When enacted in 1990, the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mostly concerned issues like wheelchair accessibility, including curb cuts in sidewalks and lifts to board public buses. The internet was barely a glimmer in the eye of the president who signed the law, famously wowed by a supermarket checkout scanner.
"Regulation was designed to be black and white, but digital's not black and white," says Lawrence Shaw, CEO of AAATraq (pronounced "triple A track,") an insurtech founded in 2020 to address ADA compliance risks for organizations' websites and operations. "We're embarking on new fields of regulation all the time with online."
Since the ADA applies to employment, public accommodations and communications, many internet and online functions are now subject to its oversight. Shaw, whose previous experience includes consulting on the technical aspects of regulation for the European Union, noticed a sharp increase in ADA-related litigation from 2015 through 2020. In the U.S., the annual costs, even for just settling
Shaw believes these expenses can be avoided. "On ADA, if you look at the rules and the content and all the technical diagnostics and guidelines, they're not complicated," he said. "For instance, one of the things you have to do to accommodate, if you've got a picture on your website, the key is to have that picture, with a description that somebody that can't see, the website would describe that picture to them."
AAATraq has a database on accessibility containing 3.6 trillion data points. "The web approach is wait till there's a problem, let's react to it and then go and try and find budget and deal with it that way," Shaw said. "We know the process of being compliant and we know how to detect where the problems are."
Starting at a $99 per month subscription rate for small businesses or smaller websites, AAATraq can comb a website to find issues that run afoul of ADA compliance. AAATraq's "Risk Control Program" plugs into a website in a manner similar to how a diagnostic computer can plug in to a car and find problems with the car's functions, Shaw explained. The service now has nearly 800 clients, with many educational institutions from the grade school level up to university level. While based in the U.K., most of AAATraq's users are in the U.S.
Many small businesses' ADA risks are in website visual elements, according to Shaw. Instead of spending thousands or even millions of dollars dealing with such website issues (and the legal and compliance issues they cause), AAATraq subscribers can identify vulnerabilities, which can also stem from vendor contracting or lack of staff training. AAATraq's system then guides users through how to change whatever their issues are, he added.
The danger of being sued for your website violating the ADA is real, as Domino's Pizza found after a
Most of all, AAATraq can catch potential legal liabilities like the Domino's case, and correct them, Shaw emphasized. "We can change the world by stopping the lawyers getting the money and make it easier for people to understand what to do and achieve it, and then remain compliant as well," he said.
