An ADA-compliant website is a legal necessity and strategic advantage for a financial advisor. While ADA compliance helps you avoid potential lawsuits, it can also expand your client base and enhance your firm’s reputation. With the digitalization of financial services, clients expect seamless online interactions. By making your website accessible, you demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity and ethical practices, which can attract and retain clients who value these principles.
What ADA Website Compliance Means For You
ADA website compliance refers to adherence to the Americans with Disabilities Act, ensuring that your website is accessible to individuals with disabilities. This includes making your site usable for those with visual, auditory, cognitive and mobility impairments. Lawsuits related to ADA non-compliance are becoming more prevalent, especially in the financial advisory industry, making it increasingly important to address these issues proactively. Key elements of an ADA-compliant website include:
- Perceivable: Content must be available to all senses. For example, images should have a text description (alt text), and audio or video should have transcripts.
- Operable: Users must be able to navigate the site using various methods, including keyboard-only access.
- Understandable: Information and user interface must be easy to comprehend and use.
- Robust: Content must be accessible across various devices and assistive technologies.
Understanding ADA Website Compliance Requirements
While some elements of ADA compliance are clear-cut, such as providing alt text for images or ensuring keyboard navigability, others can be more subjective. For instance, the guidelines for making content “understandable” and “robust” require a degree of interpretation and judgment.
Understandable: Information and user interfaces must be easy to comprehend and use. However, what is “understandable” can vary by user. For example, instructions that are clear to tech-savvy individuals may confuse those less familiar with technology. Advisors should emphasize simplicity, clear content structure and visual aids to enhance understanding.
Robust: Content must be accessible across various devices and assistive technologies. This means ensuring compatibility with different browsers, operating systems, screen readers and other tools. Robustness requires ongoing testing and updates to meet evolving technologies and standards.
Advisors could face issues if their compliance measures are insufficient. Many legal troubles stem from having no ADA compliance measures in place, but even existing programs must be evaluated for their effectiveness. This is because simply having a program isn’t enough — its implementation and the quality of the compliance measures matter significantly. For instance, if a website uses an automated tool to add alt text to images but the descriptions are not accurate or helpful, this could still be seen as non-compliant.
In essence, while some ADA compliance requirements are straightforward, others require continuous effort, interpretation, and a commitment to maintaining high accessibility standards. This complexity underscores the importance of thorough audits and expert guidance to ensure compliance measures are not only in place but also effective.
How We Keep Our Clients’ Websites ADA Compliant
To ensure our client’s websites are ADA-compliant, we implement several key features and practices using a streamlined process that is both cost-effective and high-quality. By using automated accessibility tools like accessiBe, we can quickly identify and fix accessibility issues, saving time and reducing costs. Other tools, such as WAVE and Axe, are also available and provide similar functionalities for reviewing a site’s accessibility compliance. Additionally, we conduct thorough audits of our clients’ websites to verify compliance with ADA standards. This includes detailed navigation assessments, content readability, alt text for images, video captioning and other necessary adjustments to meet legal requirements and enhance user accessibility.
Both the accessibility tool and our audit evaluate factors such as:
- Descriptions and Alt Tags: Use descriptive alt text to all images, videos and audio files. This allows screen readers to interpret these elements for visually impaired users, improving both accessibility and SEO (sear engine optimization).
- Descriptive Link Text: Use meaningful and descriptive text for hyperlinks while avoiding generic phrases like “click here” or “read more.” This helps screen reader users understand the links’ context and improves SEO.
- Readable Text and Clear Contrast: Use high-contrast color schemes and legible fonts to ensure text is easy to read. This benefits all users, particularly those with visual impairments or age-related vision loss.
- Accessible Forms: Forms should be designed to guide users with clear labels and cues. This includes placeholders and examples to help users understand what information is required.
- Closed Captions: Videos should include closed captions. This makes the content accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing and improves overall engagement and SEO.
- Navigation and Layout: Ensure that the website is easy to navigate with simple, intuitive layouts and clear instructions. This includes ensuring the site is operable via keyboard and responsive to screen readers.
By implementing these changes, our clients experience several significant benefits that underscore the strategic importance of ADA website compliance in modern digital business strategies:
- Mitigates the risk of ADA-related lawsuits, protecting from potential legal challenges.
- Expands website reach by making it accessible to a broader audience, including individuals with disabilities.
- Enhances reputation among clients by showcasing dedication to accessibility and fairness.
- Improves user experience for disabled individuals.
- Contributes to better SEO, potentially increasing website visibility and attracting more traffic through improved search rankings.
The Limits of Accessibility Overlays
It’s important to note that recent studies have shown that accessibility overlay widgets alone often fail to provide adequate accessibility or legal ADA compliance protection, and you may face legal challenges even if you use them. Comprehensive reviews of website design and functionality are essential.
Furthermore, using such tools on a website may introduce potential privacy and security risks by allowing third-party code injections. They can sometimes interfere with accessibility tools that disabled individuals use to navigate the web, inadvertently creating barriers for these users.
Beyond Website Compliance
ADA compliance doesn’t end with an accessible website. Financial advisors should work to ensure that all of their digital marketing is accessible to those with disabilities, including social media and email marketing.
Social media platforms like Facebook, X and Instagram are designed with ADA accessibility in mind, but the content you share on these sites can be further optimized. For example, including alt text for your images, ensuring all video content has captions, and using clear and simple language in your posts are best practices. Avoid using symbols instead of words, as screen readers may not interpret them correctly. For example, write “equals” instead of using an equal sign. Additionally, be judicious with emojis, as screen readers will read the emoji description along with your post’s text. For instance, “The stock market is ⬆️ today!” may be read as “The stock market is ‘up arrow’ today!”.
When it comes to email marketing, ensuring ADA compliance involves several easy-to-follow best practices. Use readable fonts and high-contrast color schemes to make your text more accessible for those with vision impairments. For any attachments, such as PDFs, ensure they are properly tagged, include descriptive headings, and provide alt text for images to make them screen reader-friendly. Here, too, you should avoid using symbols in place of words. Be mindful of complex language and jargon; aim for clear and simple language to ensure your content is accessible to individuals with cognitive impairments.
Unlock Growth and Inclusivity ADA Compliance
Ensuring ADA compliance is a strategic move for financial advisors. It protects against legal risks, expands your client base, and demonstrates a commitment to inclusivity. By incorporating key accessibility features, we help our clients achieve these benefits cost-effectively. ADA compliance is not just about legal requirements; it’s about making your services accessible to everyone and showing that you care about all your clients’ needs.
Crystal Lee Butler, MBA, is the founder and visionary force behind Crystal Marketing Solutions (CMS), a top-tier virtual marketing agency dedicated to independent RIAs and LPL Financial advisors offering tailored, done-for-you marketing solutions. Discover the freedom of having CMS as your virtual CMO. Visit crystalmarketingsolutions.com to learn more.
