11 Easy Steps To Web Accessibility Compliance

Here are our 11 easy steps to ADA  508 Compliance:

If you follow these 11 steps to compliance with your website. You will be well on your way to being Section 508 compliant.

  1. Make sure all images on your site have alt-text tags – People using screen readers don’t see images, so make sure that the alt-text of each image is descriptive – especially if the image contains text.
  2. Make sure that each field in every form on your site is properly labelled – Without labels, forms will not be viewable on screen readers.
  3. Make sure your site can be navigated using only a keyboard – Not everyone uses a touchpad or mouse, so make sure that there aren’t any features on your site which requires them.
  4. You must make sure that all videos you create have a manuscript for the Closed Captions. Also, provide an Audio transcribing for non-audio videos or animations.
  5. The color of any given content cannot be the only indication of value or what it is.
  6. There have to be flexible time limits associated with the website or software.
  7. Always include a skip navigation link or something equivalent, so the user can bypass repetitive content.
  8. Input errors by the user must be identified and described in the text to the user.
  9. Make sure your font size is at least 18+.
  10.  Ensure that your contrast is at least 3:1 for links and 4.5:1 for all other content.
  11. Make sure that all of your link texts are descriptive.

 

I will show you what the [Level AAA] section 508 Compliance recommendations are on this page.

If you want to see the other 2 levels of ADA Section 508 Compliance Recommendations are, then click one of these links Level A requirements for section 508 and Level AA requirements for Section 508. Put all 3 posts together to get the full Section 508 Compliance Checklist.

When we first learned about the ADA Section 508 (WCAG 2.0) Compliance Requirements we could not find the information that we needed anywhere on the web. Then, when we did find a snippet of information, the requirements where unclear and it was very hard to understand. But after being in this space and going to a lot of conferences and meetings for the last few years. We have been able to gain a ton of insight into these issues of internet exclusion.

 

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We decided some of the best things we could do for web accessibility was to:

  1. Gather as much useful information we could find and make an ADA Section 508 Compliance Checklist.
  2. Display it in a very clear way to developers so they can better understand.
  3. This way they can implement these Section 508 recommendations into their website or software processes much easier.
  4. Over time we believe this will help the 100’s of millions of users who have a disability use the internet.

A baby checking the internet for a 508 Compliance Checklist

 

They give us 3 different levels of ADA Section 508 Compliance (WCAG 2.0)

  • Level A: This level of compliance is the bare minimum you need to have any chance of being within the  Section 508 compliance perimeters. This is not going to give the end user the experience they deserve.
  • Level AA: This is the sweet spot! At this level, your site satisfies all the very important Section 508 Compliance recommendations. This is the perfect mix of great end-user experience and not too hard or expensive for the independent developer or large agency to comply with.
  • Level AAA: This is the highest level of Section 508 compliance you can have. This delivers a great end-user experience. But these recommendations are a bit more challenging to get done. We suggest aiming for the Level AAA recommendations but accept no less than the Level AA recommendations.

One of the main sources of information we use to build out this ADA Section 508 compliance Checklist is the United States Access Board. We highly encourage you to go check out these recommendations for yourself. This way you have all of the information available for Section 508 guidelines.

I will try to explain the recommendations better for you than the US Access Board does. This way you can better understand and implement these Section 508 Guidelines.

 ADA Section 508 (WCAG 2.0) Compliance Guidelines [Level AAA]

At this time there are no Level AAA recommendations suggested to us. I have included this article because the United States Access Board does say that there are Level AAA guidelines coming in future iterations of the ADA Section 508 Compliance guidelines.

There currently is no Level AAA recommendations.

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