The Department of Justice released the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design in September of 2010. The purpose of these standards is to make all electronic and information technology accessible to people having disabilities. This imperatively implies that all the branding carried out by businesses, especially those operating over the realm of the internet, needs to be accessible for specially challenged people.
ADA compliance requirements
In order to make your brand and the content you share with your target audience compliant with ADA requirements, the following things need to be taken care of according to the World Wide Web’s Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Perceivable
The first thing you need to do about your branding to make it compliant with ADA is to make it perceivable for everyone. In this respect, you need to make sure that:
- The text-based description is provided for all non-text elements in your branding.
- Provide captions for video content to make it understandable for people who can’t hear well.
Understandable
The content around all of your branding must be easily understandable for people with minimal knowledge of the language you are using. To make sure you need to make sure that:
- You use text that does not require any advanced level of reading to understand.
- Design the content in a way that can be understood and conveyed by personal assistance platforms.
- The overall design language is predictable and consistent.
Robust
The content needs to be:
- Compatible with current devices.
- Able to be easily adopted by future technology.
Importance of ADA compliant branding
Over the course of the last 5 years, consumers have initiated a lot of lawsuits against brands for non-ADA-compliant branding practices. It has led to a number of businesses prioritizing accessibility when designing their brand image, especially web content. ADA-compliant branding is important because of the following reasons.
- It is a portrayal of your core values
Your core values are not the ones you state, but they are the ones you practice. The way you put your core values into action is what matters the most. By adopting ADA-compliant branding you are not just saying but practically showing that you do care for the specially challenged people, and that will give any brand huge positive feedback.
- It’s a smart approach
Making your content and branding accessible for all the people in your target market, including disabled persons, you are actually broadening the target audience. More audience automatically translates to more sales.
- It reduces the risk of legal liabilities
If your branding is not up to the limitations set by ADA, you are at a high risk of being sued under the act. Making adjustments to your branding and making it accessible for all will save you from the immense financial strain that you might have for not being ADA compliant.
To sum up
Disabled people make up a considerable portion of the population, and leaving them out while designing the branding is not a good practice. Make your branding compliant with ADA guidelines to target more audiences and avoid any legal complications that might arise from your content not being up to the standards of ADA.
