Are Weebly Websites ADA Compliant?

There has been a sharp rise in the number of lawsuits for non-ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant websites. All types of businesses have been sued in recent years. In the vast majority of cases, the courts have decided in favor of the plaintiffs and awarded them sizable settlements.

If you have a Weebly website, you may be wondering if you’re safe from a lawsuit. Unless you’ve recently had a manual website ADA compliance audit and remediation performed, then most likely, no. A lack of accessibility can also lead to negative comments and reviews on social media, which can seriously hurt your online presence.

There are steps you can take to make sure none of this happens to you. Here’s a guide to website ADA compliance and how to make sure your Weebly website welcomes all visitors.

Are Weebly Websites ADA Compliant?

The short answer is no. Multiple elements within Weebly-built websites are not ADA compliant. Even worse, Weebly website owners have been sued for non-compliance.

As the number of lawsuits for website non-ADA compliance has gone up, so has the number of website owners concerned about what steps Weebly is taking to make sure their platform is compliant. The company has mostly given vague reassurances that they’re working on it.

Even in 2021, not only are Weebly websites not ADA compliant, some of the most important elements essential for compliance are missing. These are not small errors buried deep in the website’s code. A plaintiff’s law firm could easily zero in on those non-compliant elements right away.

What To Look Out For

ADA compliance means all elements on your website follow WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA guidelines. These guidelines are the standard for compliance. Disabled visitors must be able to navigate your website as a non-disabled person can. There are no exceptions to this. Even a sole proprietor without a brick-and-mortar store must be ADA compliant. Courts have ruled that websites must provide the disabled with the same reasonable accommodation that physical stores do.

The biggest non-compliance issues on Weebly websites are:

Missing skip links – Vision impaired users and those who don’t have the use of their arms don’t navigate a page by using a mouse. Instead, they rely on skip links. They can skip past menu items by using the tab and enter keys. Many Weebly websites are missing these skip links.

Missing or improper alt tags – Screen readers scan for alt tags, which give vision impaired visitors oral descriptions of images are on a page. If those are missing or incorrect, you aren’t providing them with equal access to your website.

Incorrect color contrast ratios – WCAG 2.0 guidelines provide specific ratios for color contrast on a website page. If this 4:5:1 contrast is absent on a Weebly website page, colorblind visitors and those with poor vision will have trouble reading your page.

Missing input labels – Some Weebly websites don’t allow vision impaired users to fill out input fields. This is required by WCAG guidelines. It’s also extremely frustrating when disabled users navigate to a page for check out only to realize they can’t purchase or do anything else because of missing input labels.

Auditing Your Weebly Website

There are no shortcuts to making your Weebly website ADA compliant. You may have come across some companies that promote automated audit tools as a quick and easy fix. If you look closely, they either hide warnings in their fine print that their tools alone won’t make your website compliant, or they don’t mention this fact at all.

Even if you are comfortable on a computer, note that ADA compliance is not about getting a passing grade. Every page of your website must be 100% ADA compliant.

The best way to ensure compliance is by hiring a professional to conduct a thorough website ADA compliance audit. A complete audit of your website will take time, but it will identify every issue. Then, these issues must be remediated to be certain of compliance.

This is a painstaking process. However, when it’s completed, you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing your website is now ADA compliant. And you’ll give millions of new visitors equal access to your business, organization, or charity.