web development

Is your website ADA compliant?

March 18, 2024

If you are wondering what “ADA compliant” refers to, then let’s start there.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 requires that all “places of public accommodation” be accessible to those with disabilities. This has been interpreted by US courts to include websites. So what does this mean for you, as a website owner?

While there are specific regulations for federally funded websites, websites that do not fall under these regulations still need to comply with the law and be accessible to all online users.

From a legal standpoint, U.S. courts and the Department of Justice (DOJ) reference the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA success criteria as a standard to gauge whether websites are accessible. These guidelines are comprehensive, but they are also long and difficult to understand and therefore to implement.

Thankfully, your website can still be accessible by following the simpler Web Accessibility Standards (WAS), published last month (June 2019). These standards were distilled from the WCAG guidelines into a shorter and clearer checklist of points. For the complete detailed list, see the article by Kris Rivenburgh, which this blog post was adapted from.

In WAS, there are five main areas of compliance. *Please reference the linked article above for all specific items, as the list below is a summary of the main points.

Website Presentation
This includes items such as descriptive text, form labels and a hierarchy of headings on a page.

Website Appearance
Sufficient color contrast (at least 4.5:1) and noticeable text links are the most important components here, but consistency in layout and navigation is also important.

Content Alternatives
All images should have descriptive text in the form of alt text, videos should have transcripts and close captioning.

User Control
The user must have control over any moving items (with the exception of rotating ads); there should be no popups, no auto-play video or audio, i.e. nothing that will startle a user or cause them to lose their place on a website page.

Website Usability
All website functions must be accessible using only a keyboard, your site uses focus indicators, and a website search is available.

Besides being the “right thing to do”, and the law, having your website accessible to all readers can benefit your business, too, as 20% of people have a disability. You could be significantly increasing your customer base.

If you’re feeling ambitious – or just curious – and want to review your site for compliance, I would suggest the following tools.

AXE – a Chrome extension
WAVE: Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool – an online analyzer
ANDI: Accessible Name & Description Inspector – this is my personal favorite, developed by the Social Security Administration

If you would prefer that Ryder Web Development review your website and apply any fixes needed for you, please contact us and we would be happy to help.

For more information on this topic, there is a helpful article with links to further reading on the Cape Cod Tech Council website.

Why aren’t we all blogging?

March 14, 2021

I really thought I would be doing blog posts monthly. Haha.

Why is it that blogging on my own website is the last thing I do? It’s like the cobbler whose kids all need new shoes (if you have any idea of what I’m talking about LOL).

First, I’ll make good on my words of “results and recommendations from my research” in my prior post. At that time, I had just purchased the Genesis framework and a package of premium WordPress themes from StudioPress and I wanted to write about that. Suffice it to say that although I invested several hundred dollars in these premium themes, I have never regretted it. Besides the up-front advantage of easily ensuring that I don’t fall into the cookie-cutter website trap that others do, the themes are well-coded and more easily customizable than most. There are also a slew of free plugins from StudioPress that cover many of the things your clients want to do on their sites like sharing via social media and getting the pesky “WordPress login” text off the site footer.
Cape Cod in March
Seems like spring is already here this year, but don’t be tempted to plant too early. Remember, it’s Cape Cod, you never know what weather we’ll get in April, let alone the rest of March!

I should listen to my own advice

October 9, 2020

Hard to believe that five months (well, really, almost six) have passed since my last post. Sheesh, I tell every website client that they should be changing or adding site content at least on a weekly basis. (Hint, writing a blog helps to fill that criteria!)

I couldn’t find a good picture of a sloth so here is one of my cat being lazy instead. Though if one were to call me lazy, it could only be in regards to putting up a new blog post on my site. Otherwise, I am a busy bee, as those who know me will attest to.

And it’s not as if I’ve been walking on the beach (though I sure wish I could say that, in spite of the fact that it’s winter and I can’t go barefoot) because it’s been close to impossible with all the record-breaking snow that we had this season.

Really beautiful for the most part, but all that shoveling didn’t leave as much time for working as one could wish…

February was a “lost” month, but things have been moving forward again lately. I’m delighted to say that the redevelopment of the Dennis Conservation Trust website is complete and the administrator has been doing a fine job putting up new events, updating the homepage and calendar, and even adding new pages to the website. (There is one client who listened to the “put new content on your site” speech:)

And I’ve made progress on the redevelopment of Astrolabe’s website to fully mobile-optimize it. It’s a large site that was started in 1996 and has been added onto over the years in a somewhat haphazard fashion. A challenge to update and organize, but luckily I love a challenge.

The most visible of the updated pages is the Astrolabe Events page – check it out on a mobile. And let me mention that what I am most proud of is that there is no content management system so the pages are written in pure HTML5 with some Javascript and jQuery thrown in where it’s useful. It will take a while to update the 300+ pages, since I’m only there part-time, but I’m not going anywhere.

And I WILL be posting updates more often!