ADA Compliance: Forms

The Americans with Disabilities Act is meant to make navigating public spaces easier for people with disabilities—and as it turns out, your law firm website forms (such as a contact form) might be one such public space.

Any forms on your website should be accessible to those who might be visually impaired or have other disabilities that make navigating difficult.

The good news is that really everything about making your forms ADA compliant is also about making them more accessible for every potential client.

Tips to create Accessible Forms

Make your forms easy to navigate

The first item on your ADA Compliance Checklist is making your forms easy to navigate. Forms that are easy to navigate have titles, clear instructions, and simple buttons. Every single internal link works and connects those clicking to the right page, including in mobile versions. 

Make your forms easy to read

Within each form, the text is easy to read. Paragraphs are small, and there is ample space between each paragraph.

Sections should be headlined in bold, both for SEO purposes and because it helps readers quickly scan a page to see if the content is relevant.

Avoid dense text and stick with simpler words over a more complex vocabulary. Shorter sentences are also good for web copy.

If there are buttons to click on they should be amply and easy to locate; this is especially important to keep in mind for a mobile version of your law firm site form.

Make your forms easy to look at

As far as the law firm website design of your forms goes, you will want to think carefully about everything from the font to the images to the colors you use—finding the right balance between creating a professional image and readability.

Contrasting colors are helpful for making relevant text and sections stand out. On the backend, you will want to make sure the site is compatible with a screen reader that can read its content to browsers who are visually impaired.

Easy does it…

Overall, you want to make your site forms are informative and impactful, but simple. Complex lawyer websites with dense text are NOT easy to navigate!

But as you can see, skill is needed to bring informative and simple together—most likely through the attention of a skilled copywriter, web designer, or coder.

The team at Law Firm Sites has expertise in all these areas and can get your law firm site to be more ADA compliant. The added bonus of making your site more accessible for potential clients with disabilities is that your search engine rankings will also likely improve.

Search engines like Google are increasingly rewarding law firm websites that are easy to navigate and that quickly help searchers locate the information they are seeking. That said, making your website ADA compliant will also provide a big boost in terms of law firm website SEO.