How’s that for a dry podcast title — How to Make Your Website ADA Compliant? OK, hear me out friends — if you have a website, you really do need to listen to this episode. 

Rather than share a laundry list of boring facts, my guest is going to walk you through exactly what steps you need to take to make sure that your website is 100% compliant with current accessibility laws. 

What I want you to promise is that you will listen without allowing yourself to get overwhelmed and then take action on the three steps we give you at the end of the podcast. We’ll break it down very simply, with the exact steps you need to take in order to achieve ADA compliance, depending on where you are in your business. 

Andrew Wilder is my guest today. He’s the founder of Nerdpress, a digital agency that provides WordPress maintenance and services for small businesses. While Nerdpress services all types of blogs, they specialize in food blogs.

Before we jump into the episode though, I want to remind you of all the free resources we offer here at Simple Pin. 

For starters, we have a free, comprehensive marketing planner that grows and gets better every single year! We also offer a free 8-page Pinterest image guide. In addition, we offer a variety of email training series, based on where you are in your business. 

Ready to get started with Pinterest marketing, or are you a beginner? Sign up for our Start newsletter series. If you’ve been in the game for a while and you’re ready to grow, sign up for our Grow newsletter series. 

From Food Blogger to Blogging Tech Business

Andrew got started in the online space with a food blog (Eating Rules) back in 2010. As he grew it, he also began to get involved in the food blogger community, attending conferences and helping other food bloggers with their blogs. 

What struck me about Andrew is that his process was similar to what we see so often here at Simple Pin. A person starts out pursuing a hobby, they start a blog about their hobby, and before they realize it, they have created an actual business. 

Websites and blogs require certain things in order to remain legal. In recent years, the GDPR regulations has thrown many a blogger for a loop, just trying to figure out what it all meant and how to do the right thing in light of it.

In addition to making sure your website complies with GDPR and CCPA regulations, there are even more legal aspects to think about, one of those being accessibility. 

Ensuring that your website is in full compliance with current laws can be a full-time job. Do you have to say goodbye to your hobby and hello to a new job? Not necessarily. You can outsource some of these tasks so that you can still focus on the part of website ownership that lights you up — creating the content.

What Is ADA Compliance?

Because of the number of horror stories that center around bloggers trying to figure out GDPR/CCPA, I wanted to interview Andrew on the podcast so that he can explain to us exactly what we need to know about ADA compliance and accessibility for our sites. 

Accessibility simply means making sure your website is usable for everyone, including anyone with any disability. There are varying levels of accessibility. The basic ideas is that anyone who wants to consume the content on your website is able to so. For example:

* If the user is visually impaired, they should be able to use a screen reader to navigate the site.

* If they are unable to use a mouse, a reader should be able to navigate the site with their keyboard.