What's the Difference Between ADA Compliant and ADA Certified?

ADAcompliance is complex and difficult. Having been in business for over ten years, we try our best to answer any questions our clients have. Everybody mustfollow the Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines that have been established by the Department of Justice. Any business or commercial property that is open to the public, must make reasonable accommodation of their public accommodations.

However, even these laws have gotten more complicated as the DOJ ruled that digital properties, such as websites and mobile applications are also required to be ADA compliant!  But how is that possible when the rules were written for parking lots, public restrooms and hotel restrooms?

Welcome to the challenging and legally risky world of digital ADA compliance!

Having worked in this field for over ten years, we have heard all kinds of questions about what it means to be ADA compliant. One of the most common questions is: what is the difference between being ADA compliant and ADA certified? Keep reading to learn how to protect your business from serial litigants while improving accessibility for everyone.

Difference between ADA Compliance and Certification

There is no formal ADA certification for websites or digital properties. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was written long before the internet became what it is today. However, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has clarified that digital properties like websites and mobile apps must comply with ADA requirements by ensuring accessibility for individuals with disabilities.

You probably want to know what ADA compliance means. It means your digital assets meet accessibility standards. While the ADA does not have specific digital guidelines, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have become the recognized gold standard for achieving compliance. Meet WCAG standards, and your website is accessible. Also, compliance minimizes your risk of legal trouble. You can say that WCAG compliance is the path to ADA compliance.

Key WCAG Accessibility Features You Need

The main elements your website needs to meet WCAG standards and achieve ADA compliance are:

• Alt text for images: Use alt text descriptions for images to convey their purpose so that blind or low vision users will     also have an understanding of the images you are conveying.
• Keyboard accessibility: Provide keyboard accessibility for navigation so that users who can’t physically maneuver a     mouse, can use keyboards to toggle through a website.
• Clear language: Write content in easy to understand language so everyone can follow along.
• Color contrast: Use sufficient color contrast between text and background so that people with limited vision or color blindness can read.
• Text cues: Avoid relying solely on color to convey information. Use text labels or patterns as additional cues.
• Video captions: Include synchronized captions that are accurate and identify any speakers in the video.
• Online forms: Use clear labels, keyboard access, and clear instructions.
• Text size and zoom capability: Allow people with vision disabilities to increase the font size.

These features help ensure that all users including those with disabilities can access your website effectively. Implementing these standards protects you from legal risks tied to ADA non-compliance.

Why Digital ADA Compliance Matters

ADA compliance makes your business inclusive for everyone. Retail stores, restaurants and even online businesses are open to the public. So, these businesses mus tprovide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. This includes ensuring your digital spaces are accessible.

Failing to comply can result in costly lawsuits, especially with the rise of serial litigants targeting businesses with inaccessible websites. Reports indicate that the top ten plaintiff law firms including Mars Khaimov Law PLLC and Stein Saks PLLC were responsible for over 80% of all digital accessibility lawsuits in2023. This concentration of litigation activity highlights how a small group of firms and plaintiffs are aggressively pursuing businesses with non-compliant digital assets. Hence, companies must address accessibility issues proactively and avoid becoming targets.

How to Get Your Website ADA Compliant

You must align your digital assets with WCAG standards to protect your business and provide a better user experience for all your customers. Getting your digital assets compliant does not feel overwhelming if you follow this step by step plan.

• Audit Your Website: Startwith a comprehensive accessibility audit. This will identify areas where your website doesn’t meet WCAG standards.
• Work with Experts: Hire accessibility professionals who understand the nuances of WCAG and ADA compliance. They will guide you through the process and help minimize risks.
• Remediate Issues: Based on the audit, fix accessibility barriers on your website. This could include adding alt text, improving navigation, or fixing color contrast issues.
• Test Regularly: Do routine scans for your website to ensure ongoing compliance as content changes and updates are made.
• Document Your Efforts: Keep records of your compliance work. If a lawsuit arises, this documentation can show that you have made good-faith efforts to meet accessibility standards.

ADACP: Your Digital Accessibility Team

For over ten years, we have been protecting businesses from ADA lawsuits by providing expert guidance on making their websites and other digital properties accessible.

