• Orange County, CA
Facebook Linkedin Instagram
Schedule a call
Web Content Accessibility: What It Is & Why Your Law Firm Should Care
Posted on By Author content@adaforweb.com Categories Law Firms

Web Content Accessibility: What It Is & Why Your Law Firm Should Care

When it comes to digital content, accessibility refers to the design and development that enables people with disabilities to access and use mobile applications, websites, and other digital technology. With as many as 25% of adults in the United States living with some form of disability, ensuring your law firm websites are accessible to everyone is vital.

People living with disabilities tend to process data and information differently. Accessibility makes sure that users with disabilities have a similar experience to those who navigate the website using point-and-click and keyboard-based methods. All visitors should be able to access your entire website, from submitting a consultation request to making payment.

With 25% of the adults in the United States disabled, a fourth of your audience cannot use your law firm’s website effectively. Thus, it’s your responsibility to take all the necessary steps to ensure that the site is effectively accessible to all. Fortunately, web content accessibility is nothing complicated. In this article, we discuss how you can make your site accessible to everyone.

What Is Web Content Accessibility?

In a simple sense, we can define web content accessibility as all the strategies you use to develop a website’s design and make it easier for people with disabilities. The W3C or World Wide Web Consortium established a set of guidelines called the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0” or WCAG 2.0 back in 2008.

The WCAG 2.0 provides a clear standard for web developers to ensure that a website is accessible to those living with disabilities. It includes different compliance levels ranging from A (the lowest) to AAA (the highest). This guideline seeks to enhance a site’s accessibility in four areas –

1. Perceivable: Perceivable refers to providing information in such a way that all users can understand. For example, providing alternative texts that users can convert into speech, large print, symbols, speech, or simple language
2. Understandable: Web designers must ensure that all information and features on a website are understandable. They should assist users in avoiding and correcting errors and ensure that web pages are consistent in their operation and appearance.
3. Operable: All features of a website should be accessible via a keyboard. Furthermore, all the content must be designed so that the users have enough time to read them. The site’s navigation design should be simple as well.
4. Robust: Websites should be robust enough to be compatible with different user agents such as assistive technologies.

Why Web Content Accessibility Matters For Your Law Firm’s Website

Web content accessibility ensures that everyone can access the web content regardless of their abilities or limitations. Ensuring web content accessibility isn’t only a moral obligation and financially advantageous for your practice. When your law firm’s website is accessible to everyone, it demonstrates that you care about everyone in the community.

Thus, you create an inclusive environment that stands against any discrimination people with disabilities face. In addition, you won’t have to worry about users with hearing or visual impairments facing any hindrances when navigating through your website. This way, you increase your law firm’s ability to attract more clients.

Your website ADA compliance is also important to maintain social responsibility and improve accessibility. Even as a moral obligation, your website should ensure accessibility to all as it brings us closer to a user’s experience. One of the most vital reasons for prioritizing accessibility is to provide a friendly user experience to website visitors.

Every visitor should find the website appealing, and there shouldn’t be any differences in the content or user experience based on their level of vision or hearing. Improving accessibility also benefits older people who can’t see well and those with slow internet access.

Ways To Make Your Law Firm’s Website Accessible For The Disabled
Let’s take a look at all the easiest ways you can make your website accessible to the people with disabilities –

1. Ensure That All CTAs And Forms Are Easily Accessible
Online forms are the primary key to your website’s lead generation. So it’s important to have forms that are both functional and accessible to ensure that more users can input their information. You can make forms and CTAs easily accessible on your site through –
1. Adding short and clear instructions.
2. Labeling all the form fields appropriately.
3. Make all the button instructions clear, like – “Submit consultation request” rather than “Submit.”
4. Check that all the forms are entirely operable through a keyboard.

2. Text Explanations For Audio And Video Content
In recent years, infographics have become hugely popular for a proper reason. However, they can make information inaccessible to people with visual disabilities.
So it’s important to use visual aids in your websites like labeled tables, detailed alternative titles, tags, and numbered or bulleted lists. Adding Image alt text can benefit both SEO and web content accessibility.

3. Enable Keyboard Navigation For Your Website
Many disabled internet users may be unable to navigate using a mouse. Such people tend to rely on a keyboard or various other input devices. Unfortunately, keyboard navigation may be frequently overlooked.
You can improve ADA website accessibility by keeping the most common keyboard navigation tools on your website. For example, –the ‘Enter’ key to access dropdown menus, the ‘Esc’ key to close the menu, and the ‘Tab’ key to alternate between web pages.

4. Remove Or Modify Time-constrained Elements
Individuals who use pointers or keyboard navigation often take longer to navigate a website. Unfortunately, many websites have timed elements, especially during the checkout process.
If your customers don’t get enough time to navigate the website, they may be timed out and lose their data. You should take proper steps to ensure no data is lost, even when an automatic time-out should occur.

5. Pay Attention To Usability Across Platforms And Technologies
According to current guidelines, websites need to evolve with the times. You may want to keep your website strong, but you should also ensure its content is valuable and serves a purpose.
Developing a user-friendly website is probably the most critical aspect to consider when making changes to your site. Check your site’s performance across devices and platforms regularly to ensure it remains high.

Conclusion
Making your law firm’s website content more accessible and usable ensures lead generation, SEO, and all visitors to your site have a positive experience, including disabled people. This article explains what web content accessibility is, why it’s crucial for your law firm websites, and how you can make them ADA compliant.

