ADA Website Compliance Service
Why You Need Our Website
ADA Compliance Service
Having an Accessible Website is Becoming More Important Every Day
1) To benefit those with disabilities by helping them use and enjoy the websites they visit.
2) To help your business maximize revenue from new customers who you are currently excluding.
3) To help protect your business from shakedown lawsuits related to website ADA compliance.
How Old-Style, Manual ADA Website Compliance Usually Works
Most accessibility remediation is a huge one-time coding project based on the layout and content of the website at the time. An assessment is done, the manual coding work begins. Because they are so labor-intensive, projects like these can cost many thousands — even tens of thousands of dollars — and can take many weeks and months to complete.
The bad news is that this accessibility often breaks when the website is modified or grown. That makes all or part of the website inaccessible, which requires you to repeat the costly remediation services.
How Our Intelligent Accessibility Compliance System™ Works
We take a different approach to website accessibility. Our IACS™ works like this:
We use our Artificial Intelligence technology to scan and automatically remediate your website. Our AI tool is more than 90% effective in bringing a website to WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
Once our AI tool has completed its work, we conduct an Accessibility Gap Assessment. This assessment reveals the parts of your website that are not yet compliant, and tells us what work remains to be done.
We then do the remaining Manual remediation using the Initial Remediation Hours included with your plan -- quicker and less expensive than a full manual remediation.
We complete your project with an Accessibility Statement posted to your website and send you a Written Accessibility Assessment with your updated compliance results.
After Your Site Is Accessible, Here's What Happens Next...
Now that your website is Accessible, any time your website is changed, our AI tool goes to work to automatically remediate the changes within 24 hours.
We conduct Quarterly Accessibility Assessments to look for any additional issues for your website. If we find any, we use the hour(s) already included in your plan to make the changes, usually at no additional cost to you.
With our IACS™ Accessibility System, when a visitor requiring accessibility modifications visits your site, they are immediately notified of the site’s accessible capabilities, and are given several options that he or she can customize via the keyboard in order to make the site work for them.
Meanwhile, your site retains its original design for all other users.
Why IACS™ Website Accessibility Is Better
Our IACS™ System is unique, fast, lower cost, more flexible and more permanent than traditional accessibility.
- Your website is remediated at a far, far lower initial cost...often less than 25% of manual remediation costs.
- Your website becomes accessible far faster than with conventional manual remediation, in days or weeks, instead of months.
- Since our AI tool is activated only when users requiring accessibility visit the site, your website retains its original design in most cases.
- IACS™ scans your site daily, then automatically remediates any changes. With IACS™, once your site is accessible, it stays accessible.
IACS™, Our ADA/WCAG Compliance Service Includes...
Upon Installation:
- Installation of our custom Accessibility Software to connect your website to our IACS Accessibility Engine
- Our IACS Accessibility Engine scans your site and makes it automatically accessible in less than 48 hours, depending on its size.
- We conduct an Accessibility Gap Assessment to determine if there are any remaining accessibility issues.
- We use the hours included in your plan to manually remediate the remaining issues.*
- We provide an Accessibility Statement on your website, which explains the accessibility features and level of your website
Daily:
- Continual WCAG 2.1 AA (ADA) Compliance for your website
- Daily scan of your site by our IACS Accessibility Engine
- Daily Automatic remediation by IACS of any changes or new pages added to your site
Quarterly:
- Quarterly Accessibility Assessment, to ensure that your website still meets accessibility standards
- Quarterly Manual remediation, for any new issues introduced by your changes, using the hours included in your plan.*
* Manual remediation hours may be included with your plan. Additional hours will be estimated ahead of time and billed at discounted rates.
Pricing
Small Business
Websites up to 25 Pages- $995 Installation
- Up to 2 Hours Initial Assessment & Manual Remediation Time
- Continual AI-based Remediation
- 1 Hour Quarterly Accessibility Assessment & Update
Growing Business
Websites up to 100 Pages- $1,495 Installation
- Up to 4 Hours Initial Assessment & Manual Remediation Time
- Continual AI-based Remediation
- 2 Hours Quarterly Accessibility Assessment & Update
Large Business
Websites up to 500 Pages- $1,995 Installation
- Up to 6 Hours Initial Assessment & Manual Remediation Time
- Continual AI-based Remediation
- 3 Hours Quarterly Accessibility Assessment & Update
Corporate
Websites up to 1000 Pages- $2,495 Installation
- Up To 8 Hours Initial Assessment & Manual Remediation Time
- Continual AI-based Remediation
- 4 Hours Quarterly Accessibility Assessment & Update
Note: Pricing listed above is per subdomain. For example, www.MyDomain.com and account.MyDomain.com are separate subdomains and each requires separate software, separate effort and separate purchases. This Service provides the above Accessibility Compliance services only for web pages based on HTML source code. Excluded content includes, but is not limited to: PDF files, custom Javascript code, non-standard HTML code, HTML code that includes errors, Flash, Shockwave or other multimedia elements. Nor does it add appropriate captions to videos, however Captioning is available as an add-on service.
