The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 protects those with disabilities from discrimination. For businesses, this means that all services and products have to be available to someone with a disability. Americans with disabilities have to be able to buy food at the grocery store, go to the movies, exercise at the gym, go to a restaurant, get dental services, and so forth.

Of course, you know this and take steps to ensure that your practice is physically compliant with ADA requirements. But does your website need to be ADA-compliant?

The answer is…unclear. The ADA provides rules for brick-and-mortar establishments, but those rules don’t say that they only apply to brick-and-mortar establishments. Furthermore, the Department of Justice has said ADA requirements do extend to websites, but they haven’t said how. Only that, websites have flexibility when it comes to ADA compliance. And to muddy the water further, federal courts around the country have taken both stances. Some companies have sued, but not all are successful.

Many offices use dental marketing services that ensure their website is ADA-compliant. If you aren’t using a dental marketing company yet, call (970) 672-1212 or schedule a strategy call online.

How to Keep Your Website ADA-Compliant

The ADA has four areas that they look at to determine if a website is compliant. Now, the ADA doesn’t vet every single website. But there is the possibility that someone could report your website for not having one of these four qualities. Also, this is where dental marketing services can come in handy.

Perceivable

Your website information must be presented so that all users can interpret the information with one of their senses. You can think of a couple no brainers here, like, the text needs the ability to resize without breaking the formatting and keeping the layout simple and clean. However, there are other ways to make your website more perceivable to consider:

  1. Creating a high contrast between the background color and the text color.
  2. Add descriptive text to all images.
  3. Add captions and transcripts to all video content.
  4. Allow users to turn video or audio off.
  5. Use photos, colors, text, and shapes to convey meaning.
  6. Avoid flash.
  7. Display content in sequential order so it’s easy to follow.

Operable

>All users must be able to navigate your website, whether they’re using a mouse, touchscreen, stylus, or keyboard. To make your website more operable, you can:

  1. Ensure all modalities of navigation work intuitively (mouse, touchscreen, stylus, or keyboard).
  2. Avoid quick movements.
  3. Allow users to stop or return to moving elements if necessary for their understanding.
  4. Provide a way for users to find content and know where they are on your website with titles, tags, and links.
  5. Use breadcrumbs or another navigation tool to help users know where they are. You aren’t alone if you’re unsure what ‘breadcrumbs’ are. Think of breadcrumb navigation like a file path shown on the top of the screen. For example:

My Google Drive > Recipes > Gluten Free Recipes > Gluten Free Bread

Menu > Services > Reconstructive Dentistry > Dental Implants > All-On-4s

Understandable

All users should be able to understand your content and the operation of your site. Whenever you can be concise and straightforward, choose to do so! (Dental marketing services, like those offered by Pro Impressions Marketing, can assist with this.) Other ways you can make your website more understandable are:

  1. Keep the reading level of your content low, no higher than a 9th-grade level.
  2. Remember you’re writing for the common person, so steer clear of jargon and too many abbreviations.
  3. Make sure your pages operate and appear similarly.
  4. If you have a form on your site, be sure to clarify what information you are looking to gather from the patient.
  5. If a component on your site needs an explanation, provide clear instructions.

Robust

Make sure to maintain your website so all users can access the content, even as technology advances. That means it should be accessible and usable on mobile, tablets, and computers, as well as with assistive technology.

How to Know if Your Website is ADA-Compliant

There are free and paid tools to help you determine if your website is ADA-Compliant.

You can also do a manual site audit, considering what it means to be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

Lastly, you can use dental marketing services to ensure that your website stays within ADA regulations, like the services Pro Impressions Marketing offers. Pro Impressions Marketing knows that it’s challenging to attract new patients in the quality and quantity you need to grow your practice and stay within regulations set forth by the ADA and other organizations (have you looked into privacy trends lately?). We specialize in dental marketing that generates more new patients and keeps track of these things, so you don’t have to.

Are you looking for dental marketing services? Call (970) 672-1212 or schedule a strategy call online. We’re happy to help you analyze your website and get you back on the right track to more new patients.