As the owner and operator of your own dental practice, you have so many responsibilities. You’re committed to providing the highest level of care for your patients, keeping your clients and staff safe, maintaining your building and equipment. The list never seems to end. There’s another potential risk to your business and your livelihood coming from somewhere you probably never expected—your website. If your practice website is not ADA accessible, you’re opening yourself up to a potentially devastating issue. Read on to learn more about this and how the team at Bryant Consultants can make sure your site is fully compliant with ADA standards.
How can your website lead to a lawsuit?
In a disturbing new trend in the courts, litigation based on the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) violations is on the rise. One of the favorite targets of plaintiffs is the websites of businesses just like yours. Specifically, plaintiffs target sites that lack accessibility for individuals with a hearing impairment, vision impairment, or learning issue. There were 11,000 ADA Title III lawsuits filed in 2020 in federal court.
Many of these plaintiffs are not even clients or customers of the business being sued; instead, this litigation often is coming from individuals who are filing these suits solely for financial gain. A plaintiff may look through hundreds of websites per day, seeking businesses to target. Dentists often are easy prey because, in this digital age, most dentists have a website for their practice; and dentists typically are not web experts, nor do they have content updated as often as other types of businesses, such as e-commerce.
If someone chooses to file a lawsuit against your business due to ADA inaccessibility, it can catch you by surprise. No prefiling is required, meaning you don’t have the chance to make the needed changes. The minimum damages for the first offense of ADA Title III is up to $4,000 and can multiply for every other visit the plaintiff makes to your site. The costs can add up, as can the legal fees, which may not be covered by the liability insurance for your practice.
How does a website become ADA compliant?
Businesses like dental practices fall under the public accommodation’s requirements of the ADA: Title I and Title III. These regulations stipulate “reasonable accessibility” for people with disabilities.
Still, when these matters come up under litigation, the court tends to refer to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, a stringent set of standards that includes the following:
- Alternative text for images and other non-text content
- Closed captioning of videos
- Structure that is compatible with screen-reader technology
- Color, contrast, and text sizing options to facilitate readability
- Predictable page order
- Understandable site navigation
- The ability for users to avoid or correct input mistakes
How to make your site ADA compliant
It’s highly likely you hired a web design company or web developer to build your site. And whoever you hire should build or update your site to meet accessibility standards. If your site is complete and you are unsure if it is ADA accessible or not, an accessibility professional can perform a thorough evaluation of your practice website, including a report with any issues detected.
The growing trend of lawsuits filed over ADA accessibility, combined with the prevalence of cybercrime, hacking, malware, and ransomware, make it more important than ever to trust your web design and development needs to a professional. At Bryant Consultants, web design and development represent the cornerstones of our program of digital media services. We produce sleek, professional sites optimal for every device from your desktop computer to your phone, from your laptop to your tablet. And you can rest easy knowing that your site is ADA compliant.
You may even reap some unexpected benefits from ensuring ADA compliance for your website. The IRS currently is offering a one-time tax credit of up to $5,000 for small business owners that incur expenses in the process of bringing their website into accordance with ADA regulations.
Web Development for Dental Practices
You can’t afford to sit back and just assume your practice website is ADA compliant, not with the scourge of potential litigation looming. Protect yourself, your site, and your business by hiring the services of the web experts at Bryant Consultants. Find out more today by calling (877) 768-4799 to schedule your complimentary consultation.