What is Website Accessibility, Anyway?
According to the W3C, “Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, people can: perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web.” Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to your Website, including:
Visual
Color-blindness, low vision and even complete blindness shouldn't keep potential customers and site visitors from using your website.
Physical
Some of your ideal customers may not be able to move a mouse or type on a keyboard, but your website should still be usable by them.
Auditory
Some people can't hear, and if you've got audio content, or video content with sound, WCAG says you need to give them a similar experience.
...And More
You can help those with Cognitive, Neurological, Speech and other disabilities by eliminating fast-moving content, and making your content easier to understand.
What Does Website ADA Compliance Mean?
Defining “ADA Compliance for Websites” is still a gray area. Since the ADA has not been amended with specific accessibility standards, when most people talk about Website ADA Compliance, they are talking about a set of standards called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
The WCAG was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, which is the same group that defines most web standards, including HTML. The WCAG is now at version 2.1, which contains over 90 individual guidelines. These requirements include things like…
- color contrast
- keyboard navigation
- predictability
- consistency
- meta tags and captions
- and much more…
…all of which have become as important as ramps on street corners, chirping “walk” signals at intersections, and close captioning on TV shows.
And while the WCAG is often used to evaluate a website’s accessibility, it is often open to interpretation. The real test of whether a site is accessible is a subjective evaluation when the site is used by someone with disabilities.
For all these reasons, there is no such thing as 100% ADA Compliance for Websites. But by making your website accessible, and posting an Accessibility Statement on your website, your chances of being the victim of a website-related ADA lawsuit or threatened lawsuit go down substantially.
The Story Behind Website ADA Compliance
The ADA became the law in 1990, before there ever was such a thing as a website. But the Department of Justice has not updated the ADA with specific standards for Website Accessibility.
In other words, whether or not the ADA applies to Websites had been a gray area of the law, even though the DOJ stated unequivocally that the ADA does apply to websites. Since then, thousands of Website ADA lawsuits have been filed all across the country, increasing recently by almost 40x. In 2015 there were just 56 website ADA lawsuits. In 2018 there were 2,258! (Source: American Bar Association Journal)
And these numbers do not include the tens of thousands of demand letters that were sent, or out of court settlements that were made.
In October 2019 the Supreme Court also made it clear (by refusing to hear a lower court ruling favoring a blind person who couldn’t use a website) that the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to websites as much as it does any physical place. This decision — or lack of one — is sure to cause the number of Website ADA lawsuits to rise dramatically in 2020.
The Website ADA Compliance Shakedown
Costs for website owners vary, but can be in the tens of thousands of dollars. That’s because the demand letters often require:
- Remediation of the website
- Sensitivity training for your company staff
- Accessibility technical training for your developers
- Regular automated and live accessibility testing
- Keeping the settlement confidential
- Settlement Costs to the Plaintiffs
- Attorneys Fees to the Plaintiff’s Attorneys
And of course, you need to bear the costs of all of the above, plus your own attorneys fees. More often than not, the actual plaintiffs have never actually been harmed by using (or not using) the website in question. They are plaintiffs in name only.
If this sounds like a shakedown to you, you’re right. Stories about ADA shakedowns are in the news more all the time, and if your website is not WCAG accessible, it might just be a matter of time until this happens to you.
Of course, there is another reason to make your website accessible…a very legitimate reason.
The Best Reason To Make Your Website ADA/WCAG Compliant
The number of people with disabilities increases every year, with estimates now about 20 million people in the United States. And these people want to enjoy their life just like everyone else. But most businesses don’t make their websites accessible, so people with disabilities cannot enjoy the web the same as people without disabilities can.
This is the problem that the ADA was designed to correct.
…And this is the best reason to make your website Accessible.
Let's Get Started on Accessibility
Still curious? Read more about how the ADA Applies to Websites? Have even more questions? Read our ADA Website Compliance FAQ. If you still have questions, including specific questions about your site, then fill out the ADA Website Assessment Request, or call our office at 818-592-6370.
IMPORTANT: WE CANNOT GUARANTEE 100% WCAG COMPLIANCE, OR THAT YOU WON’T BE THE TARGET OF A LAWSUIT, OR THAT YOU WON’T BE THE TARGET OF MALICIOUS THREATS, OR ANY OTHER POTENTIAL OR REAL DAMAGES OR CONSEQUENCES RESULTING FROM THE WORK WE DO OR DO NOT DO FOR YOU, YOUR COMPANY OR YOUR WEBSITE.
NOTHING ON THIS PAGE SHOULD BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVICE. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR OWN ATTORNEY FOR LEGAL OPINIONS.
Are You Ready To Protect Your Website And Your Company?
The sooner your website becomes Accessible, the lower your chances of legal trouble. Request a Consultation today and let's get started.