Accessibility Consulting for Restaurants & Hospitality Businesses
Between 2017 and 2018, there was a 177% increase in website accessibility lawsuits, and restaurants and hospitality businesses are among the companies most frequently receiving accessibility complaints and being included in web accessibility lawsuits. In recent years, both the National Restaurant Association and the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International have spoken out about the need for restaurants and businesses in the hospitality industry to have accessible websites. With the Supreme Court declining to hear the Domino’s Pizza case in the fall of 2019, effectively upholding the decision of the Ninth Circuit Courts in favor of a blind user who sued Domino’s for an inaccessible website, the landscape of website accessibility is increasingly complex for restaurant owners.
Equalize Digital is here to help you protect your restaurant, bar, or hospitality business from ADA-related lawsuits by ensuring that your website and applications are accessible to people of all abilities. Additionally, we strive to create accessibility solutions that increase the reach of your website to people of all abilities in your geographic area, allowing you to receive more orders and reservations in the current competitive dining climate.
Quick Benefits
- Ensure that patrons can access and navigate your restaurant’s website and online ordering/reservations apps.
- Maintain compliance with WCAG 2.1 and ADA accessibility guidelines and laws.
- Reach new and underserved market segments.
- Understand how people with disabilities use the internet.
Make Your Website Accessible
1) Assess
Comprehensive audits and user testing to determine your compliance gaps. We’ll help you identify areas that need improvement – whether in code or content.
2) Resolve
Equalize Digital is your partner to resolve all accessibility errors and ensure your website meets WCAG 2.1, Section 508, and ADA standards.
3) Maintain
From providing training for your team to ongoing website assessments, we’ll verify your website stays compliant with current accessibility laws and standards.
Web Accessibility Services That Fit Your Restaurant’s Needs
Whether you need urgent accessibility remediation or are planning a new website or application for your restaurant, bar, or hospitality business and want to ensure it is accessible to people of all abilities, our team of expert consultants and accessibility-focused developers are here to help.
Why Accessibility Matters for Restaurants & Hospitality Businesses
Having an accessible website and supporting digital equality is not just good karma, it’s good for business, too. More than 1 billion people in the world have a disability. So do 1-in-4 U.S. adults. Having an accessible website allows you to reach all your potential customers online, including blind and visually impaired users, deaf and hard of hearing users, and users with cognitive disabilities or physical impairments that challenge their ability to use a traditional keyboard and or mouse. Accessibility features help people who were born with disabilities and also people, like military veterans or the elderly, who become disabled or develop impairments through the course of their life.
Reduce risk of lawsuit
Ensure you’re compliant with federal and state laws for website accessibility
Improve search engine ranking
Many accessibility fixes will also improve your website’s search engine performance.
Increase sales & conversions
Allow more people access to your website, increasing opportunities for sales.
Practice social responsibility
Take meaningful action and do your part to make the internet better.
Ready to get started?
Whether you’re concerned about accessibility compliance or you want to completely overhaul your restaurant’s online presence, our team is ready to help you ensure your website is usable by people of all abilities. We have extensive experience working with and in the restaurant and food service industries and are uniquely positioned to partner with you on an accessibility audit and remediation plan that works for your business.
To get started or learn more about how we work, call us at (512) 942-5858 or visit our contact page to request more information from our sales team.
FAQs for Restaurant Accessibility
Most restaurants, bars, and hospitality businesses are required to meet the following compliance standards:
- Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
Our accessibility experts can help you identify which laws apply to your organization and craft a custom plan for ensuring that your website is 100% compliant now and on an ongoing basis.
In our experience, unless you are already extensively focusing on website accessibility, there are likely accessibility issues present on your current website that need to be fixed. Nearly all websites and applications have accessibility problems because, unfortunately, we have not yet reached a point where all designers and developers make accessibility a priority.
If you’re not sure that our services are right for you, we recommend getting one of our free risk assessments. These assessments tell you:
- If there are any errors present on your website.
- If there are website accessibility laws that may apply to your organization.
You can request a risk assessment at no charge on our accessibility audits page.
If you request a risk assessment, you’ll be able to schedule a meeting to go over your assessment at a time that makes sense for you. Typically we have your risk assessment complete and are available to meet to discuss it within 24 hours.
Our initial accessibility audits generally take 5 business days from the date you sign up and pay your deposit.
Remediation timelines are unique for every client depending upon several items, including the number of problems present on the site and the budget available for fixes. Our goal is to remediate all issues as quickly as possible, and some clients choose to have an intense remediation phase over several weeks following the audit. Other clients may elect to enter a remediation plan that stretches over many months due to the number of problems that need to be addressed, the number of pages requiring manual review, and their budget.
Yes. Our team has developed accessible websites and web applications and has provided accessibility consulting for large universities, government agencies, and enterprise-level clients.
If you have a chain or franchise business model that operates in multiple markets, we can provide an accessibility strategy that works at scale.
Yes. If you have your own in-house developers but need a trained accessibility expert to assist with auditing and providing support as your development team remediates issues, we can help.
For companies with an internal development team, we can craft custom remediation and monitoring support plans which includes access to our scanning dashboard and reports, as well as time for training and support as your developers work through issues. We can also coordinate user testing sessions with our blind and visually impaired testers. Please contact us for additional information.
