I created a website for a client using the “Vocal” Wordpress template here: https://themeforest.net/item/vocal-music-event-wordpress-theme/8324142
I need to know if that template is ADA compliant (for viewers with disabilities). Is there a way to check?
use tools such as http://wave.webaim.org, unfortunately not many themes on the market will be ADA compliant but shouldn’t take too much for a dev to comply.
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Most of the themes here are non-compliant, several of the most popular (by (Removed - calling out authors) specifically), require HUGE amounts of work to be made ADA compliant. The theme you are referencing “vocal” can’t be tested by webaim, you might be looking at $1,000’s in ada compliance work. My recommendation has become to use a specfically ADA-compliant theme (they are out there) and understand that to be fully accessible you might have to sacrifice some bells and whistles. Envato will not help you out on this one, should you find yourself in a legal jam (As several of our clients have) and the theme developers already have your $60. For our part, we’re switching over to Beaver Builder on a framework with Beaver Themer so we can ensure everything is compliant from the start.
I’m not arguing about the benefits but when did this become a legal requirement?
Section 508 accessibility has been a requirement for any company doing business with the government for several years now, but they have just recently (last year) started enforcing. Any public facing business with more than 15 employees is legally required to have an ADA accessible website, though the federal government hasn’t put forward standards, Title III is a pretty good guide. In the past year, lawyers have begun using tools to scrape the web and identify non-ada compliant properties, and serve the owners with lawsuits. This is a major issue in the hospitality sector, which is majorly served by themeforest themes. So, you have 1,000’s of businesses forced to pay to have themes converted to compliance, plus legal fees, and the developers I have spoken with on here do not seem to be in a rush to help out. If we can build a custom theme for $3000, and legal fees and conversions are $5000+, makes more sense to build the theme from scratch until the developers on here get their acts together.
Is that not just federal websites or those connected somehow to government funding etc? Also only in the US right?
“Just in the US” made me laugh. And GDPR is “just the EU”.
The Americans with Disabiliites Act is federal law. There is no specific provision for digital (guidelines have been withdrawn by the current DOJ), but Title III stands. Eventually, there will be federal guidelines, why not get in front of them (and the lack of guidelines isn’t stopping legal action).
Bigger question - why would you not make your website accessible? You want to actively discriminate against people who use screen readers and the like?
This shouldn’t even be a question. Vendors are selling products that put their purchasers in violation of the law - there should be a warning a la cigarettes “This product may get you sued”