The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is an international coding standard to help enforce a global set of requirements for all web content including hosted forms, even if these forms are designed to be completed and submitted offline. Not only does WCAG improve the end-user experience but it also ensures that everyone can access content regardless of any disabilities.

There is more to forms accessibility than ensuring that customers and users have the best experience possible. Being proactive with ensuring that forms are up to code can avoid, legal ramifications for being non-compliant, along with avoiding wasted time and money. These legal consequences are not just timely and costly but also can bring bad press to an organization. In 2019 over 11,000 ADA Web Compliance Lawsuits were filed, which still require the hosted forms to be brought up to compliance.

Forms have often been overlooked when organizations are considering accessibility. This is generally because the forms have always been paper-based but now that organizations are hosting forms, they do fall under web content, therefore they also need to meet the requirements for WCAG as well. Not only do the forms themselves need to be compliant but the complete process of finding, filling, and submitting must all meet the WCAG requirements.

Over 20% of companies do not know how many forms they have let alone which ones are compliant. These forms do not have to be customer-facing to fall under the WCAG requirements. Forms that are hosted internally for employees must also meet these requirements as well. Planning to bring an organizations content up to WCAG standards can become a daunting tasks when 15% of medium to large-sized organizations have over 5,000 forms.

Developing a strategy for updating an organizations forms to ensure that they are compliant can feel overwhelming and confusing. If you would like to chat about how your organization can start towards becoming compliant feel free to reach out.

Learn more about the importance of Accessibility on our Accessibility page.