UNCORKING ACCESSIBILITY: Ensuring Your Website Complies With the ADA

By: Vanessa Ing, Farella Braun + Martel

In today’s digital age, having an online presence is crucial for businesses, including wineries, breweries, and other beverage companies. Accordingly, it’s essential to ensure that your beverage website meets federal standards for accessibility to avoid lawsuits and fines. In this article, we will help beverage companies understand how to comply with federal law and implement accessible features on their websites.

Why is Web Accessibility Important?

In 1990, Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It prohibits businesses open to the public (otherwise known as “public accommodations”) from discriminating against people with disabilities in everyday activities. These everyday activities can include purchasing goods and services, or offering employment opportunities.

In March 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice issued web accessibility guidance, reiterating that ensuring web accessibility for people with disabilities is a priority for the Department. Relying on the ADA’s prohibition against discrimination and its mandate to provide equal access, Department of Justice emphasized that the ADA’s requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges, or activ- ities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web. The Department of Justice’s guidance was particularly timely given that many services moved online during the pandemic.

In its guidance, the Department of Justice explained that people with disabilities navigate the web in different ways: for example, those with visual impairments might require a screen reader that reads aloud text to the audience. Those with auditory impairments might require closed-captioning software, while those with impaired motor skills might require voice recognition software. A website, therefore, should be compatible with the full range of such software.

Is Your Beverage Company a “Public Accommodation” Business?

Public accommodations include businesses that sell goods and services, establishments serving food and drink, and places of recreation or public gathering. Companies that sell drinks, wineries that offer a tasting room, or breweries that host events are all considered public accommodations. Thus, those businesses’ websites must comply with the ADA by being accessible to people with disabilities.

It is an open question whether beverage companies without a physical location open to the public must still have ADA-compliant websites. Some jurisdictions, like the Ninth Circuit (which has jurisdiction over Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington), have tied the necessity of ADA-compliant websites to the existence of a brick-and-mortar location (Robles v. Domino’s Pizza, LLC). However, the Department of Justice, along with several federal circuit courts of appeals, has taken the position that even a public accommodation business without a physical location must have an ADA-compliant website.

Given the increased prevalence of online-only services open to the public, it is very likely that litigation over the next few years may resolve this open question. In the meantime, it is wise for beverage companies to take preventative caution and ensure that their websites are accessible.

What are some Website Accessibility Barriers?

To ensure ADA compliance, beverage companies must be aware of common website accessibility barriers. These include poor color contrast, lack of descriptive text on images and videos, mouse-only navigation, and more. By addressing these barriers, beverage companies can enhance the user experience for people with disabilities.

Six examples of website accessibility barriers highlighted in the DOJ’s accessibility guidance include:

• Poor Color Contrast: Ensure sufficient color contrast between text and background to aid individuals with visual impairments or color blindness. Use color combinations that are easy to distinguish.

• Use of Color Alone to Give Information: Avoid using color alone to provide information. Using color alone can be very disorienting for someone who is visually impaired or colorblind. Someone who is colorblind might not be able to distinguish between shades of gray. One solution might be to ensure that symbols conveying information are differently shaped.

• Lack of Descriptive Alternative Text for Images and Videos: Provide descriptive text (alt text) for images and videos, allowing screen readers to convey the information to visually impaired users. This makes your content more accessible and inclusive.

• No Closed Captions on Videos: Include closed captions for videos to accommodate individuals with hearing impairments. Utilize manual or automatic captioning options and review the captions for accuracy. Free options are available on the web.

• Inaccessible Online Forms: Make online forms user-friendly for people with disabilities. Provide clear instructions before the form, ensure that a screen reader could recognize required fields and fields with special formatting, ensure keyboard-only navigation, use accessible labels for inputs, and display clear error messages. Note that an image-based CAPTCHA is not a fully accessible way to secure your form; your CAPTCHA should offer users who are visually impaired an audio alternative.

• Mouse-Only Navigation: Enable keyboard-only navigation on your website to assist individuals