Description

A lot of web developers believe coding to standards is complicated and don’t even try, and then make excuses like, it doesn’t have to be coded to standards or W3C doesn’t matter.

For a website to be ADA compliant, and accessible to people with disabilities, the code has to be W3C valid.

When websites and web tools are properly designed and coded, people with disabilities can use them. However, currently according to Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), 97% of websites fail to meet the basic accessibility guidelines set by the W3C.

According to a study done in for the sixth consecutive year, by WebAIM of the home pages for the top 1,000,000 web sites.

The WebAIM Million 2024 report showed 56,791,260 distinct accessibility errors, with an average of 56.8 errors per page. The number of detected errors increased notably (13.6%) since the 2023 analysis which found 50 errors/page.

95.9% of home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures. This improved slightly from 96.3% in 2023. Over the last 5 years, the pages with detectable WCAG failures have decreased by only 1.9% from 97.8%.

And these errors not only are you missing out on marketing to people with disabilities, over 40 million. But it can also get you fined and sued.

In 2022, more than 8,694 accessibility lawsuits got filed, and the focus on ADA compliance has only increased since then.

The Americans With Disabilities Act

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) came into existence in 1990 and made it illegal to discriminate against anyone with a disability. This is when businesses started creating handicap parking, wheelchair ramps, and so on.

And while at the start this only affected physical business, this was quickly changed.

The Internet And ADA Compliance

By 1994, it became clear that the world wide web was here to stay and something needed to be done to regulate it. Thus the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was created.

By 1999 W3C was making sure websites adhered to the standards set by the ADA. This was especially important for government and educational agencies that needed to be able to deal with a lot of different people. And the way web developers could make sure people with disabilities could access their websites was for developers to code them to W3C standards.

However, according to a study by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), 97% of websites fail to meet the basic accessibility guidelines set by the W3C.

A 2022 study conducted by WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) found that a massive 96.8% of all home pages tested had a minimum of one error, per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) AA standards.

And in most cases these were simple errors to fix.

• Low contrast text and graphics
• Missing alternative text for images
• Empty links
• Missing form input labels
• Empty buttons
• Missing document language

With the rise in accessibility fines, lawsuits, and the war against small business owners, now is probably a good time to start checking your website and making sure it meets the standards set by W3C.

Because even the smallest easiest to fix coding errors can cost you thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions in fines and lawsuits.

The only way to protect yourself is to be error free.

Validation is cheap quality assurance. It will help you spot errors (especially nesting errors and those caused by mistyping something). It will save more time than it costs (especially if implemented at the outset).

Validating your pages, gives the highest probability that your pages will work in any browser. And you minimize the chances of your site being broken.

If a developer does not validate his or her code, how can they be sure they didn't forget to close a tag?

If someone asks you what makes a good developer you have to say good code and if someone asks you what makes good code you have to say code that's error free and validates.

So it makes sense that a good coder validates his or her code so they don’t get their clients fined, sued, and put out of business and so they can be sure they’ve met all the standards and didn’t forget to close a tag.