Hoteliers typically understand what needs to be done to make their on-site facilities ADA compliant, while failure to abide by law puts businesses at risk of lawsuits.
While the Department of Justice (DOJ) has declined to provide formal regulations for website compliance, hotels can follow some best practices which will protect them from potential discrimination lawsuits while simultaneously creating an exceptional online guest experience.
1. Use a Responsive Design
Hoteliers who fail to adhere to American with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards often find themselves facing lawsuits from potential lawsuits; it can send their blood running cold! But meeting these requirements won’t just improve online experience for people with disabilities and lead to higher conversion rates and guest review scores – they may even lead to greater conversion rates and guest satisfaction scores for hotels!
No matter if visitors are searching for specific hotels or simply browsing to see what’s available, responsive website designs will ensure that all content displayed accurately on any device regardless of size and screen resolution. In addition, mobile-friendly formats will help visitors easily locate booking buttons – which must be clear and enticing so as to convert visitors into guests.
Responsive websites can not only optimize your hotel website for accessibility, but they’re also great SEO practices. Google favors mobile-friendly websites over non-responsive ones; having one will help rank higher on search engines’ results pages for relevant queries.
To achieve this, a mobile-friendly web design is necessary, which can be accomplished either through professional web designers or one of the many hotel website builders available today such as Strikingly which provide responsive templates that you can quickly adapt for your brand and business needs.
Not only should your site feature a responsive layout, but you should also take steps to ensure its content is structured and optimized for accessibility. This may involve making sure headers are logically separated and organized as well as including alt-text descriptions for images or videos to assist screen readers.
Your hotel website should provide clear information regarding its accessibility features and meet WCAG guidelines at the same time. This can be accomplished either through a dedicated ADA page or by listing those accommodation types which offer accessibility on its Rooms page.
2. Optimize Your Images
Hotels’ websites are an integral component of their strategy to attract travelers with disabilities, especially those that use assistive devices. By adhering to accessibility standards and making engagement with the hotel online easier for guests with disabilities, hotels can protect themselves from potential lawsuits while making life easier for guests with disabilities who visit them online.
Optimizing images for accessibility is one of the key ways you can ensure guests with disabilities can access information on your hotel website. By including alt text with images, screen readers are better able to interpret what the visuals represent – this text allows those with visual disabilities to engage fully with your web pages – something critical for meeting ADA compliance.
Alt text serves a dual function: providing important contextual information and helping search engines understand what an image represents. To write effective alt text, begin by determining its goal – is it intended to entice people to book a room? If that’s the case, focus on detailing features that will benefit travelers when booking a room and include relevant keywords into the alt text so it ranks higher in search results.
As another way of optimizing images for accessibility, make sure they are both high-quality and optimized for faster loading times without pixelation – this will ensure they provide optimal experience to visitors with slower internet connections and improve accessibility on your website.
Make sure that any colors used on your website offer enough contrast between background and foreground. Low contrast combinations may cause issues for some users, particularly those with vision disabilities. Running the WCAG Color Contrast Tool against your site can help pinpoint any trouble spots.
Accessibility is of utmost importance, which is why it is imperative that hotel websites take all visitors into account when creating them. Not only can improving accessibility prevent any potential lawsuits but it can also increase revenue by drawing more travelers through your doors.
Hospitality industry contributions to the economy are significant, so making your hotel as accessible as possible should be in everyone’s best interests. By taking time to implement these easy accessibility tips, your hotel will find it easier to attract travelers while improving the guest experience.
3. Create a Mobile-Friendly Website
As mobile users’ attention spans shrink and screen sizes decrease, websites must present only essential information in a concise manner. Too much text can overwhelm visitors and create an unpleasant user experience; short paragraphs with headings and subheadings help readers quickly locate information they require; additionally, providing travelers with an efficient search function enhances usability further.
WCAG standards also encourage the use of text size controls that enable visitors to increase or decrease font sizes on your website, making your content easier for those with visual and physical disabilities to read. Furthermore, using alt text for all photographs allows visually impaired people to better comprehend them as well as providing context for blind or partially sighted users. Lastly, key-board shortcuts like Tab or Shift+Tab allow for seamless navigation through your site without the need for a mouse.
Keep in mind that mobile devices typically have less bandwidth than desktop computers, making it even more important to keep website load times as fast as possible on mobile. Visitors will tend to leave pages that take more than two seconds to load; furthermore, Google’s recent mobile-first indexing change means a slow website can significantly erode SEO ranking.
To speed up loading times of your website, make sure all images have appropriate alt text tags and are optimized for smaller screens, while form fields are short and simple so as to not distract or overwhelm mobile visitors. Finally, test all changes on multiple devices before publishing any changes publicly.
As well as improving SEO and providing a superior user experience, creating an ADA compliant website is crucial for all hotels. Not only will this ensure that your hotel reaches the broadest audience possible; it may even protect against costly lawsuits in the future. Luckily, following these simple guidelines will allow you to easily create an ADA compliant site that benefits both visitors and your business!
4. Create an ADA Compliant Website
As a hotelier, you know the Americans with Disabilities Act requires your property to be accessible for guests with disabilities. As part of this effort, wheelchair-friendly ramps and accessible bathrooms should be included to meet guest needs. But it’s also important to remember that your website must also comply with ADA regulations.
Although the specific regulations surrounding ADA compliance for websites remain vague, several large corporations have been sued due to accessibility issues with their websites, including grocery chain Winn-Dixie and restaurants like Burger King that failed to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards.
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and they’re the best way to assess whether your website meets current ADA requirements. They include requirements to make your site accessible for people with visual, motor and cognitive impairments as well as providing text alternatives for images as well as making sure forms can be completed using multiple input devices – including keyboards.
As well as meeting ADA compliance standards, having an accessible website offers other benefits for your hotel. Not only does it make booking accommodations easier for disabled travelers, but optimized websites for accessibility also improve search engine optimization (SEO) and attract more visitors; one study discovered that 8 out of 10 visitors leave sites that are difficult to use altogether.
Although adhering to accessibility laws can be time consuming and costly, it’s worth the investment of both time and money to comply with them. Not doing so may incur serious legal ramifications and cost you business – as well as potential customers not reaching you through your website – so implementing best practices from WCAG may enhance user experience, making your site more appealing for all. So don’t delay; begin working towards creating a more inclusive and accessible website today! Creating an inclusive and accessible website can attract more guests, increase revenue growth potential, as well as establish yourself as hospitality leader among people with disabilities – creating an inclusive and accessible website can help attract guests while simultaneously becoming the go-to source for people with disabilities!