfect ]

Asking to have your website 100% ADA compliant is not reasonable and is almost impossible to ensure because:

1. There are many tools out there to run website audits on, and each one ranks websites differently depending on the parameters their tool is set at because it’s not a “pass-fail” test.

2. Which browser are they running the audit on ( Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) effects the score 

3. There are endless variations in the type and severity of disabilities.
[ https://myaccessible.website/blog/wcaglevels/wcag-levels-a-aa-aaa-difference ]

The WCAG Guidelines are centered around these 4 main principles:

Principle 1 – Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive
Using one or more of their senses, users need to be able to perceive and understand your website in some significant way.

Principle 2 – Operable : User interface components and navigation must be operable
Users need to have the ability to navigate through your website and UI elements like the ability to click a button either with a mouse, voice command, or other method

Principle 3 – Understandable: Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable
Your website content should be readable, understandable and digestible to readers.

Principle 4 – Robust : Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies
Your website’s content needs to be developed keeping in mind how it will work across different types of browsers, both presently and in looking ahead to the future.

[ https://www.cuinsight.com/make-credit-union-website-ada-compliant/ ]

If you receive a letter and/or report, please contact us at support@dhali.com. We will gladly run an audit on your site and make any necessary changes needed to meet the threshold needed for you website.