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.

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.

Despite massive growth in e-commerce, there’s at least one brick-and-mortar industry that’s standing strong: grocery retailers. Even though people are still buying groceries in person, customers use supermarket websites for a variety of purposes. Web accessibility is an important part of the marketing strategy of any supermarket.

Although digital marketers are constantly searching for new ways to reach out to their audience and broaden their company’s appeal, web accessibility remains overlooked and underutilized.

Web accessibility is a crucial factor for both internet users with disabilities and the e-commerce websites that they frequent. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the basics of web accessibility as it pertains to e-commerce retailers.

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.

People with disabilities have been traditionally under served by the financial industry. By reaching out to these customers with accessibility initiatives, banks and other financial services companies will help lower barriers while expanding their customer base and accruing some positive PR.

Since the ADA does not explicitly address website accessibility, many credit unions are left wondering how the law affects them and how best to proceed. The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU) is responding to these recent legal cases by working to clarify existing U.S. legislation and enact new laws to better address the issue of website accessibility.

Making the process of filing taxes more accessible needs to be a multifaceted initiative. The IRS, state governments, and third-party financial companies must all work in unison to improve their web accessibility efforts if they wish to better serve the one in five Americans with a disability.

Bank of America, took initiative in the area of accessibility years ago with accessibility for ATMs and a web accessibility agreement that dates back to 2000. Let’s further explore their website accessibility policies as an example of what successful policies look like.

In order to open their doors to more customers and avoid expensive legal action under the Americans with Disabilities Act, banks need to make web accessibility one of their foremost priorities.

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.

To help schools navigate web accessibility regulations and to improve the overall accessibility of educational markets for impaired individuals, the Bureau of Internet Accessibility (BoIA) is providing in-kind donations of $100,000 in detailed electronic scans of their website and consultation to interpret results and help formulate a remediation strategy for qualified educational institutions.

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.

Web accessibility is becoming both a practical and legal necessity for retailers. Cyber Monday is the perfect opportunity for your company to embrace accessibility for the good of your customers — and your sales. 

National Epilepsy Awareness Month should serve as a reminder to all businesses with an online presence that there are simple steps they can take to make sure their websites offer an accessible experience for the 3.4 million people in the U.S. (and 64 million people worldwide) with epilepsy. With web accessibility lawsuits on the rise, it is time to ensure your website is engaging and safe for users living with epilepsy.

“Website accessibility” enables people with disabilities to view, understand, navigate, and interact with your website. For school websites, this could be anyone from students and parents to teachers, staff, and community members. By committing to accessibility as a priority for your school’s community, you give everyone the same access and opportunity, thereby expanding the educational experience to a greater number of people.

Until the ADA is updated to address the special case of website accessibility, or the Department of Justice releases its website accessibility regulations, complying with WCAG 2.0 Level AA is the best way to ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to your website. The overview below will tell you everything you need to know about meeting the WCAG 2.0 Level AA recommendations.

The plaintiff in the case of Gorecki v. Dave & Buster’s, Inc., Sean Gorecki, is permanently blind and uses screen reader software to access the internet. The defendant’s lawyers argued that the Dave & Buster’s website had already included text to accommodate people using screen readers, redirecting them to an accessible telephone hotline. However, in an October 2017 ruling, the court found that the defendant had not conclusively proven that the hotline text itself was readable by screen readers. 

Good news: Coding an ADA-compliant website is achievable with minimal expense and minimal impact on usability or design — if some basic guidelines and strategies are followed. The following list details the best ways to avoid the seven most common web accessibility issues.