Around 61 million Americans — one in four — live with a disability. For colleges, universities, and local government agencies, that statistic isn't just a moral consideration. It's a legal one, and the clock is running.
The Department of Justice finalized updated provisions to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in April 2024, officially adopting WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the technical standard for web accessibility. For state and local governments, the compliance deadline is April 26, 2027. For smaller entities with populations under 50,000, the deadline is April 26, 2028.
What WCAG 2.2 Requires
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and define what it means for a website or application to be accessible. The current standard of WCAG 2.2 prioritizes its requirements into three tiers:
- Level A (25 criteria): Foundational requirements with minimal impact on existing design. These address the most critical barriers for users with disabilities.
- Level AA (13 additional criteria): The legal target for most education and government entities. Requirements at this level affect color contrast, keyboard navigation, page layout, and more.
- Level AAA (23 additional criteria): The most rigorous tier. Full AAA compliance isn't legally required, but individual criteria can still be worth implementing where feasible.
There are four principles underlying WCAG: web content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust — meaning users can access it, interact with it, make sense of it, and rely on it across different technologies.
For higher education specifically, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act provides additional requirements for federally funded institutions, and an amendment requires public and private universities to meet WCAG 2.0 AA at minimum. The new ADA Title II rule raises that floor to WCAG 2.2 AA.
Why the Stakes Are Higher Than They Look
Accessibility isn't just about screen readers. For government agencies especially, inaccessible digital services create a cascade of problems.
Andrea Link, SVP of Engineering and Cloud Operations at Softdocs, put it plainly:
There is a nexus between accessibility and cybersecurity. Local government departments provide many of their services through their websites and mobile applications. When these are not fully accessible, it creates barriers for people with disabilities — they might be unable to access tax information or absentee ballots. If other people have to help, it exposes their most personal and private information.
Andrea Link, SVP of Engineering and Cloud Operations Softdocs
The same dynamic played out in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. As institutions rushed to move everything online, accessibility was often deprioritized. The fallout was measurable: a 2020/21 EDUCAUSE study found that one in three students with disabilities were dissatisfied with how their institutions handled technology accommodations during that period.
Compliance isn't just about avoiding legal risk — it's about ensuring that the services you've worked hard to deliver actually reach everyone who needs them.
How to Assess Where You Stand Today
Before you can fix anything, you need to know what's broken. Several free tools can give you a fast, detailed picture of your current accessibility posture:
Siteimprove — A Chrome browser extension that scans pages and surfaces issues with clear explanations of what's wrong, who it affects, and which WCAG criterion it violates.
Accessibility Insights — A Microsoft tool that supports both fast-pass automated checks and guided manual assessments for issues that automation can't catch.
WAVE — A WebAIM tool that visually overlays accessibility issues directly on the page, making it easy to see exactly what and where.
The tools are best used in combination. Each has a proprietary engines and they don't always return the same results.
One critical step that tools can't replicate: test yourself with a keyboard and a screen reader. Navigate your site without a mouse! Use NVDA or VoiceOver (on Mac or iOS) to hear how your content is literally read aloud to someone relying on assistive cues. This is the single most revealing test you can do.
A Practical Path to Level AA
Once you have audit results in hand, here's how to approach remediation:
- Prioritize by impact, not by effort.
Start with failures that block access entirely. For example: missing form labels, images without alternative ("alt") text, videos without captions, and pages that can't be navigated by keyboard. These are Level A issues that affect the largest number of users and are often straightforward to fix. - Work through Level AA systematically.
Common AA failures include insufficient color contrast (at least 4.5:1 for normal text), focus indicators that aren't visible, and content that reflows poorly at 400% zoom. These often require collaborative updates by design and development teams. - Don't wait for perfect to ship progress.
Although full compliance with the AA level is becoming the law, every guideline met makes a website or an application easier to use. Partial support of a guideline is a step in the right direction. - Build accessibility into your process going forward.
Retrofit work is always harder than building accessibly from the start. Add accessibility checks to your QA process, include it in vendor evaluation criteria, and designate someone on your team to own it. - Document everything.
If your organization is audited or faces a complaint, having a documented remediation plan demonstrates good-faith effort. This matters in enforcement decisions.
What to Look for in Vendors and Platforms
Your compliance posture depends not just on your public-facing websites but on every tool your staff and constituents interact with — forms, document portals, payment systems, etc.
When evaluating technology vendors, ask directly:
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Do you have a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)?
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What WCAG level does your platform conform to, and can you show test results?
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How do you handle accessibility in product updates?
Platforms that are already WCAG 2.2 AA compliant reduce your remediation burden significantly and shift some of the accountability to the vendor. You can read Softdocs VPATs, read our commitment to accessible products, and even our own accessibility statement for this website.
The Bottom Line
The ADA Title II compliance deadline is coming. If your organization hasn't completed an audit and begun remediation, now is the time to move quickly and methodically. Before it's time to panic.
Start with a free audit using the tools above. Document what you find. Prioritize the highest-impact fixes. And make sure the platforms you rely on are pulling their weight on accessibility, not adding to your backlog.
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