As a digital marketing agency, we strive to reach all people. Some where around 47 million Americans have some type of disability. That number is projected to steadily increase as the population ages and is expected to double to around 98 million by 2060, according the the U.S. Census Bureau.
Individuals who have disabilities – vision, hearing, or physical – make up approximately 20% of the population. This means potentially significant challenges accessing your web site. The federal government passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to help counter and support this segment of the population. Regulations in the ADA were amended in January 2018 to set a deadline sometime mid-2018 for web sites to become compliant to one of three levels. Municipal governments and most non-profits and companies that receive or plan to receive federal funding in any form must be in compliance of Level AA criterion.
Even if a company / organization doesn’t receive federal funding (i.e. political organizations, large corporations, churches, etc.) it is best to comply to Level AA as it benefits your web site by hosting cleaner and leaner code, optimized mobile rendering, and structures your web site much better.
With the experience working with the City of New York and its 50 citywide agencies, Level AA compliancy is a piece of cake. Of course setting compliancy is recommended on new web site builds, retroactive compliancy is still a task that is doable but takes more time to convert your existing web site, but the time is well spent to help you avoid ADA non-compliancy issues in the future.