Is Your Website ADA Compliant? How Inaccessible Websites Could Cost You Millions Or Drive Your Company To Bankruptcy.

A deaf movie enthusiast wants to find an entertainment option for their family on your movie website. After browsing through your endless list of movies, she finds something that she wants to try out. But on playing the movie, she is faced with one problem; your movies have no captions or transcriptions. So, she has to find another accessible website, or she could take the high road and sue your company for the sake of deaf people like her. Either way, your business loses.

In January 2019, Mary Connor sued Beyoncé’s website for not being accessible to blind people. According to The Guardian, the lawsuit targeted the lack of images’ alt attribute, keyboard navigation, and accessible dropdown menu in the website. Other websites like Fox News, Kylie Jenner Inc., and Dominos have faced the same fire. While some complainants only want to access entertainment options for their families, others will use your non-compliance to earn money. Stay ahead of ADA litigations by ensuring web accessibility.

Accessibility in web design means making your website accessible to all, including people with disabilities. According to Developer Circles Lagos, the three types of disability that your family entertainment center needs to address include:

• Permanent disability – e.g., short-sightedness, blindness, deafness, or missing limbs.
• Temporary disability – e.g., autism, mental illness, or dyslexia.
• Conditional disability – e.g., a slow internet connection or a website that is unusable on mobile devices.

While it may be easy to spot a disabled person in brick and mortar entertainment centers, it is easy to overlook the lack of inclusion for the blind and deaf in your movie website. Even the short-sighted man wants to watch their favorite show, but when your website makes the movie inaccessible, you lose customers and risk losing even more in lawsuits. Whether you are a family entertainment center owner or marketer, you need to consider all these audiences’ types for your website.

According to Rouge, making a website accessible means following the best practices in web design in the following areas:

• Accessibility (i.e., ease of use for people with disabilities).
• Website performance (i.e., speed).
• Mobile-friendliness (i.e., responsive).
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• Security

The most significant reason for website accessibility is to ensure that all your site visitors get the most out of your family entertainment center. You don’t have to worry about the technical details on how to judge your websites’ performance. Rocket Effect will help you analyze each aspect of your website’s performance and offer a comprehensive report on how to improve your website. Rocket Effect uses Google’s Lighthouse API to test your website on the 5 aspects mentioned above and provide you results within seconds.

Besides a great user experience, here are other benefits for FEC’s website accessibility.

• Competitive edge: Your family entertainment center will stand out from the competition.
• Higher ranking on Google’s organic search results; thus, your FEC will reach a large audience. Organic or natural search results are user search-term results ranked based on relevancy to the search-term.
• Minimize legal repercussions. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 demands that your website content should be accessible to people with disabilities, including visual, hearing, mobility, and cognitive challenges.
• Higher brand authority: Increase your FEC’s brand authority by making it accessible to everyone.

We understand the need for website accessibility for Family Entertainment Centers; that’s why we created Rocket Effect.

The Importance Of Website Accessibility In Family Entertainment Centers

Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of website accessibility. As previously mentioned, the 5 aspects that your FEC needs to address include; accessibility, performance, mobile-friendliness, SEO, and security.

When you run your website through Rocket Effect’s scanner, you will receive the following type of results calculated using Lighthouse score calculator:

• Overall score: which is a percentage from 0 to 100%. Though it is implausible to score 100%, aim for 90% and above. Any score below 90% means that your site needs improvement. That is why we provide you with a comprehensive report on how to improve your website at Rocket Effect.
• Performance: Calculated as a fraction out of 30 (i.e., x/30, where x represents your site’s score). It measures your site speed and user perception.
• Mobile: calculated as a fraction out of 30. It measures your site’s mobile-friendliness.
• Search Engine Optimization: Calculated as a fraction out of 20. It measures your site’s SEO in page titles, meta descriptions, and more.
• Security: If your site has an SSL certificate, it scores a 10/10.
• Accessibility: Calculated as a fraction out of 10. It measures your site’s accessibility to assistive technology tools like screen readers.

Let’s delve into each of these categories to learn why and how to maximize family fun and business revenue.

