Website Accessibility 101 for Property Managers with Attorney Kris Rivenburgh

If you saw our recent blog post and video on ADA compliance myths, you know that ‘website accessibility’ is a big buzzword these days. But, what is it and how you can you prevent one of those lawsuits aimed at your property management company, accusing your website of not being accessible?

Kris Rivenburgh is an attorney and founder of Accessible.org. He’s here to talk with us about what accessibility really means for your website and how you can avoid getting a demand letter from an attorney who claims you’re violating the law.

Introduction to Kris Rivenburgh

Kris is an attorney who became interested in website accessibility when he noticed people were being sued. It’s a brand new area for many lawyers, and as he began researching what these lawsuits were about, he developed a specialty in a subject that many lawyers and other professionals hadn’t encountered before. Everything written on the subject was vague and ambiguous. None of the information he could find was helpful to people targeted by a lawsuit. He continued his research and began writing about it. Now, he’s a resource for people who need help distilling the legal and technical jargon that keeps them from really understanding website accessibility.

Website Accessibility: An Explanation

You want to make sure that everyone visiting your property management website gets the information they need.

That’s website accessibility in its most basic form; you’re making your website flexible enough that everyone can access and engage with the content. You run into accessibility issues when the code and the structure is inflexible.

Potential Accessibility Issues on Your Website

There are several things happening on your website that you may not even think could be potential issues for people with disabilities. Kris provided a couple of examples:

* Images. You need alternative text to describe any meaningful images on your website because someone using a screen reader won’t know what the images are.

* Form fields. These need to be labeled correctly or not everyone will understand what information the fields are requesting.

Fair Housing Act and Americans with Disabilities Act: Places of Access

There’s a reason that the surge in lawsuits is especially targeted to the property management and real estate industries. Fair housing laws have to be followed. While the ADA was a civil rights law that was written before websites were even a part of doing business, the law addresses all physical places of access. Websites aren’t physical, but they are high traffic places.

Title III in the ADA is where this issue lands when we talk about website accessibility. Places of public accommodation, according to the law, have typically included hotels, restaurants, gyms, and schools. Websites are different, and the courts have come to see that websites are an integral part of daily life. Some judges see them as a nexus with a physical place and others believe that websites stand alone as a place of public accommodation. Technically, the ADA does not talk about websites but you don’t want to argue that technicality in court. If you’ve received a demand letter, you’ve already lost your lawsuit.

The Fair Housing Act requires that everything is accessible, including advertisements. That’s how it applies to your property management or real estate website. Everyone needs access to the properties being advertised on your site.

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