Making sure your business follows ADA guidelines isn’t anything new. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became a law almost 32 years ago on July 26, 1990.
However, until more recently, many small businesses only focused on updating their facility to meet these guidelines. There’s a whole other side to your business to consider now that didn’t exist in 1990: your website.
Not sure if your website meets ADA guidelines? Let’s go over how web accessibility works, so you can better serve everyone.
What ADA Compliance Means for Your Funeral Home Website
Did you know 61 million American adults live with some form of disability? Catering to the visually impaired community is often who first comes to mind when thinking about ADA compliance. While this is an important part of it, it also includes people with:
- Motor impairments
- ADHD
- Color blindness
- Epilepsy and similar conditions
- Cognitive impairments
- Dyslexia
For funeral homes, you also want to design your website with senior citizens in mind. Many elderly people visit your website, whether it’s to preplan or find a loved one’s obituary. For example, if their eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be, they could fall into the visually impaired category. You need to have features available to them to accommodate their needs, which we’ll talk more about later.
Want to dive deeper into ADA compliance? Check out this article by Tribute Technology:
What Does Being ADA Compliant ACTUALLY Mean?
Why Creating an ADA-Compliant Website Matters for You and Your Families
Be More Accessible to Everyone
Of course, you want your funeral home website to be more accessible to everyone. This gives people peace of mind that they’ll be able to navigate your website during their time of need. It also reduces people’s frustration during an already stressful time of loss. The last thing they need to worry about is how to navigate your website.
Reduce Your Risk of Legal Trouble
More funeral homes throughout North America are receiving ADA lawsuits. If your website isn’t accessible to people with disabilities, you’re putting your firm at risk. A lawsuit would take up a lot of your time and money. There’s also the damage it would do to your firm’s reputation. Creating a more ADA-compliant website lowers your risk of being sued.
Apply for Tax Benefits
The IRS offers generous tax benefits for small businesses actively working to be more ADA compliant. If you invested in web accessibility during the tax year, you could receive up to a $5,000 tax credit. The IRS offers a 50% disabled access credit on $250 to $10,250 purchases. Get more details on how this tax credit works and how to apply here.
Want to learn more about decreasing your risk of legal trouble? Read this article:
Would Your Business Survive an ADA Lawsuit?
How to Make Your Funeral Home Website More ADA Compliant
We talked about who your website should be tailored to, but how can you do this? There are a lot of ADA guidelines that contribute to creating a more accessible website. For the sake of time, these are just a few features that make your website easier for everyone to use:
- Blind: Tools like a screen reader read the text aloud for those with visual impairments.
- Visually Impaired: People who are visually impaired may need to enlarge the text and cursor size.
- Motor Impaired: Enable keyboard-only navigation for those who can’t work a mouse.
- ADHD: Give users with ADHD the option to pause distracting animations.
- Color Blind: Let color-blind users adjust the saturation so they can read the text and view images.
- Epilepsy and Similar Conditions: Allow users to stop flashing content and other elements that could trigger seizures.
- Cognitive Impairments: Provide people with cognitive impairments tips for identifying relevant information.
- Dyslexia: Offer the option to switch to a dyslexia-friendly font that’s easier to read.
Want to learn about more web accessibility tools? The chart in this article breaks them down:
Make Your Website More Accessible With Tribute Accessibility
Creating a more accessible website is a lot of work even for an entire team of website developers. Not forgetting that the ADA guidelines constantly change and get updated. That’s why it’s best to work with an expert who specializes in web accessibility.
As a Premier Partner of Tribute Technology, we’re excited to offer our clients access to their latest offering: Tribute Accessibility, powered by UserWay. This tool helps your firm create a more ADA-compliant website through the features mentioned above and so much more.
Click here to learn more about Tribute Accessibility powered by UserWay.
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