How to Make Your Website ADA Compliant (Without Hiring a Lawyer First)

A blind reviewer once tried to leave feedback on a client's homepage and his screen reader read the hero button as "button." Just that. No label, no purpose, no clue.

He couldn't sign up. The client never knew. That's what an ADA problem looks like in real life, and it's quietly happening on most websites right now.

Let me walk you through how to fix it, in the order that actually matters.

What ADA Compliance Means for a Website

The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn't list a single rule about alt text or color contrast. It's a civil rights law from 1990, written before most websites existed.

So courts and the DOJ point to a technical standard instead: WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Think of it this way. ADA is the law. WCAG is the rulebook everyone agrees to grade against.

The target almost everyone aims for is WCAG 2.1 Level AA. If you hit AA, you've covered the issues that come up in the vast majority of legal complaints.

The Four Principles WCAG Is Built On

Every WCAG rule rolls up into four ideas. Memorize these and the rest stops feeling random.

The acronym is POUR. Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Solid.

When you find a problem, ask which letter it breaks. That tells you who you're hurting and how to phrase the fix.

A 7-Step Framework to Get Compliant

Don't boil the ocean. Work in this order and you'll knock out the highest-impact issues first.

Step one is the cheapest win. Run your top pages through a free tool before you change anything, so you know your starting point.

Steps two through six are the bulk of the work. None of them require a developer for content pages built in a normal CMS.

Step seven is the one people skip, and it's the one that catches the issues automated tools miss.

The Fixes That Cover the Most Ground

If you only have an afternoon, spend it here. These five fixes resolve the majority of real-world violations I see.

Alt text comes first. Every image that carries meaning needs a short description. Decorative images get empty alt text so screen readers skip them.

Keyboard access comes second. Unplug your mouse and tab through your site. If you can't reach a link, button, or form, neither can someone using only a keyboard.

Color contrast is third. Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 against its background. Light gray on white is the usual culprit.

• Every image has correct alt text
• You can tab to every interactive element
• Text contrast passes 4.5:1
• Forms have visible labels
• Videos have captions

Form labels are fourth. A placeholder is not a label. Each field needs a real, persistent label that stays visible after someone starts typing.

Captions are fifth, and this is where a lot of teams quietly fail. Every video with speech needs accurate captions, not auto-generated word soup.

Review_Cut_v4.mp4In Review

212160p · ProRes

00:34 / 02:18

SR

Sarah 0:34

Frame-accurate note, everyone sees the exact same thing.

Where Video Quietly Breaks Compliance

Here's the part most ADA checklists gloss over. Your written pages might pass, and your video still sinks you.

Captions are a hard requirement under WCAG, not a nice-to-have. If your product demo, testimonial, or course lesson has spoken audio and no captions, that's a Level A failure, the most basic tier.

The trap is the review process behind the video. Most teams pass drafts around over email, WeTransfer, or a shared Drive folder.

None of those tools were built to review video. There's no frame-accurate commenting, no version history, no way to confirm captions are correct before a file goes live.

That gap is exactly why we built PlayPause. You upload a cut, and reviewers comment on the exact frame where a caption is wrong, mistimed, or missing.

Every revision stacks as a new version, so you can prove which cut was approved and when. When the captioned, accessible version is signed off, you lock it with an approval so nobody pushes the wrong file.

The Tools Worth Using (and the Ones That Aren't)

There's no single button that makes a site compliant. Be skeptical of anything that promises that.

For scanning, free automated checkers catch roughly a third of issues. They're a starting line, not a finish line.

For the human half, a free screen reader is your best friend. Mac ships with VoiceOver. Windows has Narrator built in, and NVDA is a free download.

For video specifically, you need a review tool, not a file-dropping service. Here's the honest comparison.

Frame.io does the job, but it charges per seat. Add a few freelance editors, a captioner, and a couple of client reviewers, and the bill climbs fast.

PlayPause prices on storage instead, from free up to 25 dollars a month, and guest reviewers are always free. Your captioner, your client, and your compliance reviewer all get in without buying a seat.

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The point of an accessible video isn't just to pass a scan. It's that a real person with a real screen reader can actually use it.

How to Keep It Compliant After Launch

Compliance isn't a one-time project. Every new page, image, and video can reintroduce a problem.

Bake the checks into your normal workflow. New blog post? Run the scanner. New video? It doesn't get an approval lock until captions are verified in review.

Keep a simple record of what you tested and when. If a complaint ever lands, a documented, good-faith effort is worth far more than a perfect-but-undocumented site.

Re-scan your most important pages on a schedule. Quarterly is plenty for most small sites, monthly if you publish heavily.

The Bottom Line

ADA compliance comes down to one question: can someone with a disability actually use your site the way you intended?

Start with a free scan, fix alt text and keyboard access, repair contrast and labels, and never ship a video without verified captions. Then test it with a real screen reader before you call it done.

The video piece is where most teams trip, and it's the cheapest to fix once you have the right review process. If your team passes cuts around over email or Drive, that's the leak.

Move your video review into PlayPause, where reviewers comment on the exact frame, captions get checked before sign-off, and the approved accessible version gets locked. Start free, add as many guest reviewers as you need, and stop letting an unlabeled button turn someone away.