While Web and Mobile accessibility guidelines had been published by most government agencies for decades, some recent federal cases have put focus back on businesses to treat compliance with utmost seriousness.
On June 13, 2017 in the first trial of its kind under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) a federal judge in Florida ruled that Winn Dixie had to make its website accessible. Four other businesses including restaurant chains, online shopping sites also lost similar cases.
With more and more businesses moving online, it’s imperative that they don’t leave behind approximately 12.6% of the US population that have some form of disability. In addition to eCommerce businesses, sites like recommendation engines, online booking of services like cabs, food, electricians/plumbers, news portals, mapping sites, airline/hotel/temporary accommodation bookings, etc. are all required to make their sites/apps accessible.
The actual cost of making Websites and Mobile Applications accessible is very small and here are the steps we recommend that businesses follow towards achieving compliance:
- Understand the requirements. These are well documented and part of the guidelines published by most government agencies.
- Implement changes to make the sites/application compliant.
- Test for compliance. A regular audit is recommended.
- Make this part of your Development and Testing cycles .
Neova offers an Accessibility Testing Service where our experienced Quality Assurance Engineers go through all aspects of accessibility testing and provide a comprehensive report that companies can take to their Engineering teams to achieve this much-needed compliance.
Let regulation not be the only reason, but let’s make this our social and moral responsibility to not leave behind a segment of the population that could significantly benefit from this online revolution.
