Expertise In Web Accessibility

We offer expertise in web accessibility and digital technology.

Is Your Website Accessible? Do You Risk Liability? Don’t Wait For a Lawsuit – Be Proactive, and Let ADA Expertise Consulting, LLC Help You

When the ADA was passed, in 1990, customers had to enter a store to buy something. Today, of course, customers use the Internet to shop, and to learn about the programs, services, and activities of state and local governments. Even when a customer with a disability encounters a barrier when entering a business or government building, they can often still find what they need on the web. But what if the website poses problems? What if a customer who is blind uses a screen reader, and the website has PDFs which are not accessible? What if information is inaccessible because of the way the website was coded?

Do you know if your website is in compliance with the federal Section 508 Standards and the Web Content Accessibility Standards (WCAG) 2.0 A/AA – the two most popular web accessibility standards? Failing to consider the accessibility features of your website could lose customers, lead to litigation or federal enforcement, damage your reputation, and result in considerable financial costs.

Just ask Target Corporation, which paid $6 million in damages to the National Federation of the Blind because their website was inaccessible to people with vision disabilities. Private plaintiffs aren't the only ones enforcing the law – the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has successfully sued dozens of state and local governments and private businesses for having inaccessible websites. These are risks that no business, and no state or local government, should have to face, especially when it is relatively easy to avoid them.

ADA Expertise Consulting, LLC , founded by former Justice Department attorney Marc Dubin, can help you identify problems with your website, and help you fix them. We can help you identify your priorities, and help you address the problems.

We partner with other ADA experts, including internationally recognized experts in PDF accessibility, web accessibility, and other digital issues.

Inaccessible PDFs:

 

Our associated experts are fully conversant with all relevant legislation including Section 508 and the ADA, and have expertise in the latest in technical standards, including ISO 32000-1 and ISO 14289-1 (PDF/UA), as well as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0 and 2.1).

Our affiliated experts are active technical contributors to the ISO 32000 and ISO 14289-1 PDF/UA standards committees and  They ensure all of their solutions comply with the latest international legislation and standards.

Even if you have had a previous assessment of your website, you should consider having it reviewed by ADA Expertise Consulting, LLC. Our affiliated experts have developed efficiencies and proprietary techniques that exceed those available in Microsoft Office, Adobe InDesign or Adobe Acrobat. We review each document throughout its remediation process to ensure conformance with WCAG 2.0 AA, the guidance referred to in the AODA Information and Communications Standard, and ISO 14289-1 PDF/UA, guidelines specific to PDF accessibility and use an automated testing tool together with manual review to ensure each document is compliant.

ADA Expertise Consulting, LLC, in collaboration with our affiliated experts, will work with your IT staff or web developer to identify inaccessible PDFs, and assist you in addressing the problems identified. We use the only PDF service provider who has fully implemented PDF/UA, and therefore will comply with all PDF/UA and WCAG 2.0 Level AA success criteria in multiple languages which meet or exceed all requirements detailed under the ADA. This will ensure the templates meet all relevant standards going forward.

The process used also includes testing on multiple types and versions of screen readers including JAWS and NVDA, to ensure accuracy, barrier free navigability, and backwards compatibility, and most importantly to us and your end users, the ease of access to all content, the way you and your authors intended. Our affiliated expert and his team are viewed as the leader in PDF accessibility services by their clients, the industry and end users due to their technical capabilities, fair pricing, exceptional service and their focus on the achieving the best possible end-user experience. All PDFs made accessible by our affiliated expert and his team maintain the same layout – the physical appearance of the document is not altered. Changes to the documents are limited to code structure and metadata required to satisfy accessibility requirements.

We employ and engage people with vision loss for input on the challenges they encounter with varying content and document formats to ensure they are aware of their challenges and address those challenges in their solutions.

Inaccessible Coding

Inaccessible PDFs are often only part of the problem. Often, developers fail to code the site properly, and fail to put the proper tags on websites, rendering portions of the websites inaccessible to screen readers. This results in users who are blind missing parts of your website. ADA Expertise Consulting can also assist you with this problem.

The process we use to evaluate a website is straightforward, and designed to assess compliance with the federal Section 508 Standards and the Web Content Accessibility Standards (WCAG) 2.0 A/AA – the two most popular web accessibility standards.

We spend about an hour discussing the key functionality of your website, using a web-based conferencing tool (e.g., Go To Meeting) while we record the session. This gives us an approximation of the number of steps to be tested and forms the basis for our quote.

Once you approve the quote, we will then review those steps, using assistive technology and automated testing tools, and provide you with a confidential written report of all the errors found, and walk you and your team through our findings. This gives your developers actionable data they can use to make your website fully accessible.

We can also build you an accessible website that complies with WCAG and the ADA. This would require a conversation and review of your website to determine the scope of the work, after which we would provide you with a quote for the services.

The cost of these services is surprisingly affordable, depending upon the scope of the review, and depending upon the number of pages and complexity of your website. Contact us for pricing.

Other Digital Issues We Can Address:

Is your organization thinking about deploying a mobile app to make it easier to engage with your customers or constituents? Do you use digital kiosks at your facilities to help customers or constituents obtain information or services? We can help you to assess the accessibility of these services.

Absent a proper assessment, individuals with disabilities may have difficulty accessing the mobile apps and digital kiosks, and you may have legal liability. Our team has the expertise to help you. We perform evaluations of each of these technologies, and can recommend ways to address the problems.

Has your site been sued? Contact us.

For further information, or to schedule a consultation, contact us.