Navigating the new web accessibility ruling in the U.S.

This blog post provides information about accessibility laws and regulations, but is not legal advice. You should consult a lawyer for advice on specific legal issues or questions.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) publication of its final ruling on website accessibility for state and local governments under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) marked an important milestone for digital accessibility in the United States.

As shared by the Justice Department in its press release, “the rule will help ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to a full range of government services including critical activities like voting, taking online courses, applying for public benefits, filing taxes and more. For far too long, people with disabilities have been left behind as we’ve witnessed more services and government activity increasingly move online.”

Published on April 24, 2024, this updated regulation establishes specific requirements about how to ensure that web content and mobile applications are accessible to people with disabilities. The DOJ has done so by adopting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 as the new conformance standard. This decision also sets a precedent for what can be expected in future regulations for private-sector businesses that are recipients of federal funding (such as the higher education and healthcare industries, covered by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act).

The deadline for most state and local governments to bring their websites and mobile apps into compliance is two years from the date of this ruling (or until April 24, 2026).

Navigating this process can be overwhelming and time consuming for your organization if you don’t know where to start, so here are the key points to creating an action plan for accessibility compliance.

Understanding the new accessibility requirements
Devising your accessibility plan
What’s next?
Resources

Understanding the new accessibility requirements

The new rule applies to organizations in the U.S. that are covered under Title II of the ADA. This means that they must ensure that all their web content and mobile apps are compliant with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA.

The first step of your action plan is understanding what this means for your organization.

Which organizations are covered by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) new accessibility rule and how?

The Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) covers services, programs, and activities provided by state and local governments. This also includes public schools and universities.

Some examples of these services are healthcare and emergency services, online lectures, courts, voting services, public benefits, parking, permit applications, tax payments, and transit updates.

Any third-party content needed to participate in the government’s programs, services, or activities (such as a payment processor for making payments to a government entity) will also need to be made accessible.

Covered organizations must ensure that all their web content and mobile apps conform to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA. For larger organizations (50,000 persons or more), the deadline for compliance is April 24, 2026. For smaller organizations, the deadline is April 24, 2027.

From the explanation accompanying the new rule, we can also infer that the DOJ intends to apply the same standards in the near future to other entities that receive federal financial assistance under the Rehabilitation Act, such as businesses in the healthcare and higher education industries that receive federal financial assistance.

What are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)?

Now that you know that your organization’s digital products and services need to be compliant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA in the near future, it is time to understand what the WCAG are.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the internationally recognized standard for web accessibility, and have been developed and evolved by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) over the past 20 years. Although the W3C published WCAG 2.2 last year, the Justice Department has chosen to enforce the older standards only, WCAG 2.1, to make for an easier transition into compliance.

The WCAG are made up of a set of technology-agnostic recommendations for making websites and apps accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. Following these guidelines also helps make web content more usable by older individuals with changing abilities due to aging and often improves usability for users in general.

The W3C provides documentation to understanding WCAG that is recommended for product designers, developers, content writers, and anyone working on the development and maintenance of digital products and its contents, but a few key aspects to understanding WCAG are:

Guidelines are grouped under accessibility principles based on how people use web content: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust (POUR).
Each guideline is broken down into individual requirements known as Success Criteria.
Each Success Criteria is assigned a conformance level: Level A, Level AA or Level AAA. Level A establishes the most basic level of accessibility (a level that still might mean that your digital products are not accessible for many people). Level AA can only be achieved once Level A has been met, and aims to ensure your websites and apps will be accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities. Level AAA is the highest level of accessibility and should be met whenever possible, but it is usually not expected for accessibility compliance.

What are some common accessibility issues to solve for?

Once you understand how the accessibility guidelines are organized, you can start using them as guidance for your next step: assessing how much work your websites or applications might need in order to achieve compliance.

This will help you estimate timeline, efforts, and budget for an accessibility remediation project within your organization.

You can spot some of the most common accessibility issues in your website or mobile app by considering the different ways that people interact with digital content.

For example, users with different impairments (vision, hearing, mobility, cognitive) might:

Use a keyboard instead of a mouse.
Change browser settings to make content easier to read.
Use a screen reader to ‘read’ (speak) content out loud.
Use a screen magnifier to enlarge part of a screen.
Use voice commands to navigate a website.