1.  First off, we will meet with you and your team to review your current accessibility plans, discuss your ADA compliance requirements and strategize on how to minimize lawsuit exposure and improve your accessibility.

2.  From there, we assign an accessibility project manager who will oversee the testing of your website to determine what is and isn’t ADA compliant.

3.  We will then support you through remediation to fix the WCAG errors and get the website compliant.

We save you the expense and risk of legal problems and keep your digital business running strong.

ADA compliance is an opportunity to make your business more inclusive anduser-friendly. Act now to address accessibility barriers and avoid lawsuits. Further more ,investing in ADA compliance can also open your doors to a broader audience.

Reach out today to discuss how our digital accessibility experts can help you. The ADA is not just about your place of business in the real world. It extends into digital as well. So, choose us and create a more accessible, legally compliant digital presence.

FREQUENTLYASKED QUESTIONS

ADA Compliant vs. ADA Certified

And at least once a week, as we review ADA requirements with our clients, they ask us what is the specific difference between a property being ADA Certified and ADA compliant. They are indeed different things and require differing accessibility requirements for people with disabilities to have safe accommodations as cited in Title III by the Department of Justice to determined ADA certification.

It is the obligation of a property or business owner to make every reasonable accommodation to their property to get it ADA compliant. This ADA training certification program is a crucial responsibility to running a business or owning a commercial property. While an ADA expert can be retained to conduct an access inspection and help you with this ADA program, it takes focus, commitment and investment to carry the process through to the end. However, there are big risks to not committing to an ADA training certification program.

For years, ADA lawsuits were coined “drive-by lawsuits” as enough info could be gleaned from driving past without ever getting out of the car. However, serial litigants are leaving the car in the garage and simply hopping on the computer. With Google Earth having visually captured all of California (and the entire globe for that matter!) we are now seeing lawsuits being filed by use of this new technology. You can now zoom in close enough to a property to survey the exterior and determine if it appears compliant. In many cases, our clients prove that the plaintiff never set foot on their property, but with the non-compliant issues verified, the lawsuits stand, and thousands of dollars are lost.

What ADA Compliance and ADA Certification actually mean:

ADA Compliance: Your property is compliant with all accessibility requirements for Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This means you have gone through a detailed process of a CASp certification program, have reviewed your accessibility requirements of your public accommodations as designated by your ADA coordinator, implemented the changes of your ADA requirements to bring the property up to compliance and had your ADA coordinator re-inspect your property to ensure your requirements have been met. Once your ADA requirements have been verified to be fully compliant, a CASp will issue a letter stating that your property meets "All Applicable Standards." This is the ultimate protections for ADA requirements and is actually much more impactful than getting your property certified. One might say this is the gold standard for ADA accessibility and how to best protect yourself from an ADA lawsuit.

ADA Certification: By hiring a an ADA expert to conduct an ADA inspection to verify if your ADA requirements are up to code, you will get a certification stating that you have had your property inspected. This ADA certification program is a crucial element to ensuring you are up to the required accessibility requirements, but this certification program, is not the be-all-end-all of ADA compliance. In fact, this ADA certification program, as a stand-alone is incomplete and leaves you exposed for a possible ADA lawsuit.

Don't Forget Your Website!:

Just as a commercial property can be sued for not being accessible, so can a commercial website. A website is legally viewed as a public accommodation and under Title III, any public accommodation must be fully compliant. Serial litigants are now targeting websites for ADA lawsuits, and from Dominos Pizza, to the mom and pop by-the-slice around the corner, every commercial website is at risk of getting hit. The threat is real and only getting worse. You must have your web site development team work with your existing website to ensure it is ADA compliant.

Fortunately, much of the process of defending such website lawsuits is similar to defending a commercial property lawsuit. The serial litigants are almost uniformly identical – looking aggressively toward a quick settlement, and in a similar way that an access report (CASp Report) plays a crucial role in resolving the law suit, so does getting a live audit conducted on the website so that a web developer can ensure it is accessible for all. Once a website is verified to be compliant, the training certification program, by an expert can verify your website to be compliant.