Top Tips in an eCommerce Development Strategy to ensure ADA Compliance

The internet is a global collection of websites that provides information to every user across the world. People with visual disabilities often access the internet by using speech reading software that reads out the text on the web page across all design formats. The American Disabilities Act (ADA) has made it mandatory for all websites that promote a product or a service to design their website in a way that would make it accessible to visually challenged users. This article shall look into the common tips in your eCommerce Development Strategy to ensure ADA Compliance.

The Importance of ADA Compliance in Recent Times

ADA Compliance has been a mandate to ensure easy accessibility of internet to all. Recently in 2016, a popular fast-food chain’s (Domino’s) website was made party to a lawsuit from a visually challenged man who complained that the website or the mobile App was not accessible to visually challenged people. His speech reader software could not accurately read the content for him to make a purchase online. This makes it necessary for websites and mobile Apps to be user-friendly and accessible to visually challenged. Here are a few tips that you must include in your eCommerce development strategy to ensure that your website’s product and service pages are in agreement with ADA norms. If you are in doubt, do check with your eCommerce developer or firm to ensure compliance.

eCommerce Development Tips to ensure ADA Compliance:

1. Ensure usage of ALT Tags in images: All of your images should be having “ALT Tags” that would specify the description of the image, so that a speech reading software can describe the image to the user.
2. Transcription version of Videos: If you are using videos in your website, do ensure to have a text format of the video in an accessible format so that it can be read aloud to visually challenged people.
3. Content phrasing: Make sure that your content is well-structured and has H1, H2, H3, and paragraph formats, apart from being well punctuated. This would help speech reading software easily read the content with its intended purpose, just as a normal page layout would look like.
4. Using Title Tags: Ensure that your web pages have relevant and informative “Title Tags” so that users can understand the relevance and idea of the web page.
5. Anchor Text for Links: Your link anchor texts should be descriptive about the link they would lead to, so ensure that your links are informative and give an understanding of the target web page.
6. Sitemaps and Breadcrumbs: Sitemaps are essential to give screes readers an idea of all the links on a web page. You can also use a well-structured navigation format and include breadcrumbs so that users know what page of the site they are on.