ADA Compliance: A Primer for Making Decisions About Your Website by Jared Dovers, COO WordSouth
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Currently, over 56 million people living in the United States have some form of disability. 
That’s roughly one out of every five people who may be accessing your utility’s website. Over 12 percent have what is labeled "a severe disability."
People with disabilities may use the Web much differently than those not affected by hearing impairment, vision impairment or other conditions. There are special tools that can be used by browsers to make sure that everyone is able to access the information on the Web — including their electric utility’s website.
However, those tools rely on your website meeting certain standards set forth by the Americans with Disability Act. Signed into law in 1990, it "prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in employment, programs and services provided by state and local governments, goods and services provided by private companies, and in commercial facilities."
A website built as solid as your electric grid.
This also applies to your website. When a browser is directed to your website’s URL, it reads the files that are sitting on your Web host. These are written in HTML, CSS, Javascript and other specialized types of languages that help the browser know what to do.
When you’re building a substation or energizing new lines, there’s a proper way to do things. Following those guidelines makes sure there aren’t problems down the road. The same should hold true for your website. The language in those files can be structured in ways that make your website reliable, easily updatable and, more importantly for those 56 million people, accessible.
The guidelines for how your website should be built in this regard is extensive. To get a sense of these requirements, visit romeo.elsevier.com/accessibility_checklist.
To see how your utility’s website is doing, you can use this Web application, which will scan your website: wave.webaim.org. Here you’ll see any errors that may be present.
These errors happen when your website isn’t structured in such a way that provides necessary information to the browser. For instance, every photo on your site should also be accompanied by "alternative text" that describes what the photo is about. For someone who cannot see and relies on the browser to read text aloud to them, this is essential. If you have photos that convey important information, it’s hard for those with visual impairment to understand what you’re trying to communicate without this important feature.
What can you do?
ADA compliance is suddenly a hot topic among electric distributors. Some predatory law firms have started sending letters out saying that you could be involved in a lawsuit if your website is not ADA compliant.
So far, all indications are that this problem is a paper tiger. However, providing a great Web experience for all of your members, regardless of abilities, should be a goal for your utility. Talk with your Web provider about a plan to rework your home page to be ADA compliant. Then, take time to revisit each of your pages with the Wave app listed above. What can be changed? What can be improved?
By making a plan to improve your most available resource, you’ll empower more of your customers to interact with your utility.
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JARED DOVERS
Chief Operating Officer
Vice President, Electric Utility Communications
WordSouth.com
256-638-5394
