Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
It seems the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance issues for websites is starting to become more mainstream and more widely known as we see Beyoncé is hit with a lawsuit over her website.
Beyoncé's company facing class-action lawsuit, says website discriminates against visually impaired (abc15.com)
Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé's company, is being hit with a class-action lawsuit claiming Beyonce.com violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.
A New York woman named Mary Conner who has "no vision whatsoever," according to the court filing, says the website isn't accessible for people who are visually impaired.
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One of the problems with the site, according to the lawsuit, is that there is not any alt-text (alternative text) accompanying website elements and images. Alt-text is a word or phrase that can be added to elements of a website so users can be told the nature or contents of what they are clicking on. While alt-text has a lot of uses, one of the most cited reasons for having it is that this text enables blind or visually impaired individuals to click on an image or element on a website and what is being displayed can be described to them. They can then independently navigate a website.
Neither Beyoncé or her website developer did this on purpose, we can assume but even so, lawsuits still get filed for website owners who have not set up their websites to be ADA compliant.
We've seen retail stores who have online e-commerce websites get hit with these lawsuits and we've done ADA website compliance for websites like magazines, property management companies, and others like dentists to help make sure they don't later get hit with a lawsuit. It's better to get compliant now than have to deal with legal issues later. One of our clients who is getting this done called it "cheap insurance" for their website and we agree.
The process to get your website ADA compliant takes a lot of grunt work to be honest. It's both technical work and tedious work but we have the team to do it and we can do it for your business website. If you're interested, please contact Webstix today.
-Tony
