We live in a litigious world and businesses can face lawsuits for a variety of different reasons. Although business owners often take steps to protect their liability in relation to employee complaints or workplace accidents, there is one type of liability that’s often overlooked: website accessibility. 

To find out why your website could cost you a lawsuit and what you can do about it, take a look at these top tips now:

Understand the Law

If you own or run a website, it’s important to be familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WACG). Both contain important clauses which relate to how and why your online content should be accessible to everyone. Many of the lawsuits that arise due to website inaccessibility are based on the ADA, so it’s well worth learning more about what your obligations are under this law. 

Improve Website Accessibility

Of course, the simplest way to avoid compliance lawsuits is to make your website accessible straight away. Many business owners assume this will be time-consuming, disruptive and costly, but it doesn’t have to be. With accessiBe, you only need to add two lines of code to your site and powerful AI engines will ensure compliance and accessibility for you. In fact, you can make your site accessible in a matter of seconds. 

Incorporate Accessibility into Web Development

Every time you update your site or create online content, keep accessibility at the forefront of your mind. By making it part of the development process, rather than an afterthought, you’ll find it easy to ensure that all of your content is accessible to everyone. Furthermore, making accessibility a priority in relation to your website will encourage your team to prioritize accessibility in other areas too. 

Identify Common Breaches

When you know how other companies commonly fall foul of site accessibility regulations, you can avoid making the same mistakes. One of the most frequent issues is failing to add closed captions or transcripts to video or audio content, for example. Although this is easy to do, particularly with accessiBe, many site owners overlook it. 

Similarly, ensure that online forms can be processed by screen readers, check the color contrast on your site so that text is easy to read, and make your site useable without a keyboard, if you want to avoid making some of the most common accessibility breaches. 

Improving Online Accessibility for Everyone

Although millions of websites are still in breach of the law, the number of lawsuits is increasing at a substantial rate and it’s likely that we’ll see many more in upcoming years. It’s easy to assume that only large corporations will face legal action but, in reality, any business can be vulnerable to compliance lawsuits.

By taking action now, you can protect your business and play your part in ending online discrimination. With easy-to-use tools to ensure constant compliance, making your website accessible is a whole lot easier than you think.