The information presented within this guide is aimed at website owners seeking to learn the ropes of web accessibility. Technical elements are described in layman’s terms, and, as a rule, all topics pertaining to the legalities of web accessibility are presented in as simplified a manner as possible. This guide has no legal bearing, and cannot be relied on in the case of litigation.
No matter how much you invest in ambience, quality ingredients, and top-tier service, your restaurant can never reach its full potential if it does not welcome all customers. Every diner, regardless of ability, deserves equal access to your restaurant's goods, services, and facilities.
The same is true in regard to the staff you hire and employ. People with disabilities should be able to work at your restaurant and contribute to its success, just like everybody else.
And, while every organization should feel morally responsible for being welcoming and inclusive, restaurants are mandated by law to accommodate people with disabilities.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), restaurant owners need to adjust their facilities and policies so that they accommodate both employees and customers who have disabilities.
But what does that entail?
What elements of a restaurant need to be addressed so that they are in full compliance with the ADA?
In this guide, we'll discuss why restaurants must be ADA-compliant, the available tax deductions for compliance, and, of course, how you can ensure your restaurant and restaurant website achieve ADA compliance.
ADA compliance for restaurants: an overview
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in the public sphere. Enacted in 1990, the ADA aims to ensure equal access and opportunities for the disability community when it comes to:
- Employment
- Transportation
- Communication
- Public places of accommodation
- Access to public services
Do restaurants have to comply with the ADA?
ADA Title III is the section of the Americans with Disabilities Act that touches on the way that businesses serve customers, and it applies to businesses that are considered “public accommodations.”
Restaurants fall under this category.
Under the ADA, restaurants must make accommodations for both employees and customers with disabilities. To cater to customers with disabilities, restaurants are expected to:
- Remove physical barriers like high thresholds or narrow doorways
- Provide adequate lighting and signage
- Offer accessible seating options
- Have a well-trained staff that can assist with special needs
- Relay menu information in a variety of alternative ways to people with low or no vision (e.g., providing menus in large print or braille)
It is important to note that this is a partial list of requirements.
To support employees with disabilities, restaurants are expected to:
- Offer flexible scheduling and accommodations for employees with disabilities
- Restructure jobs by delegating minor tasks to other employees
- Provide the option of alternative formats to inaccessible printed materials
It is important to note that this is a partial list of requirements.
U.S. courts today apply the ADA to the online domain. This means that your restaurant website needs to be accessible to people with disabilities. We will cover this in further detail later in the blog. If you’d like to skip to that section now, click here.
How to ensure your restaurant is ADA-compliant
Under the ADA, restaurant owners’ responsibilities toward people with disabilities are twofold:
- Ensuring equal access to goods and services
- Making proper accommodations for employees with disabilities
We will tackle each of these areas of responsibility in separate sections.
ADA compliance requirements for customer accessibility
To fully-comply with the ADA and provide people with disabilities with the equal dining experience they deserve, you will need to address and adjust a few elements within your restaurant and surrounding facilities.
Let’s break these down:
Ensure seats, tables, and counters are accessible
Seating arrangements that allow for easy maneuvering (like movable tables) can better accommodate patrons with disabilities. Provide accessible seating options, like tables and counters, with enough knee and toe clearance for people using wheelchairs.
For more in-depth accessibility specifications for seats, tables, and counters, click here.
Provide accessible bathrooms
Accessible sinks and toilets, grab bars, and clear floor space are things to keep in mind when designing a restaurant bathroom. These help people with disabilities access and use your bathroom amenities during their visit.
Allow for outdoor dining
Like indoor tables, your outdoor seating must be accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities. Pathways and sidewalks must be level, unobstructed, and big enough to accommodate people in wheelchairs.
Install ramps
All restaurants must provide ramps or other accessible means of access for people in wheelchairs. It's essential to maintain these ramps and ensure they meet specific slope and handrail requirements.
You can click here to learn more about these specific requirements.
Provide accessible parking
Accessible parking spaces should be close to your entrance, so people who can't walk far can get into your restaurant easily.
For more in-depth requirements and specifications for accessible parking spots, click here.
Create and enforce a service animal policy
People with disabilities can bring their service animals into all areas of the restaurant where customers are normally allowed. Titles II and III of the ADA only recognize dogs as service animals. They must remain under the control of the handler at all times.
These are just a few key requirements for customer accessibility in restaurants. Complying with them is crucial for providing a positive dining experience for all patrons.
ADA compliance responsibilities as an employer
If you own a restaurant, you will need to adopt a holistic approach toward accessibility, and begin implementing standards and procedures that support employees with disabilities, beginning with the hiring process.
Here are three key areas you should address:
1. Ensure equal opportunity while hiring
People with disabilities should have the same employment opportunities as anyone else. This includes equal access to the hiring process and consideration for all available positions.
As a restaurant owner, you must make reasonable accommodations to applicants during the hiring process, such as offering alternative application methods. It's worth noting that not all disabilities are immediately apparent during an interview.
Importantly, however, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it's illegal to ask candidates about disabilities or impairments they may have before giving a conditional job offer.
2. Provide reasonable accommodations
Restaurant owners must provide reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities. This may involve:
- Adjusting workspaces to make them more ergonomic
- Modifying work schedules and being open to part-time hours
- Providing assistive devices or services
- Bending traditional company rules within reason, as necessary
3. Provide accessible workplace training programs
Restaurant owners should train their wait staff and general employees on how to accommodate customers with disabilities. Restaurant employees should understand the different disability categories and should be instructed on how to foster a welcoming atmosphere for all customers. Examples of such instructions include:
- Offering straws to customers with motor impairments who may require them to consume their beverage
- Offering flashlights to patrons with low vision if the restaurant has a low lighting atmosphere
- Offering to read the menu to customers with cognitive or vision impairments
ADA compliance for your restaurant website
U.S. courts now apply the ADA to businesses' online domain, as well as to their phsyical environments. In cases involving web accessibility violation, courts routinely reference the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as the standard websites should conform to under the ADA.
