There has been a steady increase in lawsuits for non compliant websites as well as government fines that start at $50,000.00 per an incident.
The business owner is solely responsible for making sure their website is ADA compliant.
But the web design industry as a whole would rather point their clients towards overlays and plugins, than to code the site correctly.
Just insert some code and you're done!
To start with the single most important thing when making a website visible is content and page speed.
You spend a lot of money laying out and planning exactly how everything will be viewed.
Now you're going to add code to your site and code slows a site down but in this case the slow down will be extreme because it's pulling information from another site.
Figure a second slow done will cost you about 4% in sales from what Amazon had said.
But in addition to that the more code you have on your site the more likely some piece of that code could be used to hack your site.
No!
To start with 75% of the things that need to be checked need to be done manually. Accessibility overlays can make sure that the pieces are in place but it can’t make sure that the content and information is set up correctly.
Like having a shopping cart with all the buttons saying “Buy Now” or alt text that doesn't correctly describe an image.
Most overlays I’ve seen don’t deal with color contrast issues.
And at its best it can only fix about 25% of the problems on your site.
Overlays give a false sense of security.
I’ve checked hundreds of sites with overlays and found most of them have compliance issues.
These companies will say one thing on their homepage and another in their terms of service.
An overlay gives the impression of fixing your site without actually fixing your site. You've still got bad code on your site but now it's hidden behind more options and more confusion.
You have no idea how the site will look after this tool finishes auto correcting everything.
The reason for the law is to give everyone equal access to your services and products.
However, since this code is on a third party site and needs some type of input from me to be activated ... I am already not being treated the same as the people who access your site without a disability.
And if I do figure out how to activate your overlay, because it's not in the main code there is the question of how well it will navigate the site and make the changes.
Creating a good web experience means fixing the code, validating it, and making it ADA compliant.
Plugins and overlays add friction to the user experience that wouldn't be there had the site been coded correctly.
These plugins and overlays always create a bad user experience because they always slow a site down.
Overlays are scripts hosted on third-party sites.
If their site is slow to load, off line or any number of problems you have no control over it and your site isn't going to work correctly.
And because website speed is a ranking factor it's going to affect your rankings, sales, and traffic.
53% of people will leave if your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
You should also note that ad blockers sometimes block overlays.
They can check to make sure certain things are in the code but can't check to make sure that it is coded correctly.
For example an overlay can make sure you have headings but it can't make sure the headings are set up correctly.
They can make sure you have alt text but can't make sure the alt text is set up correctly.
Building and launching a website can be expensive.
A small website can cost you $5,000.00 or more. But fines and lawsuits can run you $100,000.00 or more and you can get sued over and over again until you fix the site.
Not having an ADA compliant website means you're turning away a lot of people.
In 2010, 8.1 million Americans were considered blind or unable to see, 7.6 million Americans had difficulty hearing, and 19.9 million people had difficulty lifting or grasping objects like a touch screen, trackpad or computer mouse.
As Baby Boomers retire, this number is on the rise.
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