[UPDATE: Our New Platform is ADA Compliant with the WCAG Standards and You Should Upgrade Immediately]
In the last few months clients have had a growing paranoia about a growing number of ADA lawsuits (Americans with Disabilities Act) for website accessibility. There have been reports of "serial plaintiffs" (driven by profiteering lawyers) filing hundreds of lawsuits against small businesses in order to extort settlements. These lawsuits have generally not been filed in good faith by disabled persons truly prevented from accessing services (they could call to receive service if they wanted), most likely are not valid against most marketing focused websites, and most are likely not defensible in court (see below), but the fear alone urges businesses to settle, which prevents clear precedent from being established.
To be absolutely clear, Website Accessibility for disabled persons is very important. It's not only legally required (in some cases), it is morally correct, and it's also in the interest of every organization and business to provide services to all people equally.
But ADA compliance is a super complex issue. It's not clearly required for all websites a priori, theoretically still undetermined by vague laws and conflicting court interpretations in different jurisdictions, e.g. in some places only those providing a "service" online or with a "nexus" to a physical space.
Furthermore the standards themselves are very vague, the ADA does not specify rules like they do for physical buildings (e.g. dimensions of door width, ramps, etc). California courts seem to imply that it's enough to follow the Web Content Accessibility "Guidelines" but federal guidelines have not specified. And these guidelines are also very vague, leaving a lot of room for interpretations, e.g. how much contrast is "enough" for colorblind people, or which images need "alt tags" (if images are for visual reference only and not important for navigation or providing services), or how many missing labels constitutes a punishable violation.
And websites have thousands of unique interactive pieces, using hundreds of third party libraries, they must be responsive for thousands of devices, and display dynamic content produced by each business (who are themselves responsible for correctly naming/labeling their content and images for disabled individuals). And the layers of technology are not well understood by the legal system (or legislators that make laws) so enforcement is done ignorantly, without a sense of the complexity or costs. Thus the burden and cost for small businesses is much much higher proportionally.
Furthermore there does not exist a website or platform that is 100% ADA compliant, it's not possible because of the vagueness of the law and constantly evolving technology. Bigger companies have more resources to attempt to comply, and more importantly they have lawyers to defend them (which make themselves harder targets). And certainly no website platform will indemnify a client against a lawsuit, because lawsuits can happen whether or not a good faith effort is put in.
Consult a Lawyer
If you are concerned about ADA compliance (and you should be), you need to consult the advice of a lawyer. Be aware of course that lawyers are "risk averse" and will always tell you to avoid all risk (it costs them nothing to give a long list of recommendations, because you are the one that must pay to implement them). So you'll have to figure out what is "good enough" (what is legally required, what is morally right, and what is defensible in court and at what cost).
Simplify and Rebuild Compliant
You should immediately rebuild a simple MVP version of your website that is accessible to all visitors. Even just one simple landing page, like many startups have, can promotes your brand, services, and contact information, but has no special functionality that would not be accessible to the disabled. This could be setup in a couple days. Then a more full site can be built out on our new 2.0 platform, and we can make sure that each new page/feature is ADA compliant with more time for testing before launching. On the new platform any non compliance issues will be fixed by our team for free (as quick as possible).
If you need help, please schedule an hour paid consultation with our team so that we can help get you on the path to compliance. Once the new website is setup, we can help you get it analyzed by a third party service and any well-defined compliance issues that are due to failures of the platform will be done for free. But any that are more vague or custom design related, could result in the need for further customizations in your particular case.
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If you want to talk more about this, please contact our support team to arrange a paid consultation to discuss options.