People accessing your products and services often encounter some of these barriers:

Lack of text alternatives (‘alt text’) for non-text content

Are there images on your site with information that users need in order to use your services, but can’t currently access if they have a visual impairment? These images should have alt text describing them, or they might contain the type of lengthy and relevant information that shouldn’t be an image in the first place.

The same goes for audio and video content lacking transcripts and captions.

These issues are connected with guidelines within the Perceivable principle, which requires you to ensure users can recognize and use your information with the senses that are available to them.

Content that can’t be used with a keyboard or other assistive technology

If a user doesn’t have the mobility or dexterity to use a mouse, they might use a keyboard or voice commands to navigate your website. These users frequently encounter that some of the essential functionality of a website or app can’t be accessed through a keyboard or other forms of assistive technologies. This can include form controls, input and other user interface components.

Some of these accessibility issues can be tackled by testing your content can be operated through a keyboard in a way that makes sense, making it easy for users to see where on the page their assistive technology is focused on (known as ‘active focus’), and minimizing use of mouse events or dynamic interactions (like swiping or dragging).

This is covered by the Operable principle, which requires you to ensure users can navigate and use your content, regardless of how they choose to access it.

Form fields that lack visible and meaningful labels, and difficulties recovering from errors

Another challenge that users frequently face when accessing digital content is filling out forms. Form fields often lack labels that are clear and properly marked up in HTML (for screen readers to be able to ‘read them aloud’). When the information entered is incorrect, users also face barriers identifying what went wrong and how to correct the error.

Labeling and grouping controls, making form controls keyboard-accessible, providing meaningful form instructions, validating user input, and providing clear notification about successful task completion or errors (and how to recover from them), are some of the steps to take in order to create accessible forms.

These and other issues related to ensuring that your content and your service are well understood, are covered in the guidelines within the Understandable principle.

Content or interface elements that aren’t compatible with assistive technologies

Your website or application might contain important status messages or modal dialogs that ‘pop up’ while navigating the content. If this type of interface elements aren’t marked up in a way that informs assistive technologies (e.g. a screen reader) of their presence and purpose, users that rely on these technologies for access might completely miss out on these messages, or be unable to take action.

Ensuring your content can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents (including assistive technologies) is included within the guidelines of the Robust principle. The best way to make sure your content is compatible with current and future browsers, assistive technologies, and other user agents, is by following web standards (such as correct usage of semantic HTML or, if completely necessary, ARIA).

Devising your accessibility plan

Now that you know whether the new regulations apply to your organization, understand your compliance deadline, and are familiar with WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirements, it’s time to plan your organization’s accessibility efforts.

Your accessibility plan will depend on various factors, such as the size, purpose, tech stack, and audience of your service. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, there are a few common steps every organization should follow.

Achieving compliance

Identify core parts of your service: Start by assessing your website or app against WCAG 2.1 to determine your level of conformance. Since it’s not feasible to audit all content, focus on a representative sample of critical user journeys, interactive features, and known problem areas.
Get an accessibility audit: If you don’t have an in-house expert, hire a professional auditor. They can identify accessibility issues, test your service with assistive technologies, and provide a comprehensive report detailing the problems and necessary fixes.
Develop a remediation plan: Use the audit results to estimate the design and development work needed for compliance. Apply an agile approach by first addressing the most serious issues and those affecting global components (elements present across your whole website or application).

Staying compliant

Upskill and get the whole team onboard: Accessibility affects all aspects of your digital presence, including the user interface, code, content, and interactions. Educate your team on the ways people interact with content to achieve and maintain compliance as your service evolves.
Think about accessibility from the start, and budget for it: Users have different needs in different circumstances. Avoid designing for perfect scenarios, and instead design, test (and budget) for real life.
Research and test with disabled users: Gain insights into how disabled users and those using assistive technologies interact with your service by hiring disabled research participants and professionals who can help you carry out accessible product design and development.

What’s next?

Accessibility is a core principle of the web, a civil right, and a vital aspect of public service design. It also serves as a framework to help guarantee quality and inclusivity. We hope this guide helps kick-start your organization’s journey toward compliance.

To ensure your digital presence is accessible to everyone, we offer comprehensive services to support your team. Let’s chat about how we can help you:

Understand your current accessibility status.
Create an accessibility plan.
Remediate and improve accessibility.
Strengthen your organization’s skills and processes.
Develop inclusive solutions that work for all users, regardless of their device or ability.

Reach out to thoughtbot today to start creating a plan for your organization. Together we can create a more inclusive society where everyone has access to the public services they need.