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ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) Compliant?
Synopsis of this Feature:
ADA stands for Americans with Disabilities. In 1990, Congress passed a law that requires all businesses to provide easy access to those with disabilities, including those visually impaired to have equal access to buildings, parking, grocery stores, etc. Included in the ADA law is accessibility to media. Internet web sites fall under the categorization of media. Specifically, those that are visually impaired need to have equal access to your awards shopping cart web site content. It is important that a visually impaired person be able to navigate and utilize the services of all web sites, including your awards shopping cart web site.
Now, I know you may be asking the question "That is silly, how can the visually impaired be effected by me not making my web site ADA compliant when the whole premise of our award and trophy products must require visualization to enjoy it"
Answers:
- First of all, the visually impaired have a very well honed and keen sense by using their other four senses. Even if they cannot visually see the award and trophy product, they can imagine it in their visualization based upon descriptions. This is another reason why accurate descriptions in textual form is important on each and every award and trophy product.
- In addition,being visually impaired does not necessarily mean 100% blind. There is a very large population of visually impaired that can see shapes, shadows and other aspects, but require just a little more information to ensure they have a complete and accurate picture in their minds of the award and trophy product.
- The majority of the visually impaired citizens in our country and around the world are very self sufficient, independent and can function in society equally well, if not better than those that have no visual impairments.
- Lastly, it is not for the sighted to make judgements on whether a visually impaired has the equal right to view, interact with, and utilize the very day to day interactions the rest of us have the right to interact with. They are equal members of society, they pay their taxes, they hold jobs, they walk to and from work, they have families, they have pets, they buy award and trophy products just like the rest of the sighted world.
The National Federation of the Blind is the national advocacy organization that advocates on behalf of the visually impaired. NFB on behalf of those it advocates for filed a class action lawsuit against Target Corporation because their web site shopping cart was not accessible by the visually impaired.
Click here to Read about the NFB vs. Target Lawsuit.
If you are interested in the USA Today article about the lawsuit, Click here.
Target Settled this lawsuit for around 6 Million Dollars. A small awards store does not need to be the target of a class action lawsuit that could put you out of business simply because your web site could not be used by a visually impaired citizen of society. In addition, utilizing good design methodology and following the W3C standards, most sites will automatically be ADA compliant and a side effect of being compliant results in better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) simply by following standards. Read More about SEO vs. Accessibility.
Historically, many web site shopping cart software solutions used the same tags that are used for accessibility by those with disabilities to spoof search engines and trick them into increasing page ranks. The article previously mentioned discusses how using the W3C standards for accessibility in a proper way will also increase visibility in search engines. Unfortunately, some prepackaged shopping cart programs don't seem to provide accessibility for those disabled.
BizWizard ShopKart™:
NetSoft Studio is proud that we have ensured BizWizard ShopKart™ supports our visually impaired friends by implementing the necessary code inside ShopKart to support visually impaired browser technology.
Lets watch a video of BizWizard ShopKart™ Site and all the coding that goes into ensuring it is usable by the Visually Impaired. We will take it slow in this video and highlight with the mouse some of the necessary tags and attributes of the HTML code that are needed for the visually impaired. This is not a complete and exhaustive example of our ADA compliance, but a small segment to show comparison.:
AwardsCart®:
So, lets take a look at the AwardsCart® Product and its accessibility to the visually and physically impaired. First of all, we will examine just a couple of key and important items. Specifically the Label tags for form fields and the attributes of the form field itself called ID Attribute. These two tags/attributes should always be present to let the visually impaired site visitor know which field to type information into if they wish to purchase an award and trophy product. In the following video, we will look at the form for adding an award and trophy product to the shopping cart. We are looking for a Label Tag that looks something like this
<label for="Quantity">Quantity</label>
<input type="text" name="Quantity" id="Quantity" />
Notice the "for" attribute inside the label tag. The "for" attribute lets screen readers used by the visually impaired know the ID of the field so the visually impaired browser knows which field they are supposed to type the quantity into. The ID attribute of the <input> tag is the link between the label and the input tags. Without this reference, the visually impaired cannot use your site, and thus you are not making your web site accessible according to the federal ADA act of 1990, and you put your company at risk for a lawsuit or even a class action lawsuit.
Lets see if we can find this in the video from AwardsCart® site for adding an award and trophy product to the shopping cart. Notice you will not find an id="" attribute in the <input> tag, and there is no <label> Tag with the Quantity. This is just one example of a AwardsCart® not being compliant with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 federal law). Lets watch the video:
There are many other items necessary to make a site accessible by the visually impaired. The above is an example of one such requirement. The purpose of this document is not to point out 100% of all the problems in the code that make it not ADA compliant, but to simply give an example and comparison of at least one.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The text, documentation, videos, screen shots and analysis show on this page were produced on April 10, 2010 and were deemed to be accurate and correct at that time. Since software changes over time, it is possible that the companies represented in this comparison have made changes to their solutions after the date of this publication. For this reason, it is recommended that each person evaluating each company represented do their own due diligence and research.
AwardsCart® is a Registered Trademark of Trophy Toolbox, Inc.
NetSoft Studio™ is not affiliated with nor partnered with AwardsCart® or Trophy Toolbox, Inc.
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