Making the Online World More Accessible for Persons with Disabilities

Americans with Disabilities Act is a US civil rights law prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities. First enacted in 1990, protections are created in the areas of employment, government services, public transit, telecommunication, and more. As of the early 2000s, ADA compliance also applies to web content that serves the functions outlined in the Act. In other words, businesses in a variety of sectors need to make sure that their business’s presence on the web - ranging from customer service to ADA Compliant Video - is non discriminatory of people with disabilities.

Not all businesses are required to comply with the ADA, but it’s important to evaluate whether or not you business is required to comply. There are several sections under which a business falls under that requires ADA compliance, including

• Title I - Employers: applies to businesses with 15 or more employees

• Title II - State and Local Government Services: applies to all government activities regardless of the existence of government funding

• Title III - Public Accommodations: applies to places open to the public, commercial facilities, private location that offer courses and examinations, and private entities that provide transportation

• Title IV - Transportation: applies to public transportation like city busses

• Title V - Telecommunications: requires phone services to have 24/7 assistive relay services

If your business falls under any of these categories, you must make sure that your website and web content is ADA compliant. We’ll get to the steps you can take to reach ADA compliance shortly, but first, we want to outline the risks your business takes for being non-compliant.

What You Can do to Make Your Content ADA Compliant

Where to Look for Help in Becoming ADA Compliant

The primary step in creating ADA compliant video includes the use of closed captioning, allowing hearing impaired persons to be included in the messages shared by your company. Large video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo have features that make your videos accessible, but their features are often insufficient in providing the intelligible, accurate transcription of your video This means that relying solely on these features to reach ADA compliance is ineffective and still leaves your business at risk for not complying to ADA video compliance standard.

If you plan on making your videos ADA compliant - which we highly suggest - here are some tips for making your video compliant:

• Time your captions to synchronize with the audio

• Do not allow captions to cover necessary graphics in the video

• Used Helvetica Medium for easy readership

• Cap your captions at 32 character per line

• Include music, laughter, and sound effect descriptions

• Denote various speakers with different font colors or callouts

These steps, depending on the length and volume of your web content, can be time consuming for your business, especially if you’ve outsourced your video content creation and it was not in your contract to create ADA compliant videos.