ADA Compliance
ADA Compliance refers to meeting the requirements set forth by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design. This legislation mandates that all electronic content and technology—including websites—must be accessible to people with disabilities. As a civil rights law, the ADA ensures equal access and prohibits discrimination in various areas of public life, including employment, education, transportation, and access to both public and private spaces.
Challenges and Solutions
Websites are often designed in ways that unintentionally create obstacles for individuals with disabilities—much like physical barriers, such as stairs, can prevent access to buildings. These digital barriers can limit access to important information and services provided by businesses and government agencies. Fortunately, such barriers can be addressed or removed to make websites fully accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.
To support this, an ADA compliance feature has been implemented to ensure our websites meet accessibility standards. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires certain businesses to provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities, including making their digital content accessible. This means ensuring that users who are blind, deaf, or have other impairments—and who rely on assistive technologies such as screen readers, voice controls, or captions—can effectively navigate and use the website.
Implementation
People with disabilities use a variety of tools and techniques to access and navigate the web. For example, individuals who are blind often rely on screen readers, which convert on-screen text into spoken words. Those who are deaf or hard of hearing may depend on captions to access audio content. Meanwhile, individuals with mobility impairments may use voice recognition software to operate their devices through spoken commands.
Steps for Implementation
Step 1: Applying HTML Attributes
To enhance accessibility or customize the behavior of form controls, HTML attributes can be directly applied using the control’s property panel.
How to Apply:
Select the control you wish to configure within the form designer.
Click the settings (gear) icon to open the control’s property panel as shown in the image below.
The custom HTML Attribute window appears as shown in the image below.
Enter the desired HTML attributes (e.g., aria-label, role, tabindex) based on your accessibility or design requirements.
Working with ADA Compliance
To check if this value is being read correctly, use a screen reader. Add the screen reader extension to Chrome and open the form as shown in the image below.
Click on the txtName control, select the aria-label attribute in HTML Attribute, and enter the appropriate value as illustrated in the image below. The HTML attribute can be modified or removed by clicking on the Edit or Delete icon, respectively.
The screen reader will read the value of the aria-label property for you, as well as the value in the control. Use the tab key to set the screen reader’s focus to the next control.
Please note that controls with buttons such as peoplepicker will only be read when the button is focused. For instance, the people picker control’s aria-label property will be read after its text area value when the browse button is focused.
By implementing these steps, we ensure that our websites are accessible to individuals with disabilities, in compliance with ADA guidelines. This approach enhances inclusivity and ensures equal access to online resources for all users.