Enacted by the European Union in 2019, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) is an important piece of legislation that defines accessibility rules for different areas across the public sphere, such as transportation, electronic devices, and websites, making it easier for individuals with disabilities to digest content. It shares remarkable similarities with ADA compliance, as it establishes a legal and regulatory framework to ensure the rights of individuals with disabilities across products and services, only in the European Union instead of North America.
With over 96% of the world’s top one million web pages not accessible, EAA compliance should definitely be top of mind. Please keep reading to learn more about the EAA, including its requirements, key components, accessible website, and mobile app features, why accessibility is important, and the role of the Accessibility widget in helping websites increase their EAA compliance.
Understanding EAA Compliance Requirements
Requirements for EAA compliance mainly revolve around the products and services individuals with disabilities use in different domains, such as transportation, banking, digital, public procurement, and more.
Let’s explore three common domains to better understand their EAA compliance requirements:
Digital Services
One of the hallmarks of digital services is equitable access to websites and online tools for individuals with disabilities. This implies retrofitting or creating entirely new websites equipped with assistive technologies or widgets that enable features like larger cursors, screen readers to convert text to speech, closed captioning, navigation, and dozens of other similar improvements.
Transportation
Another important aspect of EAA compliance is transportation services. One goal of transportation services is to increase mobility among individuals with disabilities, ensuring that bus shelters, airplanes, maritime vessels, and other means of transportation are equipped with accessible features such as designated parking spots, louder-than-usual announcements, helpful visual displays, and convenient wheelchair ramps.
Banking
EAA compliance also extends its influence to the banking and financial sector. ATMs, electronic payment terminals, and other financial institutions’ services must be fully optimized to accommodate the needs of individuals with disabilities. Whether it’s converting keyboards to Braille, creating simplified menu navigations, tighter controls around color contrast, or other best practices, individuals with disabilities are better able to work.
Critical Components of an EAA Compliance Checklist
As mentioned, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) sets digital accessibility standards and accessibility requirements for websites and mobile apps.
Developing Accessible Website and Mobile App Interfaces
Developing accessible website and mobile app interfaces involves an exhaustive series of steps to ensure responsive design for individuals with disabilities. For example, using semantic HTML elements allows websites to create a concise and clear structure and improve screen reader usability.
Providing Alternative Text and Captions for Images and Multimedia Content
Additionally, alternative text (“alt text”) and captions within images allow the visually and auditorily impaired to understand the contents of what they’re viewing or watching. One sample HTML snippet for alt text is the following: <img src=”banner.jpg” alt=”Two dogs barking at the moon”> , which translates into an image of two dogs barking at the moon with underlying text explaining what the image portrays.
Alternative text and captions for images and multimedia can enhance navigation, facilitate inclusive content consumption, and be compatible with several auxiliary technologies for people with disabilities, such as Braille readers and voice assistants for website accessibility and an inclusive online experience.
Implementing Keyboard Navigation and Focus Management
Another component of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance is implementing keyboard navigation and focus management. For individuals with motor control issues, ADA-compliant websites focus on optimizing digital interfaces so that almost every element can be accessed using your keyboard.
Another important aspect is focus management, which allows individuals with disabilities to better identify web page elements using keyboards or screen readers across products and services.
Without proper focus management, individuals with disabilities can quickly become frustrated and lose their workflow.
Ensuring Color Contrast and Text Readability
A third aspect of ADA compliance and national laws is ensuring color contrast and text readability are on point via the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). For starters, it provides equal access to information by optimizing color contrast and text readability for the visually impaired.
For example, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) mandate specific color contrast options for individuals with disabilities. Specific provisions call for a particular contrast ratio between text and images with size requirements for normal versus larger text that differ from the norm, as well as dozens of other best practices. This “style guide” looks and feels much different than a standard interface, and can help users more easily identify content.
Offering Accessible Form Controls and Error Messages
Another aspect of digital ADA compliance is ensuring that all forms and error messages are eligible for individuals with disabilities. Anyone with visual or motor impairments requires information to be presented differently. For example, larger cursors allow them to navigate the screen better, and alternative text for images provides key image content information for the visually impaired or fully blind.
