How To Make a Website ADA Compliant
After you receive your site from our team of experts, you won’t have to ask “Is my website ADA-compliant?” You can trust that Mannix understands the ins and outs of WCAG guidelines. Contrary to popular opinion, an ADA plugin does not make a site ADA-compliant. For a site to be ADA-compliant there are four main principles it must follow: it must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. These principles are commonly known by the acronym POUR.
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Perceivable
To be perceivable, content on and components of an ADA-compliant website must be presented in a way all users can understand and see clearly. This includes text alternatives to images, alternatives to time based media, adaptable methods of presentation (without losing information), color contrasts, and much more.
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Operable
Operable sites must have components and navigation that can be used by all visitors. For example, all functionality must be available from a keyboard, users must have enough time to read and use content, and an ADA-compliant website won’t be designed in a way known to cause seizures or physical reactions.
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Understandable
For a site to be understandable, it must have text that can be read and understood, it must operate in a predictable way, and it has to have input assistance. To make text readable, for example, definitions must be provided for acronyms. To operate predictably, an ADA-compliant website must navigate in a consistent way, and there should be labels and instructions when content requires the user to input information.
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Robust
A robust site is compatible with current assistive technologies—the site must also maximize compatibility with future assistive technologies as well. This aspect is a bit more technical, but it includes coding things up to a proper specification in order to make the site as accessible as possible for all users.
Source: W3.org: WCAG 2 Guidelines