The Web Works Best When It Works for Everyone

Web accessibility as a human right

We're all online now — from the youngest of us to the oldest. What used to be a niche tool for forward-thinking businesses and universities is now our primary way of interacting across the globe. It's often a required tool for making important personal, legal, and financial transactions. Because of that, it's imperative that we all can interact with the internet — not just some.

No different than ensuring brick-and-mortar institutions are wheelchair accessible, or that crosswalks function for the hearing impaired, the web has a moral obligation to ensure its accessibility to each and every one of us.

User experience and accessibility

UI & UX — User Interface and User Experience — concerns itself with not just visual design, but with the patterns, heuristics, and best practices that allow us to understand how people best interact with the web. In the early days, it was anyone's guess. Now we have decades of data, and increasingly we're finding that UI/UX is at its best when it takes accessibility into consideration from the start.

A few examples of what accessibility-informed design has taught us — improvements that benefit everyone, not just users with disabilities:

• Color and contrast — ensuring that color choices are legible and contrasted enough, even for folks who have difficulty seeing.
• Audio alternatives — where audio is used, transcripts should be provided. Not everyone can hear, or wants to listen. Give users the ability to approach content as they need to.
• Clear forms — forms and form data should be presented simply and labeled accurately. Messy or obscure forms make it next to impossible for screen readers and other assistive devices.
• Responsive design — resizing and reconfiguring page content based on the device it's viewed on, simplifying visual data for easier consumption.
• User preferences — giving users options for increasing font sizes, enabling high-contrast modes, or switching to dark mode greatly aids usability.
• Guided experiences — providing helpful walkthroughs for new services, products, or experiences. We all have different levels of technical ability.

ADA compliance

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is the United States' most important law regarding accessibility and civil rights for people with disabilities. Signed into law in 1990, the ADA prohibits discrimination against anyone based on ability or disability.

In 2008, the ADA was amended to broaden the definition of “major life activity” to include daily activities like caring for oneself, as well as impairments to major bodily functions and neurological conditions. In 2017, a clear consensus emerged that the ADA also covers the online world — websites, internet portals, and online stores need to be accessible for people with disabilities.

The Department of Justice reinforced this in 2022 with new guidance clarifying that the ADA indeed covers web accessibility. Today, U.S. courts routinely apply ADA accessibility requirements to the internet.

Who needs to be compliant?

Increasingly — and ethically — we all do. All types and sizes of businesses with more than 15 employees must comply with ADA legislation, for both customers and employees. This applies to places of entertainment, restaurants, retail stores, government offices, and more. Approximately 85% of ADA lawsuits during 2018 were filed against small and medium retail businesses, with the average website lawsuit settlement reaching $35,000.

Web agencies need to keep ADA requirements in mind too. If a client gets sued for a non-accessible website, they'll turn to the agency that designed it — and that agency could face demands for refunds, reputational damage, or legal action of its own.

Our approach

We take a layered approach to ADA compliance — because no single tool or technique covers everything.