Making your business processes accessible to people with disabilities is not only about serving your customers, but also about the law. The priority should be to make your business process compliant to accessibility standards and create equal access to people with disabilities irrespective of being in education, health, legal, employment, entertainment or transportation sector. Accessibility supports social inclusion and creates a level playing field for people with disabilities.
Our specialized accessibility consultancy and accessibility testing team at BarrierBreak not only ensures your business is transitioned smoothly into accessibility but also makes sure all your digital products and services meet the accessibility standards and guidelines such as WCAG, Section 508, ADA.
Nitty-Gritty of Accessibility
To achieve accessibility, build accessibility into your business development process right from the start. Demonstrate how products do not meet accessibility standards and provide useful, actionable and achievable guidelines for ways to seize opportunities, such as new ways to involve the customer base of people with disabilities in the development and design process to solve the problem.
Create an access plan to an existing strategic business cycle, publish the policies on your public viewing website, and update the policies regularly. It is always advisable to integrate accessibility in your business at the beginning.
Creating a barrier-free working environment for workers with disabilities is easier if organizations have a clear understanding of the legal requirements they must comply with. Companies covered by ADA are required to change their business policies and procedures as necessary to serve customers with disabilities and take steps to communicate with them. The rules underlying ADA require companies not to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with employee disabilities. We have explained more about ADA and digital accessibility in this article. Keep reading!
The Offline World of Accessibility
The ADA requires that new public accommodation facilities, including small businesses, must be accessible and usable for people with disabilities. Businesses have been required to remove architectural barriers to building since the passage of the 1990 American with Disabilities Act, but this process can be difficult for small businesses with limited budgets. The ADA requires companies to remove all architectural barriers from existing buildings and ensure that all newly built or modified facilities are accessible for people with disabilities.
Assessing whether your business has architectural barriers is very crucial!
Accessibility Documentation is the evidence that supports your case when your company needs to defend itself against violations of ADA regulations or lawsuits. It is best for your company to document the steps it has taken to address accessibility issues; however, minor they may seem.
The Online World of Accessibility
The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) outlines rules and guidelines for businesses to allow people with disabilities access, but it can be overwhelming for business owners to read through the long list of requirements.
ADA strikes a careful balance between improving access for people with disabilities and recognizing the financial constraints faced by many small businesses.
The fear of lawsuits and financial risks are not the only reasons why it’s a great idea for your website to adhere to ADA compliance standards. Ethically and financially, it becomes all the more important to address to the needs of your customers. By complying to ADA, it allows you to meet the requirements of the federal and state governments and open your business to a larger clientele. By adhering to these standards, you will not only create a better user experience for your users but also inadvertently increase your profitability and overall company success.
In addition to ADA, AODA policy requires companies and government agencies to adopt an outward-looking, publicly accessible policy, such as achieving a declaration on accessibility and an organizational commitment to timely accessibility.
Why BarrierBreak?
BarrierBreak’s accessibility team assist organizations to recognize that accessibility needs to come at the start, and not be an afterthought. As an accessibility vendor, we help you build accessibility features and support you in integrating accessibility in all your business processes. We make sure the user experience is seamless especially for people with disabilities.
Write to sales@barrierbreak.com to help us support you with accessibility.