Website accessibility requirements: a guide to ADA and WCAG

Website accessibility is no longer just an ethical issue. It is now an operational risk and a competitive advantage. Users with disabilities are a part of your audience, and an inaccessible website means losing customers, fines in certain jurisdictions, and reputational risks. In this article – – we’ll give you a brief and practical overview of what ADA and WCAG are, how they differ, what key requirements to implement first, and how to organize your work so that accessibility becomes part of the development process.

ADA as a legal basis for business accessibility

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a US civil law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities and applies to services available to the public, including digital services. Although the text of the law does not contain technical criteria specifically for the web, case law and guidance documents from the Department of Justice encourage organizations to focus on generally accepted accessibility standards.

WCAG: what an accessible website looks like in practice

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a set of technical recommendations from the W3C that describe how to make web content more accessible. WCAG is organized around 4 principles:

• Perceivable;
• Operable;
• Understandable;
• Robust.

The success criteria have three levels of compliance: A, AA and AAA.

The latest WCAG 2.1/2.2 updates added a number of success criteria aimed at improving mobile accessibility, supporting users with visual impairments, cognitive difficulties, and limited motor skills. For example:

• Reflow (re-flow of content when resizing the window);
• Non-text Contrast (contrast of important interface elements, not just text);
• Focus Not Obscured / Focus Appearance (the keyboard focus should not be obscured and be visible);
• Target Size (minimum size of interactive targets for clicking);
• Accessible Authentication / Redundant Entry (accessible ways to log in and avoid re-entering data).

These additions make WCAG recommendations more practical for mobile scenarios and people with sensory, cognitive, and motor limitations.

How ADA differs from WCAG

ADA is a law that requires services to be accessible, but does not provide technical checklists in the text of the law. And WCAG is a technical standard (W3C recommendation) with clear success criteria that are used as a practical check for compliance and as a benchmark in court practice and tenders.

In applied terms, lawyers and courts often refer to WCAG as a reference standard when assessing whether a website has been «accessible» in practice. Therefore, the right combination for a business is to follow WCAG (at least AA) as a technical implementation and to document processes to demonstrate ADA compliance.

Key technical requirements

Let’s consider a basic set of technical requirements that provide the greatest coverage of WCAG criteria and give a quick practical effect without a significant increase in budget. These elements should be considered the technical minimum for most commercial websites.

1. Alternative texts for significant images.

All images that convey information or perform a function, such as infographics, button icons, or illustrations with instructions, should have correct alt attributes that convey meaning rather than describe the visual form. Decorative elements should be marked with alt=« « so that they are ignored by screen readers. In practice, this means checking the most visited pages and eliminating critical gaps first.

2. Keyboard navigation and visible focus.

All interactive elements of the interface, such as links, buttons, form fields, and widgets, should be accessible via the keyboard. The focus should be clearly visible and not get lost in the design. This is critical for users who don’t use a mouse, as well as for people with motor skills disorders.

3. Color contrast for text and interface.

Text, icons, and key controls should meet minimum contrast ratios (WCAG level AA). Insufficient contrast directly affects readability and accessibility, especially for people with visual impairments or when using mobile devices in bright light.

4. Semantic markup and correct form field labels.

The correct use of semantic HTML elements (h1-h6, nav, main, form) and correctly linked form field labels (label) allow crawlers to correctly interpret the page structure. ARIA roles should be used only for dynamic components when standard semantics are not enough.

5. Accessibility of media content.

Videos should have subtitles and the ability to control playback (pause, volume). Audio content requires text transcripts. This provides access to information for users with hearing impairments and cognitive barriers.

6. Logic of focus and avoidance of «keyboard traps».

The focus should move logically according to the page structure. Modal windows and interactive widgets should allow the user to exit them using the keyboard, and after closing them, return the focus to the element that initiated the action.

7. Manual testing and checking with screen readers.

Automated tools can help identify basic errors, but only manual testing and testing with screen readers and real users can give a complete picture. It is at this stage that problems that directly affect UX are identified.

How to implement accessibility on your website: a step-by-step plan

Implementing accessibility is not a one-time interface edit, but a managed process that is integrated into product development. Let’s analyze the sequence of actions that allows you to move from quick improvements to a stable long-term practice.

Conduct a combined audit

Start with an automatic scan to quickly identify common errors, and then supplement it with a manual check of key pages. Identify 10-20 priority URLs (home, product card, order form, payment) and record the results in the form of a list of problems with priorities and effort estimates.

Eliminate critical barriers first

After the audit, close the top 5 issues that have the greatest impact on accessibility and UX. Specific technical actions, such as alt-texts, contrast, focus, semantics, and media, are implemented as described in the Key Technical Requirements section.

Integrate accessibility into workflows

To prevent bugs from returning, make accessibility part of standard processes: add relevant criteria to the Definition of Done, include accessible patterns in the design system, and prepare basic test scenarios for QA. This reduces technical debt and simplifies scaling.

Conduct testing with real users

For key funnels, involve 3-5 users with different types of constraints. Even short sessions allow you to identify problems that are not visible from analytics or autotests and adjust the priorities of fixes.

Record results and set up monitoring

Document changes, save test results, and keep a version log. For external partners or large customers, prepare an accessibility compliance report (ACR). Regular post-release monitoring will help you spot regressions in time.

Train your teams

Accessibility is not just the responsibility of developers. Short internal trainings for designers, marketers, copywriters, and support reduce the number of errors at the stage of content and communication creation.

Why businesses benefit from investing in accessibility

Investing in accessibility has not only an ethical but also a clearly measurable practical value for businesses. First and foremost, it reduces risks: in countries and jurisdictions with a strict regulatory approach to digital accessibility, non-compliance leads to claims, fines, and legal fees. Proactive work with accessibility helps to avoid such scenarios and reduce legal uncertainty in the future.

The second important aspect is expanding the audience. An accessible website becomes convenient for a much wider range of users, including people with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive disabilities. This directly affects the potential traffic volume, the number of interactions and sales, without requiring additional costs to attract new channels.

The combined effect on SEO and user experience is of particular value. Semantic markup, logical page structure, correct focus handling, and loading speed are equally important for both search engines and real users. Removing barriers often leads to increased conversion rates, reduced bounce rates, and improved behavioral metrics.

The reputation factor is no less important. Companies that systematically implement accessibility are perceived as responsible and mature brands, which increases the trust of customers, partners, and investors in the long run.

The key is that each of these effects can be measured. All of these indicators should be included in business cases and used to justify investments in accessibility in future releases and product development strategies.

Olha Tyshchenko

Editor

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