DOJ Extends Website Accessibility Deadline. Will It Help Schools Get Ready?

As the clock ticked down, schools were simply unprepared to be graded on their assignment. Federal disability law has required local governments to make their websites accessible for decades. Two years ago, during the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Justice published a “final rule” spelling out how schools could measure whether their websites and mobile apps were accessible for students with disabilities, relying on widely accepted guidelines. The agency also set enforcement dates based on population size. For states and local governments with a population over 50,000, the first date would have taken effect later this week. Experts told EdSurge at the time that it was an important milestone that shifted the burden of responsibility from families of students with disabilities — who often have to labor to even access class materials — and onto schools and the vendors that work with them. In the years after the pandemic’s forced switch to remote learning, it seemed even more vital. But Monday, the DOJ published an “interim final rule” that postpones the compliance date to next year. Disability advocates and policy experts had expected an extension. The federal government had been holding meetings about the rule, as EdSurge recently reported. Testimony revealed that governments were not going to be able to meet well-advertised deadlines, as EdSurge noted. The extension will “ensure that covered entities better understand the rule's substance to achieve compliance to the benefit of persons with disabilities,” according to a notice from the Justice Department. To disability experts, that’s crucial. The extra time is “not an invitation to pause” attempts to make sure websites and mobile applications are accessible to all, but rather a chance to get accessibility right, argues Glenda Sims, chief information accessibility officer at Deque Systems, a digital accessibility company. Digital accessibility is in a different cultural moment than when the original enforcement deadlines were issued. Schools are facing widespread fatigue and skepticism over their reliance on tech. Plus, under the Trump administration, shredded grants, mass firings and shifting priorities mean that students with disabilities cannot rely on federal support. For instance, a nonpartisan government watchdog group noted federal actions have led to the dismissal of 90 percent of student civil rights complaints, including from students with disabilities. Lately, accessibility lawsuits have surged, with more than 3,000 filed last year. For schools and vendors, there’s still pressure to be proactive, experts argue. Taking the next year to invest in accessibility will set institutions up to avoid an endless cycle of accessibility audits and remediation, according to Sambhavi Chandrashekar, global accessibility lead at D2L, which operates a learning management system. That means putting money into procurement systems, training for those who create course content, and tools that produce accessible content by default, she explained in a note to EdSurge. But that could prove useful. For example, a U.S. district court recently dismissed an accessibility lawsuit against a website for an eyeglasses vendor, which Chandrashekar attributes to the company’s ability to show it had a documented and ongoing accessibility program. Right now, most schools are not accessible because they started too late, argued Sims of Deque, in a note to EdSurge. If schools interpret the DOJ’s extension as permission to delay accessibility efforts, they will fall farther behind, she added. Schools that use this time to build resilient systems and treat accessibility like other responsibilities, such as security and privacy, will fare the best, Sims said.