Other areas of ADA compliance focus on labeling and redirection of attention so that individuals with cognitive disabilities can better digest content. The more precise and descriptive a form’s error message is, the better.
Testing and Auditing Accessibility Compliance
With ADA compliance, a series of testing controls ensure that compliance is met across digital assets and services according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). When one approaches accessibility through testing and auditing, it ensures that digital assets meet ADA accessibility standards. With these audits, all digital content, such as websites and documents, is reviewed to ensure that they have alternative text for images, better color contrast ratios, simplified navigation, larger cursors, and other features that are helpful for individuals with disabilities.
One of the preferred methods for testing and auditing is through accessibility testing tools, which can scan hundreds of digital assets at a time to detect missing key elements individuals with disabilities need, such as good color contrast.
From there, digital content can be evaluated based on three levels of conformance (A, AA, AAA). Level A (also known as Basic Accessibility) ensures only the most basic ADA compliance elements, such as alternative text for images and optimized keyboard layout.
In turn, Level AA builds upon A with features such as color contrast selections and closed captioning.
The highest level, AAA, offers the greatest user experience for individuals with disabilities, complete with pre-recorded audio content, voice navigation controls, and better assistive tools for improving a website’s accessibility. Given the complexity, Level AAA may only be achievable for some organizations.
In short, the three levels of conformance allow companies to rate themselves on their approach to digital content. The higher the level, the better the inclusivity for all individuals with disabilities.
Best Practices for Maintaining Ongoing EAA Compliance
Here are five best practices for maintaining compliance with the EAA:
Regular Auditing
One of the best ways to maintain EAA compliance is by performing regular audits to ensure that your organization’s websites, products, and services meet accessibility standards.
Two popular automated testing tools are WAVE and AXE. Both allow developers and designers to enter the URL of any web page and generate detailed accessibility reports that explain everything from icon placement to poor color contrast. While WAVE is a free tool, AXE is an open-source tool that also works with a browser extension. It scans web pages and scores them based on WCAG criteria and best practices.
Ongoing Training
With ADA compliance still a nascent subject even among the most experienced business owners and web developers, continuing training and awareness are key. This may mean regular accessibility training sessions for all employees or a subset of employees within your organization.
Alternatively, you can share readily available resources such as toolkits and online courses to educate your employees on the importance of ADA compliance.
User Testing
One of the best ways to ensure ADA compliance is to routinely include individuals with disabilities to provide regular, ongoing feedback on your website or application. Your feedback loop should involve people with a diversity of disabilities, not just visual or cognitive. Make sure all accessibility features are covered!
Usability testing sessions for mobile applications, websites, and digital products should also be arranged so you can observe users with disabilities performing everyday tasks and interacting with your content. Feedback can be collected qualitatively or quantitatively through detailed questionnaires with immediate categorization of issues from most severe to least severe, allowing the project planning team to inform future design updates.
A Word on the Accessibly Widget
The Accessibly widget helps retrofit websites and online tools to meet WCAG 2.1, ADA, Section 508, and EN 301549 compliance and follow the EU web accessibility directive, creating the most inclusive websites possible for individuals with disabilities.
After downloading the widget, it takes only minutes to transform websites and apps with features like larger text, larger cursors, adjusted brightness, new reading lines, native text and images, inverted colors, and much more to ensure compliance.
Currently, Accessibly supports all major platforms, including but not limited to Shopify, Wix, WordPress, Squarespace, Magento, Weebly, and WooCommerce.
The Role of the Accessibly App in Helping Websites Increase EAA Compliance
The Accessibly App plays a significant role in helping websites increase their EAA compliance – an important topic for everyone, including organizations exempt from these legal requirements.
Accessibility includes the use of assistive technologies like screen readers and voice recognition software, as well as accessible forms with proper labeling. Don’t forget synchronized captions and transcripts, alternative text for images, and enhanced keyboard accessibility, ensuring that everything you can perform on the website can be conducted from the keyboard.
