Step 4
Conduct Self-Evaluation

Starting Your Journey to Accessibility: A Guide for Businesses

Step 4 is to conduct an accessibility evaluation, looking for any accessibility barriers that might prevent customers with disabilities from using your services. This is one of the most effort-intensive and important steps in this process. Each accessibility evaluation will be different based on the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations offered as part of each individual business. While there is a misperception that accessibility for customers with disabilities means only architectural accessibility, accessibility is more than a ramp. Businesses must evaluate all of their facilities that are open to the public, but they must also evaluate all of their policies and procedures regarding communication and provision of services to ensure that customers with disabilities have equal access to their business.

In an accessibility evaluation, a business reviews each provision of goods and services, and each facility, privilege, advantage, and accommodation offered as part of a business to determine what is and isn’t accessible to people with disabilities. Your ADA Manager or team should examine each element of your business for accessibility. The self-examination should also include looking into any feedback you received from your staff or from the public. This website provides a series of forms that a business can use to take itself through a self-evaluation.

While this website is meant to set your team up for success during your transition, you don’t have to do the evaluation yourself. Many companies, especially larger ones, will hire professionals to conduct this step of the process. If your business has multiple facilities or many different programs, bringing in outside help might be the best move. Ensure that the people you hire have the expertise to conduct an accurate and thorough evaluation.

Self Evaluation Forms Page

Accessibility Evaluation

To conduct an accessibility evaluation, businesses should follow these steps: 

  • Identify all departments and locations where goods, services, privileges, advantages, and accommodations are offered to the public
  • Review policies and procedures to ensure that they offer an equal opportunity for customers with disabilities to participate
  • Review procedures for communication with the public to ensure that auxiliary aids and services are available, and that communication with customers with disabilities is as effective as communication with others

We’ve created forms for you to use during your evaluation to be used in creating a transition plan in Step 5. The forms are linked to each step above. 

The accessibility evaluation begins by listing every department of your business. Your ADA manager or team then needs to work with staff in every department to review what is offered to the public and ensure it is accessible to customers with disabilities. The manager or team must work with the employees of that team, from the department heads to the front-line employees to identify possible barriers for people with disabilities to access any goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations open to the public.

Evaluating Specific Barriers

Architectural Barriers

The ADA creates a continuing duty for businesses to update their facilities over time to remove architectural barriers in accordance with the ADA Standards for Accessible Design. It also requires that all new buildings and additions be built in accordance with those standards. Any business seeking to be more accessible should conduct an architectural review, or hire someone to do so, to ensure that their facilities are accessible.

 
 
 
 
 
 
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Communication Barriers

Under the ADA, businesses are required to communicate with customers with disabilities in a manner that is just as effective as how they communicate with customers without disabilities.[1] This is referred to as Effective Communication. Businesses are also required to provide auxiliary aids and services to customers with disabilities if their disability substantially limits their ability to communicate. Auxiliary aids and services are devices or methods that allow a person who has a disability to communicate such as ASL interpreters, CART providers, braille, or providing a person who is blind with an electronic version of a document. ADA regulations contain a list of some of the most common auxiliary aids and services.[2]  
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Hiring and Employment Practices

Title I of the ADA prohibits employers with 15 or more employees from discriminating against applicants and employees with disabilities, and it requires that employers grant reasonable accommodations to applicants and employees with disabilities.[3] Employers need to take stock of their employment policies and procedures from job posting and application all the way through exit interviews. 
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Program and Policy Barriers

The ADA requires that all customers with disabilities have an equal opportunity to participate and benefit from the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of a business in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs.[4] As part of this obligation, businesses cannot deny customers with disabilities the opportunity to participate in their programs and activities and must make reasonable modifications of any policies that prevent a customer with a disability from participating.[5]
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Footnotes

[1] 42 USC 12182(b)(2)(A)(iii). ↩

[2] 28 CFR 36.303(b). ↩

[3] 42 U.S.C. 12112. ↩

[4] 42 USC 12182(b)(1)(B). ↩

[5] 42 USC 12182. ↩

Continue to Step 5 →