Frequently Asked Questions about Website Accessibility
To ensure all your guests have an amazing experience from the moment they engage with your restaurant, it's important to have an accessible website. The responsibility is on you as a business owner to ensure that your website is accessible to people with disabilities—just as you would with your physical space.
Website accessibility efforts are part of an ongoing journey that is never complete. And no one can complete it for you. Not to mention no one—individually or as a service provider—can guarantee website accessibility.
While Popmenu offers more support than any other technology partner within the restaurant industry to help you set up your website with accessibility in mind, it's vital that you protect yourself through education and consistent action.
Here is a list of frequently asked questions regarding website accessibility. Have more questions? Reach out to your success manager rep today.
Simply, having an accessible restaurant space or website means that people with disabilities can enjoy your space and use your website equally to counterparts without disabilities or impairments. Website accessibility is a journey, NOT a destination. Maintaining an accessible website is a constant process that is never finished. Popmenu does more than any other vendor—including partnering with Level Access—to get you set up for success through expert design and education.
Yes. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) states that all public areas must accommodate people with disabilities, which includes your website.
By following generally accepted standards on accessibility, including Section 508 Standards (IT accessibility standards for US government contracting) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG (published by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium, the main international standards organization for the internet).
The WCAG have three Levels of Conformance:
- A: minimum level to achieve conformance
- AA: More difficult success criteria to achieve, this level is what most organizations strive for and what has been recognized as sufficient in ADA lawsuit settlements (which aren't legally binding precedent, but provides some context).
- AAA: The most rigid level of conformance, AAA is extremely difficult to attain. Even the World Wide Web Consortium acknowledges that it is impossible for each page of every site to meet AAA criteria.
Learn more here.
You can be liable under the ADA if your website isn't accessible. ADA lawsuits incur hefty monetary and other costs like attorneys' fees, settlement payments, site redesigns, bad publicity and lost business. Although conformance to Section 508 Standards and/or WCAG does not guarantee ADA compliance or that you will not be sued, they put you in a good position with respect to the ADA and defending against ADA lawsuits.
You should consider those with:
- Blindness or those with low vision
- Deafness and hearing loss
- Limited movement
- Speech disabilities
Read stories about the potential experiences of web users with disabilities.
Ultimately, the responsibility is on you as a restaurant owner—not Popmenu or any other industry partner or vendor—to ensure that your public space—both physical and digital—follow the law of accommodation laid out by the ADA.
- While there is no legally-mandated regulation on how to comply with the ADA, your best bet is following the Section 508 Standards and achieving Level AA conformance with WCAG 2.1.
- Remember, no one can 100% guarantee website accessibility. If a vendor is telling you they can, that is a red flag.
That’s the hard part: there is no defined standard for what constitutes an accessible website. However, achieving Level AA conformance to Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 has been recognized as sufficient in past ADA lawsuit settlements. In addition, the DOJ, which enforces the ADA, recently issued guidance that references WCAG and Section 508 Standards as helpful to ensuring accessibility of website features.