Understanding WCAG and ADA compliance on your B12 website

Learn more about how B12 can facilitate ADA and WCAG best practices.

If your industry requires your website to meet ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) or WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards, you might be wondering how B12 can support that. While we do not guarantee full ADA compliance, the B12 platform enables you to follow accessibility best practices that bring your website closer to those standards.

This article outlines the features B12 offers, the steps you can take, and additional third-party tools you can integrate to improve your website’s accessibility.

What B12 supports for in-house accessibility 

B12 offers several built-in features that help you follow ADA and WCAG best practices. These tools make it easier to design a more inclusive website, especially for visitors with visual or hearing impairments.

Add alt text to images

Alt text, or alternative text, allows screen readers to describe an image to someone who cannot see it. You can add alt text to any image you upload on your site, ensuring that visitors using screen readers understand the purpose of visual content.

Use accessible color combinations

Poor contrast between text and background colors can make content unreadable for people with visual impairments. In B12, you have full control over your color selections for text, buttons, backgrounds, and other elements.

We recommend checking your color combinations with free tools like the WebAIM Contrast Checker before finalizing your design.

When choosing colors in the B12 editor, be mindful not to rely on color alone to communicate important information (e.g., using only red text to show required fields).

Accessible video and multimedia

At this time, B12 does not automatically generate captions for videos. If you embed video content on your site, ensure it has captions for any spoken content so users with hearing impairments can still understand the material.

You can do this by uploading captioned versions of your videos to platforms like YouTube or Vimeo, and then embedding them in your site via a Video section or a custom embed code.

Accessible online forms

B12’s form builder includes labeled fields and input types that screen readers can detect. To help ensure accessibility:

• Always include clear labels like “Email address” or “Phone number”
• Use placeholder text for added guidance
• Avoid using color alone to indicate missing or incorrect fields
  
  

While we don’t currently offer customizable error messages, required fields will automatically display standard error indicators.

Tools to enhance accessibility further

If you want a more robust accessibility solution, B12 supports integration with accessiBe, an AI-powered accessibility tool. This third-party service overlays an accessibility widget onto your site, giving visitors control over things like text size, contrast, keyboard navigation, and more.

What B12 does not guarantee or support directly

It’s important to note that while B12 enables you to follow accessibility best practices, we do not guarantee full ADA or WCAG compliance. Meeting those standards is ultimately the responsibility of the website owner.

Here are areas where B12 may not provide full coverage:

• Keyboard-only navigation
• Custom scripts or third-party code
• Video captioning or audio descriptions: These must be created and added by the user.
• Color-dependent design elements: You must manually review your layout to ensure it doesn’t rely solely on color to communicate meaning.
  
  

For full guidance on what constitutes ADA or WCAG compliance, we recommend visiting:

• W3C’s official accessibility guidelines
• ADA.gov’s guidance on web accessibility