Vpat Accessibility & Ada Compliance Guide – 2022
It is important to ensure compliance with digital accessibility laws. It won’t be an understatement that ADA and VPAT compliancehas become more significant in 2022.
The number of digital accessibility lawsuits is rising at an exponential speed. Almost every business owner is aware of the consequences of having a websiteinaccessible todisabled users.
Moreover, the shopping season for the upcoming holidays has already begun.
Therefore, increased traffic or lead generation is obviously expected by every business that has a digital presence. No one would want their customers to go to the competitors just because they can’t access the availablecontent.
To put it simply, the trend of online shopping is huge. Everyone is online and deserves to access the information available on the internet.
- To ensure that you are able to exceed the sales and profitability goals in this holiday season
- To ensure that none of the disabled users sue you for uploading inaccessible content
- To ensure that your website ranks on top for being ADA compliant aVPAT assessment is essential in 2022.
What Is VPAT Compliance?
VPAT or Voluntary Product Accessibility Templateis a self-evaluation measure. The template can be used to test your website and ensure compliance with various accessibility civil rights laws.
VPAT helps you develop an ADA compliant website. ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) mandates that every disabled individual must have barrier free access to a website.
Since websites are public, ADA mandates that businesses must keep the disability of the US population in mind and provide provisions for alternatives. Such as if a visually impaired person is accessing digital content then must be able to use screen readers or there must be captions to aid users with hearing loss. Moreover, there can be assistive technology for those who are dealing with cognitive difficulties.
ADA compliance is achieved through WCAG (Web Content Accessibility) testing.It is a framework used by businesses to test their accessibility standards. A WCAG audit helps you generate VPAT documentation for denoting your compliance level.
Further, the VPAT report is also helpful in developing a website compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and EN 301 549 by the European Union. In other words, it can be said that publishing VPAT reports ensures that your website is compliant with global accessibility standards.
Best Practices For VPAT Accessibility
Evolution is obvious in technology therefore the accessibility guidelines and templates keep revising. To ensure compliance in 2022 you need to test your website with the latest version VPAT 2.4.
You can contact an accessibility specialist to test your website and provide an honest report for the latest release of VPAT. In order to maintain the relevance of your accessibility reports, you also pay attention to the latest versions of WCAG standards. WCAG 2.2 is expected to be a recommendation in 2022. It is best to let the experts do the job, however, you must consider the following aspects when testing your website for disabled users:
- Screen readers
- Contrast ratio
- Keyboard navigation
- Form input assistance
- Dragging movements
- Enhanced focused appearance
Much debate has been made about using automated scans for accessibility conformance. Software scans are obviously faster than human auditors, however, relying only on automation is certainly not the best practice. Evaluation tools can catch only 30% of the possible WCAG issues. Ignoring the rest of the issues can lead to legal consequences.
A combined approach of manual and automated testing is recommended as a proactive measure against digital accessibility laws in 2022. Get a one-to-one consultation with the audit specialists at ADA Compliance Pros. They have been instrumental for over a decade now and are recognized for offering personalized and hands-on service.