Customers with Disabilities and You
Having covered how disabled individuals can become business owners in my last post, this time I figured I would what happens when disabled individuals are on the other side of the situation, as your customers. In particular, how to best accommodate customers with all sorts of disabilities. For some of this there is clear guidance from the government, for other parts of it there is only guidance from individuals with disabilities themselves.
The Law and You
Most likely your small business has to be American with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant with Title III, which covers who you serve, and possibly with Title I, which covers who you hire (which I do not plan to go into detail about here). Title III covers, “Any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation”. This has basically been said to cover everything except some private clubs and religious institutions.
However, even if you don’t have to comply with the ADA, you should still want to. There are millions of people in America, and a good percentage of people in your area with disabilities. These people with disabilities go shopping just like everyone else. Thus, by making your place of business, and your business website, accessible, you will be increasing your customer pool a great deal.
The Place of Business
ADA guidelines, last released in 2010, cover several ways to easily make your business more disability friendly. These primary address physical disabilities, deafness, and blindness. These don’t include some other disabilities such as autism, but I will speak more upon that later.
One of the simplest things to do, is to go around your place of business, and imagine what it would be like for someone in a wheelchair to get around your business. Are all the aisles wide enough? Is there enough room to turn in the corners? Can they reach everything they might want to buy? Is there a way for them to easily check out? If you have a bathroom, can they both easily get into and out of it? If not, think of ways to make your place more accessible.
Other issues to consider have to do with other disabilities. Is there a way for people with certain disabilities to speak to you, such as with a pencil and paper or with communication devices? Does your business accommodate service dogs? Do you have enough handicapped accessible parking spots (generally the rule is one accessible parking spot for every 25 total parking spots)? These are the sorts of questions you should ask when trying to make your place of business ADA compliant. Mores suggestions can be found at: https://www.ada.gov/business/retail_access.htm
Websites and ADA
When it comes to business websites, the law is messy to say the least. Some courts have said that it needs to be attached to an actual business, some courts have said all websites count, some courts have yet to rule on this, and of course, the Supreme Court has yet to talk about it at all. While the government did release some guidelines, these are only guidelines state and local governments must follow, and they are more than a decade old, so not that useful to a business owner like yourself.
Instead, what has generally become the accepted standard for private businesses is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines were created by a private consortium but have generally been recommended by courts in settlements about websites, and therefore are likely what you should follow when developing your own website.
There are some simple things you can do to make sure you are meeting these guidelines. For one, if you have pictures on your website, make sure to describe what the picture is conveying in text below (text to speech software used by those with visual problems can translate the text but not the picture). Another example is not having audio play for too long as it can interfere with other software. More suggestions can be found at: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/
What ADA Does Not Address
One thing that ADA guidelines fails to cover (which I hope it will cover soon) that I feel is important to cover here is accommodating people with autism and other sensory disabilities. Autism affects millions of children and adults here in America today. Those are millions of potential customers that all need things too. The main thing that autistic people need stores to be mindful of are sensory issues. Loud sounds, smells, crowds, etc., will all make autistic people not want to visit your store.
For some stores, that might be hard to manage. If for example you run a store that sells coffee, you might have a hard time running a store that does not lead to sensory overload. However, many stores can manage these issues by just having less clutter, sensory hours (one hour a week where you limit customers), not having lights so bright, less overloading websites, and other small things. Look at your business and see if there is anything you can do to help. In addition to that, if there is no way to avoid sensory overload in your store, having a way for people to not have to enter your store such as curbside shopping, might be a good idea.
Below is a good example of what becoming overstimulated is often like, while this involves a child, adults can and often do experience much the same thing (even if they have developed coping strategies over the years):
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPknwW8mPAM
Works cited
https://www.ada.gov/smbusgd.pdf
The Muddy Waters of ADA Website Compliance May Become Less Murky in 2019
Images
https://www.ada.gov/business/retail_access.htm
https://www.aruma.com.au/about-us/blog/6-facts-about-sensory-hypersensitivity
Video
Bryan,
Loved this post! I thought it was super helpful and definitely insightful in helping businesses not only be more accessible to those with disabilities, but more welcoming as well. All of your suggestions seemed easy enough to do, which I hope will encourage many to do so! It was also a great perspective that I bet not many think about or consider if they themselves are not affected by or have personally experienced a disability.
Hello Bryan!
I think this is such a valuable topic and it is encouraging to see all the ways business owners can make their enterprise more accessible. I was surprised by how outdated the ADA guidelines are and I too hope they offer relevant and up-to-date guidance in the future. This may be a great opportunity for a business idea to fill a need. Perhaps one that advocates for accessibility and assists business owners in planning their ventures in a way that serves all their customers. I think the video offers a relevant perspective and I like that you included it. I would suggest introducing it in your post and encouraging people to watch it. A short description and some background information may be helpful to viewers. Great post!
Bryan,
I think this was a very clear way to represent a rather unclear topic. I am continuously surprised by the number of stores I see that seem to be either unaware of the ADA’s requirements or have made a decision to not even attempt to comply. I do remember at one point I was working at a retail store and helping other employees rearrange tables, when the owner came in and stopped everyone; the aisles were too narrow. Not only did we widen them, we made a point of making them even wider than strict compliance would require in order to make sure both sides of the aisle would be usable. I’m not sure where ADA guidance will go with websites, but it doesn’t appear to be anywhere fast.
Interesting enough, I have it on good authority (fancy way of saying I am not going to search for the decision right now lol) that the Winn Dixie decision was overruled by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals leading to a circuit split between the 11th and 9th (sorta figures it would be those two), so maybe the Supreme Court decides to look at this circuit split soon?