Your website is the face of your brand online, but have you thought about whether everyone can use it? Making your website ADA compliant means ensuring it’s accessible to people with disabilities — and it’s more important now than ever before.
What Is ADA Compliance?
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses and organizations to provide equal access to goods and services — including online. For websites, this means designing your site so that people with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive disabilities can navigate and use it without barriers.
Why Accessibility Matters
- Reach More Visitors: Over 1 billion people worldwide have some form of disability. Making your website accessible opens your content to a much larger audience.
- Avoid Legal Risks: Lawsuits related to inaccessible websites have been increasing. Ensuring compliance helps protect you from costly legal issues.
- Boost SEO: Many accessibility best practices, such as adding descriptive alt text and maintaining clear site structure, also improve search engine rankings.
- Enhance User Experience: Accessibility features make your site easier to use for everyone, including older visitors or those on mobile devices.
Essential Website Accessibility Features
- Proper Use of HTML Labels: Using
<label>tags correctly with form fields is crucial for screen readers to announce what each input is for. For example, contact forms should have labels linked to inputs so users who rely on assistive tech can easily fill them out. - Alt Text for Images: Descriptions for images help screen readers communicate their content.
- Keyboard Navigation: Your website should be fully navigable using a keyboard alone.
- Readable Fonts and Colors: Use legible fonts and sufficient color contrast to aid visitors with vision impairments.
- Closed Captions and Transcripts: Provide captions or transcripts for video and audio content to support users with hearing impairments.
- Consistent and Simple Layout: Predictable navigation and clear content hierarchy help all users browse smoothly.
How UltimateWB Helps You Build Accessible Websites
UltimateWB is designed with accessibility in mind — the platform’s built-in forms, such as the contact form or member media post forms, come with properly coded HTML labels, ensuring screen readers can identify form fields correctly. Beyond forms, UltimateWB’s social apps allow you to post photos, videos, and other content with the necessary accessibility features, like alt text fields for images and captions for videos.
With these built-in tools, creating an accessible website becomes simpler — no need to be an expert coder.
Easy Steps to Improve Your Website’s Accessibility
- Run your site through free accessibility checkers like WAVE or Google Lighthouse / PageSpeed Insights.
- Address obvious issues such as missing alt text or low color contrast.
- Choose an accessibility-friendly website builder like UltimateWB, with built-in accessible forms and content posting tools.
- Keep accessibility considerations top of mind when adding new content or features.
- For comprehensive compliance, consider a professional accessibility audit.
In Summary
Website accessibility is about more than just compliance — it’s about creating an inclusive online experience that welcomes everyone. By making your website ADA compliant, you not only protect yourself legally but also reach a broader audience and improve usability for all visitors.
Related: Descriptive Link Text: A Guide to Accessibility
How to Test the Color Contrast of Your Website for Accessibility?
Ready to build a website that everyone can enjoy? UltimateWB is here to help you create accessible, engaging sites that stand out. We also offer web design packages if you would like your website designed and built for you.
Got a techy/website question? Whether it’s about UltimateWB or another website builder, web hosting, or other aspects of websites, just send in your question in the “Ask David!” form. We will email you when the answer is posted on the UltimateWB “Ask David!” section.
