How the ADA treats insurance offices
Private businesses that are open to the public are covered by Title III of the ADA. The Department of Justice has not adopted a technical standard for private business websites, but its guidance says the ADA's requirements apply to web content, and WCAG is commonly used as the yardstick for accessibility work.
The ADA lists an insurance office among its examples of public accommodations. Whether the ADA applies to an agency's website, and how, is a legal question for an attorney. Insurance is also regulated by states, and some state rules touch on accessibility of required notices and documents. Check with your compliance contact.
Where insurance sites break
- Rate request forms. Multi step forms from carrier or rating tools that have unlabeled fields, date pickers that need a mouse, and errors that are hard to find.
- Claims reporting. Upload steps that cannot be used by keyboard.
- Policy documents. Long PDFs that are scans, with tables that screen readers cannot read.
- Carrier logos and badges. Images that carry meaning with no description.
- Comparison tables. Tables built from images or with no headers.
- Client portals. Login pages with captcha tests that exclude people who cannot see or hear them.
The special problem of third party tools
An independent agency may represent several carriers, each with its own rating and portal tools. You may not control those. What you can control is which ones you embed or link to, how you introduce them, and what you offer when a tool does not work. Ask carriers about their accessibility, and if a tool fails, give customers another direct way to get a rate, such as a clearly displayed phone number and a plain form of your own. That is a fallback, not a substitute for fixing what you can.
What to do now
Scan your home page, then test your own contact and rate request forms by keyboard. Make policy information available as readable text. Our testing service reviews the pages customers use most, and remediation fixes what we find. For a new site, accessible redesign builds it in. See also law firms and dental practices.
General information, not legal advice. Automated testing cannot establish full ADA compliance or guarantee protection from lawsuits. It finds some kinds of barriers quickly. A person still has to test the rest. Ask a qualified attorney how the law applies to you.
Frequently asked questions
Is an insurance agency covered by the ADA?
The ADA lists an insurance office among public accommodations. How it applies to a website is a question for an attorney.
Who is responsible for a carrier's rating tool?
That depends on the facts and contracts. Ask carriers about accessibility, and give customers another way to get a rate.
Do captchas cause problems?
Yes. Some captcha tests cannot be solved by people with visual or hearing disabilities. Ask your form provider for an accessible alternative.
Is there a technical WCAG rule?
There is no DOJ technical rule for private business websites. WCAG 2.1 AA is a common benchmark.