Unless you work in the tech industry or the communications department of a public sector entity, you’ve probably never heard of WCAG 2.1. Well, forget everything you know about censorship, because this is a whole new ballgame. Under the pretext of fighting discrimination, regulators are paving the way to eliminate free speech for small businesses and individuals.
The way it works is this: in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law, with the stated intention of ensuring that blind, deaf, or limited-mobility citizens were not barred from participating in society. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details. Specifically, Title II, section 12182 of the ADA, which states, “No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation.”
While you or I might think of “public accommodation” as being shops and restaurants – and, indeed, local businesses have been sued into bankruptcy on the basis of their failure to comply with the “full and equal enjoyment” requirement – some courts have ruled that websites also count.
As just one example, Domino’s Pizza spent six years in court arguing that it was unreasonable to require the company’s website to facilitate a blind person placing a pizza order. Needless to say, most small businesses can’t afford six years of legal fees to defend themselves.
To make this even more Kafkaesque, there’s no legal definition of just how “accessible” online content needs to be. That’s where the clunky acronym of WCAG comes in. Created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are simply that: guidelines. However, courts have started using them as the de facto standard by which websites are judged.
That’s bad enough, but it gets worse, because the goal posts keep moving. Even if your website is considered “accessible” today, it may not be tomorrow. We’re currently at WCAG 2.1, but WCAG 2.2 is next, and WCAG 3 is in development.
Realistically though, most website don’t even comply with current guidelines. Here are just a few of the requirements of WCAG 2.
Image Descriptions: Every meaningful image needs a text description explaining its content, which can take a lot of time to write, especially for complex images like charts.
Flexible Layouts: Websites must adjust to very small screens without requiring the user to scroll side-to-side.
Pop-up Control: Tooltips or pop-ups must be easy to close or move around, needing extra coding to work on all devices.
Clear Form Fields: Forms collecting personal info must use specific code to help auto-fill, which can mean hiring a developer.
High Contrast for Icons: Buttons, icons, and graphics need strong color contrast, often requiring design audits or changes.
Simple Gestures: Features like swipe or pinch-zoom must have button alternatives, adding work to touch-screen designs.
Big Buttons: Buttons should be large enough for easy clicking, which might force layout changes on small sites.
Status Updates: Alerts like “form submitted” must work with screen readers, needing extra code and testing.
While these can be complex on their own, the most onerous requirements relate to videos.
Video Captions: All videos must have accurate captions for dialogue and sounds, requiring effort to transcribe and sync text.
Video Audio Descriptions: Videos need a separate audio track describing visuals, like actions or scenes, which involves extra scripting and recording work.
Here’s an example of what a descriptive audio track entails. Imagine doing this for every video you posted for your business or blog.
Whatever the original concept of the ADA may have been, it is clear that it is being turned into a brutal regulatory cudgel. Rather than censoring the content of people’s speech based on its substance, the government is simply imposing such expensive and burdensome requirements on speech that only large institutions will be able to comply.
In other words, it isn’t about the left silencing the right, or vice versa, it’s about the dominant institutions in our society silencing everyone else.
Currently, ADA lawsuits and penalties target large businesses and public institutions, but the net is widening inexorably. By April 2027, every municipality in the United Sates will need to ensure that its website is compliant with WCAG 2.1. How many small towns will simply take down their websites rather than risk litigation?
The irony is obvious. While claiming to increase the ability of all citizens to consume content, the ADA is restricting the ability of all but the largest entities to create it. If we don't speak up now, small businesses and independent creators will be forced off the internet entirely.