The 3 Benefits of Monthly ADA Accessibility Testing
Monthly accessibility testing is an important part of website maintenance. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects against discrimination by requiring business owners to minimize physical and communication barriers to their services.
In an era with a prospering e-commerce industry, obstacles can be abundant for people with a diverse range of visual, physical, and cognitive disabilities (to name just a few). Assistive technologies, such as screen readers for customers with low vision, are a huge help, but they’re only as effective as your website allows them to be.
If you’re a website owner or developer, then you have plenty of reasons to ensure your website is ADA compliant. From minimizing legal risk to making your site more accessible to a broader market, it’s simply more efficient to maintain compliance month-over-month.
1. Stay Current on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
The primary benefit of monthly accessibility testing is that it proactively identifies problems so that they can be fixed as early as possible. Whether it’s a change to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or a coding error by your development team, you want to be made aware of the situation as soon as possible to limit long-term effects. That’s a reasonable expectation with ADA web compliance software.
2. Improve Usability for All with ADA Compliant Formatting
Compliance with the ADA ensures that every visitor can access your digital content in a format that best suits their needs. Coincidentally, an accessible website is typically friendlier for everyone, as well.
Pages that are organized for ADA website compliance tend to perform better with all users in general because of their improved usability. This means increased traffic, more leads and conversions, and greater user satisfaction.
3. Consistent Website Accessibility Improves SEO Authority
Traffic and conversion metrics have an impact on search engine optimization (SEO) authority. The greater your traffic, the longer your visitors stay, the less they bounce, and the more they buy: all of this affects your SEO ranking.
However, as anyone in web development can tell you, SEO strategies can take time to show results. On the opposite side of the same coin, changes (either to WCAG guidelines or to your site) may not reveal their effects for months.
This means that you can’t afford to let more than 30 days go by without confirming that every variable remains consistent. By tackling problems immediately with testing software, you can regularly confirm that WCAG compliance is one of those unchanging variables for your website.
Get Monthly ADA Compliance Services from Site Compliance
Once you make your website accessible to all users, it’s vital that you continue to ensure your website remains accessible. Because you can be held responsible for non-compliance with ADA regulations, it’s highly recommended that you keep a close eye on your website.
However, things can change quickly and frequently, meaning it’s often most ideal to use software to stay updated on a month-by-month basis. We understand that you have no shortage of ADA compliance companies that you can work with, so we recommend that you find a knowledgeable and trustworthy team to invest in.
Web accessibility for all is a core belief at Site Compliance. The Americans with Disabilities Act ensures that every customer can find what they need. This also serves to guarantee that it will be easier for you to reach every customer that needs what you offer. If you want to take advantage of the benefits of monthly ADA compliance testing, sign up for a free Site Compliance account today.