Once you start viewing your site through the eyes of a person with a disability, you will immediately start to get a sense of how accessible your site really is. But remember that people who are blind aren t the only people with disabilities who surf the Web. For example, if you have streaming audio content at your site, you probably didn t think to put in text transcripts for people who are deaf. Although most of this is just plain old common sense, there really are a lot of things to consider. Hopefully, we ve convinced you that the ADA does apply to law firm Web sites.
Most sites are pretty easy to make universally accessible.
Like we said above, it s usually just a matter of using your common sense, and testing the site with a text-based browser. Making your site fully accessible not only protects you from potential liability under The ADA, but it s also just good business sense. Cynthia D. Waddell, named to the Top 25 Women on the Web by Webgrrls International, received her JD from the University of Santa Clara School of Law and her BA from the University of Southern California. Currently, Cynthia works for the City of San Jose as the ADA compliance officer where she wrote Web accessibility standards that have received state and federal recognition as a best practices model. Kevin Lee Thomason, Esq.