Keeping Your Website ADA Compliant

As a marketing director, your entire job revolves around getting people to make a purchase. Sure, you may not be selling $10 products on Amazon, but even getting new students to enroll or signing a retainer client is a type of sale. You can work hard, create amazing content, and get a ton of people to click, but if you don’t have an ADA-compliant website, you can be missing out on a lot of revenue.

Your marketing should drive growth, but a website that doesn’t work for everyone creates roadblocks. It not only makes it harder for some people to buy from you, but it also exposes your organization to legal risks and brand damage.

Here’s what many people get wrong about web accessibility: this isn’t a one-time fix. While many of us in the digital marketing industry love that websites can change constantly, that also puts you at risk of introducing new accessibility issues all the time.

How do you keep a website compliant, protect your organization, and reach all of your customers? Let’s break it down.

In this article, we’ll explore what ADA compliance means, the key laws you need to understand, how to audit and fix your website, and how to build a repeatable process for regular updates.

Before we dig further, I just want to clarify something important. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted in 1990. While it has been updated, it doesn’t clearly define what an ADA-compliant website is because websites didn’t exist then. However, many courts have found that websites must follow the same basic principles of accommodation and accessibility.

How do you know what those principles are? Luckily, court after court says the same thing: we need to meet international web accessibility standards. Those standards are known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Most international laws currently require organizations to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

While you can explore WCAG and learn each rule, one principle might help you understand the main objective: POUR.

WCAG standards aim to ensure everyone can access the information they need on your website. Many of the rules require that you offer either alternatives or a way to get the content easily. The international organization that creates WCAG uses four key pillars to ensure accessibility:

• Perceivable: Users can comprehend all the information
• Operable: The website is usable by everyone
• Understandable: Content and operation are clear and predictable
• Robust: The website works on all devices, including assistive technology

The POUR principle more or less asks, “Is all content on this website ____?”

Many WCAG rules answer that question, ensuring that no matter someone’s abilities, they can use and understand your website.

Personally, I believe you should follow WCAG standards because it’s the right thing to do for your customers, but I know it takes a budget. If you need to convince the higher-ups, this might get their attention: it’s literally the law.

Who enforces that law? Well, in the US, 360 web accessibility lawsuits were filed in September 2026 alone. Sure, this administration will likely leave you and your website alone (especially since the current DOJ delayed an updated ADA ruling), but private plaintiffs will not.

Real people trying to use websites will send demand letters, then file lawsuits, to ensure websites meet WCAG standards. Are there some attorneys who take advantage? I suppose. But not many attorneys handle ADA-compliant website lawsuits either. More often than not, it’s a real person who is blind, deaf, or has another disability just trying to get their local community to care enough to include them.

Your US business or organization needs to meet ADA requirements. Under Title II Part H, organizations that receive federal funding must fully comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AA by April 2027. This doesn’t mean you can avoid being sued, though. It just means the government will not fine you for noncompliance. Public universities and colleges must also comply with Section 508, which requires you to provide access to the same information regardless of someone’s abilities.

All businesses and organizations must meet basic “public accommodations” requirements under the ADA, including on their websites.

Just because you are located in the US does not mean you only have to follow US laws. If your website is accessible in other countries and you are actively selling to other countries, you have to abide by their web accessibility requirements, too.

Some common laws you need to follow:

• UK Equality Act: Organizations have to provide reasonable adjustments for individuals with disabilities.
• European Accessibility Act (EAA): Focused on improved access and non-discrimination, this applies to all EU countries.
• Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA): Applies to any business selling to Ontario, Canada, and must meet WCAG standards.

You will meet conformance with most international laws if you ensure your website meets WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

Many of these laws also require you to have an Accessibility Statement on your website. This statement should explain what your conformance level is, how you test, and how to contact you if there is an issue.

Now that you know what it is and why you should care (and may have a good argument for your budget request), what do you do first?

You start by seeing where your current website stacks up.

No, you may not need to start from scratch to get an ADA-compliant website. Your current website may even be closer to meeting WCAG than you realize.

Before you start fixing things or quoting an entirely new website, it’s worth getting a web accessibility audit. This audit should be completed by using a mixture of automated and manual testing. If the company you hire does not mention basic keyboard navigation or screen reader results, they did not find 70% of the potential issues.

A great web accessibility audit should include a breakdown, with screenshots, of WCAG errors and how to fix the issue. An even better audit will include a quote to fix the issues after they’ve been identified.

After you complete an audit, you can fix the accessibility errors on your website. While you can hire the same company to fix the errors they found, several of our clients choose to do the repairs themselves. (Each of our audits comes with a re-check to ensure your developer team addressed the issues without introducing new ones.)

Depending on the extent of your issues, your remediation could take just a few hours or several months. We’ve recommended a new website in some cases, but usually only when it’s built on a platform that is nearly impossible to make compliant.

Even before you have finished your remediation, I would recommend adding an Accessibility Statement to your website. This lets people know exactly what you are fixing, your timeline, and how you are continuing to test.

This statement should be more of a living document and can be updated as you improve your website.

Always include a way to contact your business directly in case someone finds an issue so you can address it quickly.

After you have addressed the issues found in an audit, you might assume you will always have an ADA-compliant website.

Unfortunately, that’s not true.

Remember what I said at the beginning of this article: websites often change constantly. Those changes can knock you out of compliance. Adding a new blog article, updating images, or adding links to a landing page can cause problems. You cannot just go back to your normal posting procedures. You need an accessible content process.

Not everyone on your team will learn WCAG, but they can all follow basic best practices. Put together a process or checklist to ensure no one is missing a vital step.

Some of the things you’ll need to include are:

• Adding valuable ALT text: Descriptions should actually describe the content and purpose of the images.
• Offering audio/visual alternatives: Videos should have captions and audio descriptions, and audio should have full transcripts.
• Following proper heading sizes: Headings have meanings. Use proper hierarchies in the right order (H1 – H2 – H3), rather than using sizing for what you like.
• Avoid generic link text: Always link text that describes where someone is going. Avoid “Click Here” and “Learn More.”
• Follow proper color contrasts: Make sure the brand colors you are using together are legible to everyone.

A great way to ensure you don’t publish problems on your website? Add a web accessibility checker tool. If your website is on WordPress, for instance, you can use Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker. This flags when you have missed something or added content that may not comply.

Just remember: automated tools only find about 30% of issues. This is a helper, not a replacement for a good web accessibility process.

What causes a lot of repeated accessibility problems? Marketing teams don’t get an updated brand guide after a web accessibility audit.

During your audit, ask your web accessibility partner to provide a guide for passing color combinations and break down any other brand styles that need to change. Then, add this to an updated brand guide for your team to use.

An ADA-compliant website is not a static goal. It requires a change in how your entire team publishes and creates content. That habit change, though, makes your brand more inclusive and your marketing more effective.

A web accessibility audit and remediation can be a sunk cost if you don’t retrain your team to create accessible content.

Want an easy, effective way to close that gap? Empower your marketing team to create accessible content without all the hunting for answers. Instead, get the exact process we follow at Captain Coder with the Creating Accessible Content course. Releasing soon, this course is designed specifically for copywriters, designers, web developers, social media managers, and marketing directors. It will teach your team the core basics of accessible content and give you actionable frameworks to create WCAG-compliant content. Designed by a college professor (me) who specializes in creating effective, engaging online content.

Join the waitlist today and be the first in the door.