ADA: Creative Thinking from Curb Cuts to the Internet

When ADA was signed into law, the Internet was merely a gleam in the eyes of a few enthusiasts - like Andy Zavoina and Richard Insley to name a few in the compliance world. At the time ADA was enacted, the primary issues were curb cuts, wide doors, and ATM accessibility. The leading concerns were physical accessability inside the bank lobby and at the ATM for people with different abilities.

To prepare for implementation of ADA, banks took hard looks at their physical structure, inside and out. The result was widened doors, stair rails, ramps, and in some cases innovative tables and chairs. We also put up braille signs and chimes in elevators. ADA caused us to look at our physical environment and identify ways that it could be changed to be accessible and useful in different ways.

Since then, the Internet has become a major component of daily life and banking. The Internet has changed a lot of things, including how ADA affects the institution. ADA now causes us to look at more than our physical surroundings. We need to consider how various customers - with varying abilities and varying equipment - access our services in whatever means we provide them. This includes consideration of how consumers see and use our Web sites.

What ADA does is drive us away from the easy and ordinary. ADA makes sure we don't channel people or commerce. As Americans, we are challenged by frontiers. We are at our best when we are generating new ideas and breaking new ground. Now we have a whole new opportunity on the Internet and ADA makes it even more interesting.

When was the last time you trained staff on ADA? It is time to do it again. This is also a great time to use training for evaluation of your Internet site and to generate new ideas and observations for service to customers of all kinds of abilities. Schedule a training session on ADA, use some (or all) of the following ideas, and have fun!

ADA Training Points:

Before the training session, ask half of the attendees to spend an hour watching TV with the sound turned off. Have them report back on the content and quality of the show.
Ask the other half of the class to "watch" TV with only sound, no picture. Have them share their impressions.
Take five minutes and ask people to think about an incident in a public place when a customer was having difficulty with something. This needn't be in the financial institution itself. Discuss why the problem occurred, how people responded, and how they could have responded more effectively.
Ask everyone to list the accommodations in your institution that provide access for disabled customers or employees. Give a prize to the person with the longest list - the list should also be accurate.
Now discuss ways in which those accommodations are used for something else, or make something easier in a way that didn't involve a disability. [Curb cuts and baby strollers are a good example to start them off.]
Ask people to be creative. Think about new (and safe) ways that your institution can deliver products and offer services.
Now discuss the Web site. Ask everyone to think of possible problems users could have with the Web site (color blindness, eyesight, etc.)
Ask everyone to keep ADA in mind for the week following class and write down one (or more) surprising observation or new idea. Share these (the good ones, anyway) with everyone else in an internal memo.
Have each person visit at least three government websites. They should look for ways the website is designed to be ADA compliant.
Then have each person visit their three personal favorite websites. Have them evaluate those websites for ADA compliance and report back on the best idea they see.