10 Web Accessibility Examples for ADA Compliance
- Understanding ADA Website Compliance and Requirements
- 1. Create Visual Impact With High Contrast
- 2. Take Control With the Keyboard
- 3. Leave a Trail of Breadcrumbs
- 4. Suggest Corrections if Users Get It Wrong
- 5. Let Users Scale Text to Their Needs
- 6. Paint a Clearer Picture With Alt Text
- 7. Let People Pause Scrolling Content
- 8. Set the Tone With a Table of Contents
- 9. Use the Correct HTML Tags To Identify Headings
- 10. Write Compelling (and Accurate) Page Titles
- ADA-Compliance Testing: Find Out How Accessible Your Site Is
10 Accessible and ADA-Compliant Website Examples
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Originally Posted December 13, 2023
An accessible website works for everyone, particularly those with disabilities. The concept promotes inclusivity and ensures everyone has equal access to digital environments. Plus, an accessible website helps to protect you from litigation.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), organizations cannot discriminate against individuals with disabilities in public accommodations, including online spaces. The ADA requires organizations to create accessible digital content that follows the standards included in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or risk legal consequences.
The good news is that creating a website that is both ADA-compliant and visually stunning is doable. Below, we’ll show you 10 examples of ADA-compliant websites created by various organizations.
Before we look at accessible UX design examples, a quick review of what makes a website ADA-compliant.
Understanding ADA Website Compliance and Requirements
The ADA requires organizations to follow the technical standards included in WCAG to be considered compliant. These guidelines help to ensure web content is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (known as the POUR principles). Following these principles help organizations create a better, more accessible experience for individuals with disabilities.
More simply, organizations need to ensure content is accessible by and accommodating to users with disabilities. To ensure your website is compliant with the ADA, it should include the following:
- Well-written alt-tags for all images, videos, and audio files
- Clear and accurate transcripts for video and audio content
- Up-to-date site language in header code
- Text alternatives when users experience input errors
- Consistent, organized layout that promotes readability
- Follow proper color contrast ratio recommendations and accessible color palettes
Though this is not an exhaustive list, these capabilities do help people with disabilities interact with web content to their specific preferences (you can find a more exhaustive list of WCAG criteria here).
For example, users with low vision or other visual impairments can increase font size or change color schemes to their preferences. Multiple navigation options, including keyboard navigation, provide users with multiple ways in which to navigate your site. Both practices ensure users have equal access to your content.
10 Websites that are ADA-Compliant
1. Scope: Create Visual Impact with High Contrast
Scope proves that businesses don’t need to sacrifice a slick brand identity to meet requirements for color contrast ratios. According to WCAG Success Criterion 1.4.3: Contrast (minimum), the minimum contrast ratio is 4.5:1. Scope’s site has a high color contrast ratio of 9.66:1 between its logo and page background, exceeding what’s required by WCAG. Because of this, it’s much easier for users with visual impairments or color blindness to distinguish between various web elements.
Curious about your brand’s accessibility? Use our free color contrast checker to see if your brand colors meet the latest WCAG requirements.
2. BBC News: Take Control with the Keyboard
WCAG Success Criterion 2.1.1: Keyboard requires all websites to be operable with the use of a keyboard alone. The BBC News Website is an excellent example of how to implement this functionality while still providing a good user experience. For example, users can hit the ‘Tab’ button on their keyboard and cycle through every element on the page without needing a mouse. The site also features a clear, easily distinguishable focus element, letting users know exactly where they are on the page.
This capability is particularly useful for users with limited mobility or difficulty with fine motor control. They can maneuver through the BBC website via a keyboard emulator such as speech input software, sip-and-puff software, on-screen keyboards, and more.
4. Metropolitan Transportation Authority: Suggest Corrections if Users Get it Wrong
In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has created a responsive search experience that makes it easier for users to find information. The search function still provides relevant search results even if information is spelled incorrectly or in the wrong format.
For example, if an address is spelled incorrectly, the search bar can provide suggested addresses beneath the search bar. These recommendations ensure users can find information and get to where they want to go — even if they’ve misspelled words or entered the wrong information.
5. RNID: Let Users Scale Text to Their Needs
Small text can be a big hurdle for low-vision users. To overcome this issue, RNID, a national charity for hearing loss, enables users to scale text size up to 300% without disrupting the user experience.
This ensures low-vision users can still read content without losing any content or functionality. It also fulfills WCAG Success Criterion 1.4.4 Resize text guidelines which require text to be resized without assistive technology up to 200% without impacting the user experience.
6. National Federation of the Blind: Paint a Clearer Picture With Alt Text
In the United States, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) highlights some of the best practices around using alternative text (also known as alt text). Alt text is a written description of an image that screen readers can read out loud or convert to Braille. To help organizations create high-quality alt text, the Web Accessibility Initiative’s alt text decision tree provides best practices for alt text.
The NFB’s website includes short, descriptive, and evocative alt text that’s also relevant to the surrounding context of the page, fulfilling WCAG Success Criterion 1.1.1: Non-Text Content. Because the site contains such well-written alt text, individuals who use assistive technologies can understand the entire content of a page, making the site more accessible and usable to people with disabilities.
7. BMW: Let People Pause Scrolling Content
To ensure users with low vision or cognitive disabilities don’t get distracted by content, BMW’s homepage includes a way to pause scrolling content. This functionality allows BMW to fulfill WCAG Success Criterion 2.2.2 Pause, Stop Hide recommendation and increases users’ concentration.
Additionally, this enables web developers to fit a lot of information on a page without users getting overwhelmed. Take BMW’s carousel for example. Users can pause the scrolling carousel and consume content before moving on to the next slide.
8. Wikipedia: Set the Tone with a Table of Contents
Wikipedia is a prime example of how a table of contents can streamline the browsing experience. The site has more than 6.5 million English pages, but enables users to navigate through web pages within a set of pages via a clickable table of contents.
This approach also satisfies WCAG Success Criterion 2.4.5: Multiple Ways which recommends providing users more than one way to locate a web page within a series of web pages. Essentially, the idea is to provide users with more than one way to locate content to choose the best way for them.
10. World Wide Web Consortium: Write Compelling (and Accurate) Page Titles
As you’d expect, the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) website demonstrates some of the best practices for page titles. Each page title is concise, yet descriptive, and gives users a clear idea of what the page is about. For example, page titles such as ‘Planning and Policies Overview’ and ‘Web Accessibility Laws and Policies’ are clear and concise, helping users more easily decide if the page has the information they’re looking for. This is particularly beneficial for those who rely on assistive technologies to navigate the web.
ADA-Compliance Testing: Find Out How Accessible Your Site Is
Creating an accessible, ADA-compliant website doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your existing digital content. Adding accessibility features like alt text, proper heading structure, captions for videos, and maintaining appropriate color contrast all enhance the accessibility of your content — and get you closer to ADA compliance.
To help you get started in finding and fixing accessibility issues, there’s AudioEye. We start with a free accessibility scan that finds common accessibility errors that our Automated Accessibility Platform can automatically fix. We go a step further, supplementing our automated testing with expert testing overseen by our team of human experts and individuals from the disability community. With additional accessibility tools like our Color Contrast Checker, Developer Tools, and Accessibility Training, you can find and fix accessibility issues and create compliant, inclusive, and usable digital content.
See how accessible your existing content is — enter the URL of your digital content below to get a free accessibility scan.
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