Website Accessibility and the ADA: Basics

Accessibility means people with disabilities can use your website: someone using a screen reader, someone who cannot use a mouse, someone with low vision or color blindness, someone who is deaf and needs captions. For a small business, it is also about not turning away customers who want to buy from you.

This guide covers what WCAG is, what the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Justice Department’s guidance say at a high level, and the practical fixes that remove the most common barriers. It is general information, not legal advice. If you need to know your specific obligations, speak to an attorney.

What the ADA and the Justice Department say

The ADA is a civil rights law. Title III covers businesses open to the public, which the law calls “public accommodations”.

In March 2022 the Justice Department published guidance on web accessibility. At a high level, it says:

• The Department’s position is that the ADA applies to the goods and services businesses offer, including those offered on the web.
• The Department does not have a regulation setting detailed technical standards for business websites.
• Businesses have flexibility in how they make their web content accessible, but must still meet the ADA’s requirements for nondiscrimination and effective communication.
• Existing technical standards, including WCAG and the Section 508 standards federal agencies use, provide helpful guidance.

The same page notes that it does not reflect the newer rules for state and local governments, which are covered next.

The 2024 rule for state and local governments

In 2024 the Department issued a rule under Title II for state and local governments. It requires their web content and mobile apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with some exceptions. According to the ada.gov page, the compliance dates are April 26, 2027 for governments serving 50,000 or more people, and April 26, 2028 for smaller governments and special district governments.

This rule is aimed at public bodies, not private businesses in general. It can reach private companies when they provide web content or apps on a government’s behalf. It is still useful context, because it shows which version and level of WCAG the Department chose when it did set a standard.

What WCAG is

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are published by the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative. According to the W3C’s WCAG overview:

Later versions add criteria rather than replacing earlier ones, so content that conforms to WCAG 2.2 also conforms to 2.1 and 2.0.

WCAG is built on four principles. Content should be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Each guideline has testable success criteria at three levels: A, AA and AAA. Level AA is the level the Title II rule above uses, and a sensible target for most business sites.

The most common barriers, and how to fix them

The Justice Department’s guidance lists several barriers it sees often. Each one has a practical fix.

Poor color contrast

Light gray text on a white background is hard to read for many people. Check your text and button colors with a contrast checker and darken them where needed.

Color as the only signal

If a form error is shown only by turning a field red, someone who cannot distinguish red will miss it. Add a text message and an icon alongside the color.

Missing alt text on images

Screen readers read the alt text of an image. Describe what the image shows when it carries meaning, such as a product photo or a chart. Leave alt text empty for purely decorative images so they are skipped.

Video without captions

Add captions to videos with speech. Auto-generated captions are a start, but check and correct them.

Forms that are hard to use

Every field needs a visible label tied to it in the code, clear instructions, and error messages that say what went wrong and how to fix it.

Mouse-only navigation

Some people navigate with a keyboard alone. Every menu, button, link and form must work with the Tab and Enter keys, and the focused element must be visible.

A practical checklist for a small business site

• Every page has one clear heading structure (H1, then H2, H3 in order)
• Text and buttons meet WCAG AA contrast
• Meaningful images have alt text; decorative images do not
• All videos with speech have accurate captions
• Every form field has a label, and errors are described in text
• The whole site works with a keyboard, with a visible focus outline
• Links describe where they go (“View pricing”, not “Click here”)
• Pages still work when zoomed to 200%
• PDFs you publish are accessible, or the same content is on a web page
• An accessibility contact on the site so people can report problems

Testing: tools help, people decide

Automated checkers catch a useful share of issues, such as missing alt attributes or low contrast. They cannot judge whether alt text is meaningful, whether a form makes sense when read aloud, or whether the reading order is logical. Combine automated scans with manual checks: navigate by keyboard, try a screen reader such as VoiceOver or NVDA, and zoom the page.

Be careful with any product that promises instant or guaranteed compliance. No tool can make that promise, and neither can we.

Building accessibility in from the start

It is cheaper to design and build accessibly than to retrofit a finished site. When you request quotes, ask each provider:

• Which WCAG version and level do you design and test against?
• How do you test: automated tools only, or keyboard and screen reader checks too?
• Will the CMS let our team add alt text and captions easily?
• What do you do if someone reports an accessibility problem after launch?

At Hostlyx, our web design team can build against WCAG 2.2 AA as the target, test with keyboard and screen reader checks as well as automated tools, and set up your CMS, including WordPress, so your team can keep content accessible. We do not promise legal compliance, because that depends on your content, your business and the law, not only on code.

Talk to us

If you want an accessibility review of your current site or a new build planned around WCAG from the start, send us your site address. We will reply with a fixed written quote listing exactly what we will check and fix.