What do Domino’s Pizza, Fox News Network, Nike, and Harvard have in common with your home improvement business? If your website isn’t ADA-compliant, you could face an ADA lawsuit.

Find out more about ADA website compliance, why it matters, and how you can attend to it in this four-part blog post series. Today, we’re starting with a look at why home improvement firms can’t—and shouldn’t want to—ignore this issue.

Is This Really Something Home Improvement Firms Should Worry About?

Admittedly, the likelihood of a lawsuit probably increases as exposure to your website and your revenue does. But that doesn’t mean small businesses can’t be targeted if they’re not making their sites accessible to as many people as possible.

And if you want to skip this step in managing your website, the law doesn’t tend to side with you. Although the actual text of the Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t address websites, it does say that “public spaces” must meet ADA accessibility requirements. Numerous courts have ruled that websites that provide information, goods, and services to the public fall under those parameters.

Potential Benefits of ADA-Compliant Websites

ADA website compliance isn’t only about protecting your firm from lawsuits, though. Here are some other benefits home improvement firms might experience when they do the work to ensure their sites are compliant:

• Improved SEO performance. Many steps required to make a website ADA-compliant involve supporting technology such as screen readers and AI. What’s good for those tools is also good for search engine bots, so you could get a bit of an SEO boost.
• Larger reach. When your site is accessible to more people, that increases your audience and the potential pool of people to whom you might sell goods or services.
• Increased brand reputation. Demonstrating that you care about your audience and want to support everyone in accessing your services can help create goodwill in the community for your business.

Now that you know why ADA website compliance is important, check back next week. We’ll cover what ADA compliance actually means in terms of technical requirements on your site.