 Accessibility

ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Litigations are at an all-time high. Still, since the adoption of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, the entertainment industry has been hit hard due to accessibility issues on their websites. Disney fought over 30 lawsuits claiming that Disney violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by making people with autism wait too long in line to take rides. According to Ability Magazine, waiting in line for more than 15 minutes may trigger meltdown episodes in autistic guests. Despite Disney’s lack of control over such natural occurrences, a Tampa-based lawyer filed over 60 similar lawsuits targeting the Florida and California theme parks.

While a lawsuit should not be your motivation for ensuring accessibility, the legal costs are better avoided by ensuring compliance with ADA and WCAG. That is partly why Family entertainment Centers need to be inclusive.

Web assistive technology tools like screen readers make it possible for the blind to use smartphones and computers. But a screen reader cannot help the user if your FEC is not well optimized through labeled elements, titles, and images.

Besides screen readers, other web assistive technology tools include:

• Screen magnifiers to enlarge web content.
• Alternative input devices, e.g., head pointers, eye tracking, large-print and on-screen keyboards, joysticks, trackballs, and voice recognition.
• Keyboard navigation.
• Accelerators such as browser history and bookmarks reduce user effort when clicking or typing.

Rocket Effect checks web accessibility for your FEC through the following general metrics.

• Optimized (well-labeled) Buttons, Title Element, Labeled Elements, and Alt Attribute for people using screen readers. Screen readers can only convert text to braille or synthesized speech.
• TabIndex Attribute for keyboard navigation. Proper ordering of elements and the tabindex attribute allows users to navigate your FEC using a keyboard.

If you need a more in-depth web accessibility analysis, contact Rocket Effect. We shall connect you with our professional team to guide you through improving your website accessibility and ADA compliance.

Why FEC Web Accessibility Is Important

• A great user experience for visitors using assistive technologies.
• Avoid legal repercussions for non-compliance with ADA and WCAG that would cost your business.
• An all-inclusive FEC ensures that you reach a larger audience that could be ignored by competitors.
• Including everyone in your FEC improves your brand’s authority. It creates goodwill from your users and the potential to form lasting relationships.

Performance

Search engines like Google use algorithms to determine the relevancy and quality of your family entertainment center. As these algorithms rely on pre-determined factors, it becomes easier for website owners and marketers to improve their position in organic search results. Despite Google’s constant tweaks on search algorithms, all changes incline to one goal: a great user experience.

Google’s search algorithms consider over 200 factors, and your site speed is one vital factor. Google goes a step further to check your site’s speed under slow internet connection and mobile devices. Mobile devices have slower processor speeds compared to desktops. According to Statista, more than 50% of total website traffics come from mobile devices since 2017. But from our experience with customers in the Family Entertainment Center industry, the number of mobile devices is beyond 70% of the total traffic. Site speed is of essence because, according to New York Times, people will abandon your FEC if it is 250 milliseconds slower than your competitor’s

Rocket Effect determines your site’s performance by checking the following:

• Page Loading Speed: We recommend less than 3 seconds load time.
• Page Size: We recommend that site owners keep their pages below 3mbs for optimal performance.
• Browser Caching: The browser stores the user’s frequently used content in their device’s memory for faster loading in the next request.
• Page Redirects: The more the page redirects, the more the loading time. Avoid redirects as much as possible.
• Compression: compress your JavaScript and CSS files for faster loading speed.
• Render Blocking: For better loading speed, remove or limit the data (HTML, JavaScript, or CSS) needed to render above-the-fold content (this is the parts of a webpage that appear first in the browser on the first time that the page loads).

Why FEC Performance and Site Speed are important.

• To maximize user experience. A slow-loading video will very likely annoy your visitors.
• Higher page ranking. A low bounce rate (people leaving immediately after viewing only one of your FEC’s pages) shows that your site is relevant, thus raising your page ranking on organic search results. Another aspect of this is repeated site visits. If your visitors come back to your site, your site gets a better page ranking for proving relevant.

A great user experience increases conversion rates and sales. Combining the best entertainment options with the best user experience gives your brand the recognition it deserves.

Mobile Friendliness

With over 70% of Family Entertainment Center industry traffic coming from mobile devices, there is a dire need to optimize mobile devices’ web pages. There’s nothing that accelerates the bounce rate more than a messy website.