To remind you, website accessibility lawsuits are very real and it could really affect the image of your law firm if it gets one when you yourself deal with the lwa. We hope it was helpful, and thanks for reading till now.

Posted on By Author content@adaforweb.com Categories Law Firms

10 Common ADA Compliance Issues with Law Firm Websites

Almost every business needs a website, and the legal industry is no exception. But when it comes to creating a website that meets ADA compliance standards, law firms can be significantly challenged.

This blog post will outline 10 of the most common ADA compliance issues with law firm websites.

By being aware of these pitfalls, you can avoid them in your website design. Let’s get started!

10 Common ADA Compliance Issues with Law Firm Websites

Here are the ten common ADA Compliance issues with law firm websites:

  1. Missing Alternative Text: 

Alternative text allows visually impaired users to know what an image is about. This is referred to as “Alt” text because it’s meant to provide alternatives for images that can’t be seen or are hard to see.

The alt text should always describe each image in full detail on any page where there are images. For example: if your website uses a photo of a man holding up his hand with five fingers showing, you might write alt text that reads, “A man is holding up his hand with 5 fingers showing.”

Without this important alternative information, many users will have no idea what your images are about, which could lead them away from your site entirely! It’s also worth noting that search engines use alternative text for search results.

  1. Lack of a Logical Reading Order:

One of the main guidelines for effective web design is that a page should always “flow.” The user should not get hung up on anything, especially not reading the order.

Your paragraphs of text should flow from one to the next in a logical order. The order you write them in may be different from how they’re numbered within the content, but the actual information itself must make sense when read from start to finish.

Here’s an example: “There are several common issues that many law firm websites have,” this would be a poor way to structure a paragraph because it jumps all over the place and doesn’t follow any particular pattern. Don’t put your readers through that!

  1. Lack of a Clear CTA:

In the US, a call-to-action is a primary method used for getting people to take action on your site – whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase or simply completing contact information so you can send them more information later.

A call-to-action is how you get your readers from Point A to Point B in the most straightforward way possible. It typically involves using language like “sign up,” “shop now,” or “let us know.”

If you don’t have one of these CTAs somewhere on every single page, then it’s time to add some in! That will help direct visitors toward conversion goals and reinforce that your CTAs are always meant to take visitors further into the site.

  1. Lack of Alternate Navigation Methods:

Many people cannot or do not use a mouse, including those with disabilities or simply aging adults. The ability to control cursor movement using only the keyboard is known as “mouse-less browsing.”

Suppose you’re not catering to these users by allowing them another method of navigating your site. In that case, they will start closing it down and looking elsewhere for information much faster than other users.

You must also make sure any page links have descriptive text instead of just words like “click here” or “here.” Rather, say things like, “Contact us now,” “Shop Now,” or whatever works best for your needs.

  1. Icons With No Alternate Text Descriptions:

Icons can be a great way to add some visual interest to your website, but if they don’t have any alt text associated with them, it’s like leaving out half the equation.

For many visually impaired users, this means they won’t know what your icons are about – which could lead them away from your site entirely!

To get around this issue, you should always include an alternate description of what each icon is supposed to mean when you’re designing your site.

Here’s an example: “A man holding up his hand indicating that he wants to speak in front of others in a meeting” would be perfectly acceptable alt text for an icon that shows a picture of someone holding up their hand.

  1. A Lack of Keyboard Accessible Links:

There are plenty of tools out there that can help automate the testing process for keyboard-only users, but it all starts with you making sure those links show up despite not using a mouse. Here’s how:

  • Anchor text – Always use descriptive anchor text like “Contact us now” instead of “click here.”
  • Icon alt text – You already know what we’re going to say about this one! Every single icon used on your site should have an alt tag associated with it, so someone who uses a screen reader knows what they do ahead of time.
  • Link order – If you’re most important pages (like product pages) aren’t accessible via keyboard, you’re going to lose out on the majority of potential traffic.
  1. Flash Content:

Flash is like Kryptonite for search engines because it’s notoriously difficult for machines to read without human influence.

That means no matter how excellent your flash intro or movie is, maybe if it doesn’t have a transcript, then you’re losing out on valuable content that could be indexed and used in relevant searches – instead of pages that are just filled with junk text. Not cool!

  1. Automatic Playback of Audio & Video Content:

When it comes to accessibility, auto-playing audio can get old pretty fast. Not everyone wants to hear what you have to say, so make sure you include an “off” button or another method of stopping the media from starting on its own.

  1. No Keyboard Shortcuts or Assistive Technology Support for Site Navigation

Keyboard shortcuts are an easy way to make sure your website is accessible for users whose disabilities may prevent them from using a mouse or trackpad. These are often readily available, so always check with your web developer first if you have any technical questions about implementing them.

  1. Non-Standard (Non-Mobile) Viewports

Law firm websites need to be responsive and viewable by mobile devices because that is where many lawyers and law firms find their clients these days – especially those who don’t live in major cities like New York, Chicago, etc.

That means you’ll want to make sure your website is viewable on any devices that you may visit at some point. That’s where things like “viewport” settings come into play.

Conclusion:

This article covered the ten most common ADA compliance issues on law firm websites. This is a crucial topic for any lawyer running an online business that may be violating one of the most important laws in America today.

Make sure you read through these 10 points and take action to make your website accessible before it’s too late!

0