ADA Compliance in Atlanta
Professional ada compliance services for Atlanta businesses. Strategy, execution, and results.
Our ADA Compliance Work in Atlanta
- WCAG 2.2 AA compliance audits combining automated scanning with tools like Axe, Lighthouse, and WAVE, plus manual testing with screen readers including NVDA, JAWS, and VoiceOver, and keyboard-only navigation testing
- Emergency remediation for Atlanta businesses that have received demand letters or are responding to ADA complaints, with expedited turnaround and documented good-faith remediation plans
- Accessibility statements and compliance documentation for Atlanta company websites, drafted to provide the strongest defensible position
- VPAT and ACR documentation for Atlanta companies bidding on government contracts or enterprise clients that require documented accessibility conformance
- Ongoing monitoring for Atlanta businesses to detect accessibility regressions as content is added, features are built, and the site evolves
- Content team training for Atlanta marketing and editorial teams on accessible content creation, including alt text, link text, heading structure, and accessible document formats
- Healthcare-specific accessibility reviews for Atlanta's large healthcare sector, including patient portal compliance and Section 1557 documentation
- Code-level fixes addressing actual HTML, CSS, and JavaScript issues, not overlay workarounds that fail for screen reader users and provide no legal protection
Industries We Serve in Atlanta
Healthcare. Emory University Hospital, Piedmont Healthcare, Grady Memorial Hospital, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and the broader Atlanta medical community need accessible patient portals, health information sites, appointment scheduling systems, and telehealth interfaces. These organizations comply with both ADA requirements and Section 1557 of the ACA, which prohibits discrimination in health programs receiving federal financial assistance. The OCR at HHS has taken enforcement actions specifically related to inaccessible patient portals and digital health tools. Getting ahead of this compliance requirement is significantly less expensive than responding to an enforcement action.
Fintech. Atlanta's payment processing and financial technology companies need accessible platforms for all users. NCR Voyix, Global Payments, and the dozens of fintech startups at ATDC and Atlanta Tech Village are building digital tools that must comply with ADA requirements. Companies pursuing enterprise sales or preparing for investor due diligence face accessibility expectations as a baseline. CFPB guidance on digital financial tools increasingly touches accessibility, and fair lending law analysis of AI-driven underwriting platforms intersects with accessibility requirements for how results are communicated to applicants.
Retail and E-commerce. Atlanta retailers and e-commerce companies face elevated ADA litigation risk, particularly for online shopping platforms where inaccessibility directly interferes with a customer's ability to complete a purchase. Retail websites are among the most frequently targeted in ADA litigation nationally. For Atlanta retailers with significant digital revenue, accessibility compliance is both a legal requirement and a protection for the customer experience.
Film and Media. Atlanta's production industry, operating across major studio complexes in College Park, Doraville, and Fayetteville, needs accessible websites, casting platforms, and streaming interfaces. Content distributed through major streaming platforms is increasingly subject to contractual accessibility requirements, and casting platforms that exclude users with disabilities may create ADA exposure.
Hospitality. Hotels and restaurants in Midtown, along the Beltline, and in the Old Fourth Ward and Inman Park neighborhoods need accessible reservation systems, menus, and information pages. ADA litigation targeting restaurant and hotel websites has increased consistently, and Atlanta's vibrant hospitality sector has real exposure.
Education. Georgia Tech, Emory, Georgia State, Morehouse, Spelman, and Atlanta's K-12 public school system need accessible digital platforms for all students and families. Title II and Title III ADA requirements apply, and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights investigates digital accessibility complaints regularly.
Professional Services. Atlanta's legal, accounting, and consulting community in Buckhead and Midtown needs ADA-compliant websites as a professional baseline. Law firms and accounting firms that serve large corporate clients increasingly face accessibility requirements from those clients in vendor assessments.
Nonprofits. Atlanta's large nonprofit sector serves populations that include above-average rates of disability. Organizations that depend on accessible digital tools to serve their communities have a mission-driven reason to prioritize compliance, in addition to the legal requirement.
