The Internet has democratized the healthcare industry, giving patients and their loved ones access to more health and medical information than ever before.In particular, parents rely heavily on the Internet to find information on their child’s health.

Hospitals may be unintentionally shutting their doors to patients with disabilities by not considering accessibility when designing their websites. In order to adequately care for the 56 million Americans with a disability, hospitals must make web accessibility a priority.

As more health and medical information moves online, web accessibility will play an increasingly important role in promoting women’s health initiatives such as National Women’s Health Week.

Healthcare providers must reassure patients with disabilities that they will be able to get the information they need and receive an equal standard of care. Crucial to this, as the Internet grows ever more important in our daily lives, is web accessibility.

It is important that people with disabilities have the same access to skin cancer screenings and information, so that they can catch the disease quickly and begin treatment. With the Internet revolutionizing patient care and education, web accessibility plays a crucial role in skin cancer awareness for people with disabilities.

Instead of conducting business in person, many people with disabilities prefer using the Internet to find information and access services. This means that  primary care practices must invest in web accessibility to better serve patients with disabilities.

Although it doesn’t explicitly mention them, the ADA has been widely interpreted to extend to websites. In this article, we’ll provide an overview of how web accessibility is a requirement under the ADA.

The past several years have seen a sharp uptick in lawsuits against websites for failing to meet the requirements of the ADA. Past lawsuits have targeted only the organizations that are the subject of the website. In a marked change of pace, however, one recent ADA lawsuit names both the business and the developers responsible for creating the website as defendants in the case.

The Bureau of Internet Accessibility (BoIA) identified the top 15 highest-trafficked banks and used their websites to create a benchmark for the overall web accessibility within the banking industry. The assessment was based on the results of an automated scan performed on each bank’s site. The scan, BoIA’s A11Y® Platform, was built to identify issues based on the international standards for testing website accessibility, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 A/AA.

During a government shutdown, all non-essential activity terminates, and employees not involved in essential activities are placed on furlough. In the vast majority of cases, this includes civil litigation in the federal courts, including ADA lawsuits.

Increasingly, state and local government websites are leveraging video for a variety of purposes: promoting tourism, issuing storm warnings, updating viewers on new urban development projects, informing citizens how to vote, releasing messages from the mayor’s office, and other important happenings. Being truly inclusive when building your website means that your videos must be accessible to everyone — including people with disabilities.

By connecting citizens with their government and providing access to information, the web is one of the most powerful tools of democracy. Unfortunately, far too many local government websites still have one big barrier for many of their users: accessibility.

Without experience implementing web accessibility, it’s difficult to know where to begin. Even if you think that you’ve taken steps to become more accessible, you might have overlooked some of the difficulties that people with vision, hearing, motor, or learning disabilities might encounter when navigating and using your website. The good news is that you can take steps today to make your website more accessible to users and protect yourself from lengthy and complicated litigation.

By not following through on the promised steps toward a more transparent standard for website accessibility, President Trump and the DOJ are unwittingly contributing to the ongoing flurry of website accessibility lawsuits.

Schools, school districts, and departments of education across the country are scrambling to avoid conflicts with the OCR. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is the organization within U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) tasked with ensuring access to education by enforcing civil rights. Essentially, the OCR prohibits discrimination by schools on the basis of disability, race, sex, national origin, color, or age.

Titles II and III of the ADA prohibit discriminatory lack of access for individuals with disabilities to goods and services of public services and public accommodations, respectively.

State and local governments may soon get more clarification as to how to make their online presence more accessible to people with disabilities.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ATM accessibility class action lawsuits against banks are on the rise. Over 100 cases have been reported across Pennsylvania and Texas, and have most recently popped up in Georgia as well.

Large companies, such as Target and Netflix, agreed to settle lawsuits against them when the federal court found that websites fell within the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).