Making your Hotel Website ADA Compliant

– note that the guidelines can be interpreted differently but here are the most recent updates.

1. Orientation – Landscape or Portrait? – content must not restrict view and operation to a single display orientation. Some users have fixed orientation views such as attached to a wheelchair. Therefore content must be available in both landscape and portrait mode.
2. Identify Input Purposes – add information that identifies what the input field is for, for example, email sign up, booking form fields. Helps people with cognitive disabilities understand and use form inputs.
3. Reflow – avoid horizontal scrolling. A large number of people with low vision need to increase their screen size often more than 200%. Scrolling increases the effort to read by 40 to 100 times. Keep vertical scrolling content at a width equivalent to 320 CSS pixels, horizontal scrolling content at a height equivalent to 256 pixels.
4. Non-Text Contrast – visual presentations should have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1, meaning that the contrast for text or graphics needs to have enough contract for a low vision person to see them on the screen.
5. Text Spacing – text needs to have adequate space between lines and letters. Low vision users need to be able to override paragraph spacing, letter spacing, word spacing, and line-height.
6. Content on Hover or Focus – content that only appears on mouse-overs or on focus can present challenges for users with a low vision where their mouse accuracy might not be great.
7. Character Key Shortcuts – Applies to mobile. Helps users who rely on speech-to-text technologies to interact with content without inadvertently triggering some functionality based on a shortcut. Like a keyboard shortcut.
8. Pointer Gestures – requires that all functionality that uses multipoint or path-based gestures for operation can be used with a single pointer. Applies to mobile, to help users who cannot accurately perform complex pointer gestures such as touchscreen swipes, or two-finger pinch/zoom.
9. Pointer Cancellation – functionality that can be operated using a single pointer to help people inadvertently initiate touch or mouse events with unwanted results. Helps reduce the chance that control will be activated accidentally.
10. Label in Name –mobile, helps users who rely on speech-to-text technologies to interact with content and submit things like forms.
11. Motion Actuation – mobile, having to tilt or shake for an action to take place. The device may be mounted and not possible to move.
12. Status Messages – making sure that error or success messages can be easily seen. Users who are blind or have low vision may not be able to see success messages.
13. Identify Purpose – add the context, to the meaning of symbols, regions, buttons, links, and fields so that the user agent knows what to do with them.
14. Animations from Interactions – motion animation should be able to be disabled unless the animation is essential to the functionality. Some people find animation on a page will give them nausea, headaches, and dizziness so it needs to be able to be disabled.
15. Warning of timeouts – users are warned of the duration of any user inactivity that could cause data loss unless the data is preserved for more than 20 hours when the user does not take any actions.
16. Target Size – ensure that the target for pointer inputs is at least 44 by 44 pixels in most cases.
17. Concurrent Input Mechanisms – make sure people can switch from different modes of input when interacting with the web content.