What to Expect
Discovery. We begin with a review of your site's current accessibility status using automated tools that identify obvious issues quickly. We then scope the manual testing required, which varies based on the size of your site and the complexity of its interactive features. We deliver a preliminary findings summary before the full audit is complete so you understand the scope of the issue early.
Audit and Reporting. We conduct full manual testing using keyboard-only navigation and screen readers across multiple browsers and operating systems. We document every issue found, its WCAG success criterion, its severity level, its specific location on the site, and the recommended technical fix. The resulting report serves as the remediation roadmap and as evidence of good-faith compliance effort if needed in a legal context.
Remediation. We fix issues at the code level. HTML structure corrections, ARIA implementation, keyboard event handling, focus management, color contrast adjustments, and accessible content patterns are all addressed in the actual codebase. We do not use overlay tools. We test every fix before marking it complete.
Ongoing Compliance. We recommend monthly automated monitoring to catch regressions, combined with semi-annual manual reviews for sites that change frequently. We help you build internal processes, including an accessibility policy, content guidelines, and a check-in process for new feature development, that prevent the accumulation of new issues.
Protect Your Atlanta Business and Serve Your Community
ADA compliance is both a legal requirement and a genuine commitment to every customer who visits your site. Running Start Digital handles the technical complexity so you can be confident your site is accessible to everyone in Atlanta. Contact us to get started with an audit.
Frequently Asked Questions
WCAG 2.2 AA is the current standard and the one courts and the DOJ point to in ADA website cases. Georgia state accessibility requirements for government vendor tools also reference WCAG AA as the standard. Some Atlanta businesses with federal contracts or healthcare operations need to additionally meet Section 508, which aligns closely with WCAG 2.1 AA but has additional requirements. We build to WCAG 2.2 AA by default, which satisfies all of these requirements, and we stay current on the development of WCAG 3.0 so we can advise on where the standard is heading.
Healthcare organizations face ADA requirements plus Section 1557 of the ACA, which prohibits discrimination in health programs receiving federal financial assistance. Patient portals, appointment scheduling systems, telehealth platforms, and health information sites must all be accessible under both laws. The OCR at HHS has taken enforcement actions against healthcare organizations for inaccessible digital tools. Atlanta's large healthcare sector, connected to major systems like Emory, Piedmont, and Grady, has significant exposure. Getting compliant proactively is far less expensive than responding to an OCR enforcement action or a private ADA lawsuit.
The fastest risk reduction comes from fixing the issues that most directly interfere with screen reader use and keyboard navigation. These include missing form labels, images without alt text, keyboard traps that prevent navigation, missing skip navigation links, and inaccessible interactive components. An expedited audit and focused remediation of these critical issues can meaningfully reduce legal exposure within two to four weeks, while a comprehensive remediation project addressing all identified issues continues on a longer timeline.
Running your site through free automated tools like WAVE or Google Lighthouse will catch some issues, but automated testing reliably identifies only 30 to 40 percent of WCAG violations. A genuine compliance determination requires manual testing with screen readers and keyboard-only navigation. Running Start Digital provides both automated and manual testing and delivers a detailed report of exactly where your site stands, with every issue identified and remediation guidance for each one. The report gives you a clear, defensible answer to the compliance question.
Yes. We frequently work alongside existing web agencies and development teams. We can provide audit reports and detailed remediation specifications that your existing agency implements in their development environment, or we can handle remediation directly. Either approach works. What matters is that fixes are made at the code level, not masked with overlay tools that do not actually solve the accessibility problems they claim to address.
Accessibility regressions are common because every new content addition, feature build, or site redesign can introduce new issues. New images without alt text, new form fields without labels, and new interactive components without proper ARIA implementation all create new violations. That is why we recommend ongoing monitoring, which catches regressions quickly before they accumulate into another large remediation project. Companies that maintain consistent monitoring stay compliant with significantly less ongoing effort than companies that treat ADA compliance as a periodic large project.