Is your business's website is following ADA guidelines? Watch this episode to find out why it is so important to do so.

Hey and welcome back to SEO on the Go! My name is Ryan Kelly and you might be asking yourself, who this is. This is Julianna Ferrara, WSI Smart Marketing’s Website Designer and Project Manager. So who better to answer your question: what is ADA and why should I care?

I’m glad you asked. So ADA just stands for Americans with Disabilities Act and it’s a reasonable and basic set of guidelines that are smart to follow for businesses. The overarching issue why is because now more than ever, small businesses are facing litigation for not accommodating all sorts of internet users. And everyone uses the internet differently, right? So why tempt fate for not accommodating people who, say, have color blindness? The second issue is that persons with disabilities make up 20 percent of Americans or about 50 million people. That’s an entirely new target audience, right? These are people who don’t use the internet the way we do.

So, some of the things and tools that are helpful for them are changing contrast subtitles for videos, dyslexia-friendly fonts, and the like. So it’s a really easy change to make and it provides so much relief and it’s respectful to everyone who uses the internet. So the American Disabilities Act, the idea behind that is twofold: number one, protect your business against litigation by making sure that you’re having all of these different tools on the website to help make people with disabilities be able to use the site better, right? And the second reason, which I think is even more, why not increase the opportunity in your audience by 20 percent?

Serve people, help people, and take care of people, and all with one thing. So it makes sense to me. So hey, thanks for watching! Please like the video, subscribe to the channel, and if you have questions I’d love to answer them and until next time, I’m Ryan and this is Julianna and we’ll see you next time.