Google’s page ranking algorithm also factors in your FEC’s usability (mobile-friendliness) to determine your site’s quality. The algorithm checks how your website looks like in different browsers and different screen sizes before displaying your site in search results. Your visitors should use your FEC on their mobile devices without the need to zoom or scroll horizontally. Your web content should also have enough space for tap targets on different mobile devices’ screens.

The following aspects of your FEC design determine your Rocket Effect score on mobile-friendliness:

• Mobile responsive design: your FEC should maintain usability in various screen sizes.
• Viewport: Viewport is a CSS rule that lets web designers control web content’s appearance on different screens.
• Page speed: owing to mobile devices’ slow processor speed, your site needs best practices to keep the load time lower than 3 seconds.

Based on your results, you will know if Google sees your website as mobile-friendly. If your FEC scores are below 25/30, please contact Rocket Effect to learn how to improve your page performance. You will also see tips on your result page and receive a comprehensive report on how to improve your site’s score.

Why Mobile-Friendliness Is Important For Your FEC

• A great user experience for mobile device users.
• Higher page ranking on organic search results.
• Higher page speeds improve user satisfaction for repeat visitors, referrals, and forming lasting relationships.
• Improve website traffic for higher conversions and sales.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is all about ranking high on organic search results. For example, if a user searches for “family entertainment center near me.” The search engine (e.g., Google Search) first determines the user’s intent, then looks for relevant websites that closely match the user query. To assess your FEC’s relevancy, Google search will look for the keywords’ family entertainment center’ in your domain name, page title, meta description, headings, and webpage content. The search system will also look beyond the keywords into your FEC links, URL structure, backlinking from reputable sites, site usability, and other previously mentioned ranking factors. Google uses over 200 SEO ranking factors but using each could give your FEC the page ranking leap you expect.

Rocket Effect scanner will examine your FEC in the following SEO factors:

• Page Title: We recommend having your keywords within the first 65 characters. Limit your title to 70 relevant characters.
• Meta Description. The meta description contains keywords on the page and web content. Limit your meta description to 300 relevant characters.
• Heading Tags: Identify your headings using HTML tags for SEO and ease of use with screen readers.
• Site Map: A sitemap is the list of all your FEC’s pages. As a search engine crawls your website, a sitemap acts like a guide showing all the pages’ contents and structure in your FEC.

If your site scores well on Rocket Effect, but your page still ranks low, speak to our agents for free advice on how to improve your ranking.

Why SEO is important For Your FEC

• Improve page relevancy to rank higher than competitors in organic search results.
• Improve your FEC’s visibility. Reach a larger audience for more leads.
• A high page ranking combined with a great user experience improves conversion rates and sales.

Security

With the rise in cybercrimes, online security is a critical part of online businesses. Google demands that websites provide their SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates lest their website is tainted with a ‘not secure’ mark on the address bar. This is enough reason to raise your website users’ suspicions, even though you won’t sell anything. With an SSL certificate, your brand seems authentic and trustworthy.

An SSL certificate adds that ‘S’ to HTTP in your address bar. An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that establishes the authenticity of a website and provides an encrypted connection between two communicating devices, e.g., between the web server and user device.

Though Google will not hide the fact that your site does not use SSL certificates, Rocket Effect also checks whether you have an SSL certificate. Without an SSL certificate, your site scores zero on security.

Why Security Is Important For Your FEC

• A great user experience. Your site visitors will feel free and safe on your website.
• Brand authority, authenticity, and trustworthiness. An SSL certificate creates the impression of an authentic website that your visitors can trust.
• Brand authority is also a factor in Google’s page ranking. An SSL certificate ensures that your FEC gets all the traffic it deserves.
• Prevent data breaches. An SSL certificate provides encryption for data passing through the communicating devices. It keeps your site and customer data safe from malicious users.
• An SSL certificate protects your website and users against phishing scams.

After doing a Rocket Effect scan on your website, you will receive tips on how to improve your website’s score and performance on page ranking. You can also access your detailed results report on how to improve your website in your inbox. If you need professional advice, feel free to contact us today.