Created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), WCAG is considered to be the most influential set of standards shaping global web accessibility policy.
Throughout the years, there have been a number of WCAG iterations:
WCAG 2.0 was released in 2008, while WCAG 2.1, was released in 2018. WCAG 2.2, the most up-to-date version of these guidelines, was published late in 2023.
WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 have three levels you can conform to:
- Level A: The minimum level of conformance
- Level AA: The most commonly-sought after level of WCAG conformance by website owners
- Level AAA: The most difficult level of conformance to achieve
Website owners who have been sued for having non-accessible websites under the ADA have been ruled by U.S. courts to adjust their websites so that they conform to WCAG 2.0 Level AA. For now, if a restaurant's website conforms to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, it is unlikely to face legal recourse.
A restaurant website that conforms to WCAG 2.1 Level AA will offer:
- Properly structured and labeled forms that website visitors can easily understand, complete, and submit
- Adequate color contrast between text and background: This ensures that people with low vision or color blindness can access content on your website
- Compatibility with screen reader technology: People who have vision impairments rely on these tools to understand your website
- Resizable text: People with disabilities will need to be able to resize text appearing within your website up to 200% without losing functionality or content
- Clear and intuitive navigation: Clear headings and links, search functions, and keyboard-accessible drop-down menus ensure an optimal user experience for people with disabilities
- Text alternatives for non-text content: This will allow people with vision and hearing impairments to access videos, audio, and meaningful images (i.e., the kind that provide additional context to your content)
It’s important to note that this is a very partial list of website elements you will need to address to reach full conformance with WCAG 2.1.
You can click here to read our complete ADA website compliance checklist.
ADA compliance for restaurants’ online documents
ADA website compliance applies to all areas of your website, including online documents. If you feature PDFs or Microsoft Office files (e.g., Word documents) on your website, they will need to be made accessible to people with disabilities. You can test whether current online documents are accessible using testing features that are built into most programs, such as Adobe Acrobat, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
The process of fixing accessibility issues within online documents is called document remediation. For the most part, the goal of document remediation projects is to ensure that online files can be read by screen reader technology.
Restaurants that have a large volume of documents they need remediated often turn to expert service providers, such as accessServices.
Expert service providers are intimately familiar with the various requirements and standards documents must adhere to in order to be considered compliant. They are also better-equipped at handling longer, more difficult remediation projects.
Click here to see how accessServices can help you with your online remediation needs.
How to test your restaurant website for ADA compliance
To see whether your website is ADA-compliant, you will need to run an accessibility audit on it. To that end, you can use free automated ADA website compliance testers, like accessScan.
Once you submit your website's URL, accessScan will run a quick, automated audit of your restaurant website, and examine its level of conformance to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Within a few seconds, your website will be assigned a score: Compliant, semi-compliant, or non-compliant.
You will also be presented with a more detailed breakdown of your website’s compliance status that you can download as a PDF. Compliance issues found during the automated test will be highlighted in the report, along with instructions on how to address and fix them.
It’s worth noting that restaurant owners can turn to expert service providers, such as accessServices, to manually audit their website for ADA compliance, as well. accessServices can be relied upon to thoroughly inspect restaurant websites and make the necessary adjustments so that they reach full compliance.
The consequences of having a non-compliant restaurant website
Restaurant websites that are in violation of the ADA expose their owners to significant legal recourse, including receiving ADA website compliance demand letters and facing ADA compliance lawsuits.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a man who is blind who sued Domino's, claiming he couldn't properly access Domino's website or its mobile app using a screen reader.
The judge ordered Domino's to fix its website, stating "alleged inaccessibility of Domino's website and app impedes access to the goods and services of its physical pizza franchises—which are places of public accommodations."
The benefits of ADA compliance
ADA compliance upholds the principles of equal opportunities for people with disabilities. It should be a basic right for everyone to work at a restaurant, and to enjoy its services, regardless of ability.
89% of American adults believe businesses should be accessible to all customers. Restaurant owners should know that their customer base expects them to be welcoming to people with disabilities. It’s important to note that the disability community’s consumer power is immense. If your restaurant is ADA-compliant, your customer base is significantly wider.
ADA compliance also helps restaurant owners avoid legal action and hefty fines. Non-compliance can result in restaurant owners receiving demand letters and potentially facing lawsuits, both of which can have damaging effects on your establishment’s reputation.
Tax deductions and credit for ADA compliance
Making accessibility improvements to your restaurant may qualify you for tax deductions. Businesses can claim a tax deduction of up to $15,000 per year for expenses incurred in the removal of physical, structural, and transportation barriers.
Additionally, restaurants with ​thirty or fewer employees, or a total annual revenue of up to $1 million, can receive a tax credit. Such restaurants can claim up to $5,000 for eligible access expenditures made during the previous tax year.
Examples of eligible expenditures include, but aren’t limited to:
You can keep track of your spending and report it on IRS Form 8826.
Tip: Consult with a tax professional to determine if your specific expenses qualify for these deductions and to ensure you're taking advantage of all the available benefits.
Key takeaways
Making accessibility a priority for both your physical establishment and website will allow for people with disabilities to work at and properly enjoy your restaurant, both things they rightfully deserve.
Achieving ADA compliance will see your restaurant cultivating a good reputation, and will help expand your customer base, en route to greater business results.
Many restaurants rely on web accesssibility solutions, such as accessWidget, to help them present an ADA-compliant website.
To learn more about accessWidget, and how it can help visitors with disabilities better-navigate your website, press here.
