DOJ

Why You Need Red Barn Consulting to Get Your Banking Website ADA Compliant

You know, when it comes to ADA compliance, you can’t afford to take any chances. If you’re in the banking world, you know how important it is to dot the i’s, cross the t’s, and make sure everything is in order. What you might not know is there’s something big coming down the pipe — Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance.

Put simply, it means your banking website and online presence needs to be fully accessible for people with visual and hearing difficulties. That means it has to be easy to use, and be compatible with all the various software and hardware they use to access the internet — Think screen readers, braille interfaces, specialized keyboards, speech recognition, and the like.

The ADA compliance issue is pretty serious too — The Department of Justice is insisting all banking organizations meet their guidelines by 2018, with the threat of large fines if they’re not. We definitely don’t want that to happen to you.

It’s why our leisure reading includes such gems as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 so we understand exactly what guidelines your website has to meet.

We admit it, here at RBC, we’re a little bit geeky (and a little bit cheeky). It’s why we’ve read through all of the new specifications and requirements in detail — There are over 70 of them! And it’s why we’ve got a solid, proven action plan to get your banking website to be fully compliant, fast.

When it comes to the guidelines, we find headings like “Perceivable,” “Operable,” “Understandable,” and “Robust” delicious. In face, we savor them, and more importantly, we know what they mean to keeping your banking business out of trouble.

That includes:

  • Reviewing every aspect of your website to ensure it’s accessible to everyone.
  • Prioritizing, recommending, and making changes to keep you compliant.
  • Ensuring all your images, media, and other visual elements have text descriptions to help the visually impaired.
  • Amending your media player so users can pause, rewind, and fast forward video and audio content easily.
  • Your text and background have a good contrast to each other to make everything easy to read.
  • Reviewing your media to make sure it’s compliant (e.g. checking your audio content has text substitutes, captions, and sign language).
  • Checking your website is completely usable with just a keyboard (Mice are a no-no).
  • Making sure your navigation, menus, and other interactive elements make sense and area easy for everyone to use.
  • Testing out your website in a variety of different browsers so it’s usable by every member of your audience.

I mean, just look at this stuff… Do you really have time to go through everything in detail and make sure your banking website meets every single requirement? Probably not — But we do. Plus, we actually find it kind of enjoyable. We’re strange like that.

We’ve already helped banks like Litchfield Bancorp and Collinsville Savings Society, and we’re here to help you.

Get in touch today and we’ll explain exactly how we’ll make your bank website ADA compliant. Get yourself some peace-of-mind.

Why You Need Red Barn Consulting to Get Your Banking Website ADA Compliant Read More »

Getting Your Banking Website ADA Compliant – What Does It Take?

As we covered in our last article, getting your website ADA compliant by 2018 is critical if you want to avoid problems (read; big, big problems) from the Department of Justice. Here’s a quick refresher.

Essentially, the DOJ wants all banking websites to be fully accessible for visual and hearing impaired people by 2018. If your website isn’t ready, you could run into issues with fines, getting sued, equal rights laws, and bad public perception. You don’t want that to happen, and neither do we (really, we like you).

So, what does the DOJ mean when it says you have to get your website ready? Glad you asked.

Making your website accessible — What the DOJ wants

The DOJ has several requirements under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. That’s a bit of a mouthful so we’ll break it down. This comes in two delicious compliance favors — The changes the DOJ requires, and what that means in terms of getting compliant.

Changes required by the DOJ under the ADA

There are over 70 (really!) specific requirements so we’re just looking at the high-level areas. Here are the direct quotes on what each one involves.

  • Perceivable – Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
  • Operable – User interface components and navigation must be operable.
  • Understandable – Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
  • Robust – Content must be robust enough so it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Now, that list doesn’t look very easy to understand (we know!) so here are some examples of what they mean in practice.

Perceivable — ADA Compliance

  • Provide text alternatives for any non-text content — Having text descriptions of any images or interface components, making sure there’s a good text alternative that can be read by screen-reading software.
  • Captions / sign language for prerecorded content — Videos and other media will need to have captions and / or sign language so hearing impaired people can get the information they need.

Operable — ADA Compliance

  • Keyboard navigation — Your website should be completely usable and navigable using just a keyboard (i.e. There’s no requirement to use a mouse to access any specific part of your banking website.)
  • Accessing media — Users should be able to easily pause, rewind, and interact with all the media (video, audio, and other) on your banking website.

Understandable – ADA Compliance

  • Language of the webpage — The language on a specific webpage can be easily updated according to a user’s needs.
  • Ease of use — A website must have consistent navigation and be easy to read and use.[/cs_text]

Robust – ADA Compliance

  • Make sure all of your website enhancements for ADA work with all client browsers or other ways people access your website.
  • Make sure your enhancements work with the various specialized hardware and software that visual and hearing impaired people use. (e.g. screen readers, braille interfaces, speech recognition etc.)

You probably don’t have the time to do all this (I mean, there are 70 requirements, and they’re not exactly… simple). That’s why we’re here.

Relax, we’ve got this

We understand just what it takes to get your banking website ADA compliant. We also understand you just don’t have the time. That’s why we’re here to help — We’ve already helped banks like Litchfield Bancorp and Collinsville Savings Society, and we’re here to help you.

Get in touch today and we’ll explain exactly how we’ll make your bank website ADA compliant. Get yourself some peace-of-mind.

Getting Your Banking Website ADA Compliant – What Does It Take? Read More »