What an ADA compliant website means

What the ADA is, and why websites come up

The Americans with Disabilities Act is a United States civil rights law. It says people with disabilities must be able to use the things a business offers the public. Courts and regulators have treated websites as one of those things.

The law itself does not contain a checklist for web pages. That gap is why people ask what compliant means and get different answers. This page is not legal advice. If you need to know your own obligations, ask a lawyer who knows your state and your trade.

WCAG is the yardstick people use

With no checklist in the law, people reach for the one that exists. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG 2.2 at level AA, is what courts, agencies and accessibility firms tend to point to.

It is a published standard with concrete tests. Can the page be used with a keyboard alone. Does every image have a text alternative. Does the text have enough contrast. The WCAG page walks through its four principles.

AA is the middle of three levels, and the one most people mean when they say accessible. Level A is the floor, and AAA is stricter and rarely asked of a business site.

What accessible looks like on a real page

Take a service page for a plumber. A person using a screen reader lands on it and hears the main heading first, then jumps heading by heading to the part they want. Each form field is announced with its label, not as an unnamed edit box.

A person who cannot use a mouse tabs through the page and can see where they are. A person with low vision zooms in and the text reflows instead of running off the screen. A person who sees color poorly can still read the button, because the contrast passes.

None of that is exotic. It is the page doing what a page is supposed to do, for everyone who opens it.

What the builder does on every page

Headings in order, one main heading per page. A label on every form field. Text and background contrast that passes the published standard. Links whose text makes sense on its own.

And a check that runs before anything publishes. Every page is validated against Google Search Essentials and modern web standards, and a page that fails does not publish. The in-app assistant says why.

That is the structural half. It is the half a machine can see, and it is done on every save rather than once a year when someone remembers.

What you do yourself

Alt text is a short description of an image for someone who cannot see it. Only you know whether the photo is your van, your team or a finished job. Say what is in the picture, plainly.

Plain words. A sentence a stranger can follow the first time is an accessibility feature, and it is genuinely useful to every reader in a hurry. The in-app assistant can rewrite anything you find stiff.

Any page you write yourself, and any legal page you upload, keeps the same duties. Headings in order, plain words, an honest description on each image.

What a check cannot see

A checker can tell an image has alt text. It cannot tell whether the alt text is true. It can tell a heading exists. It cannot tell whether the heading is honest about what follows.

So a clean report is a starting line, not a finish. Accessibility is a practice you keep, and the builder keeps the structural part for you on every save.

Be wary of anyone selling a badge that makes a site compliant overnight. A badge does not make a page usable. The page does.

When to talk to a lawyer

If you have received a demand letter, or you are in a trade with its own rules, talk to a lawyer. The same if you simply want to know where you stand. Nothing on this site is legal advice, and no builder can tell you what a court would decide.

What the builder can do is make sure the structure of every page is right before it goes live. Then that conversation is about your words rather than your code.