New Federal Regulation Takes Effect in 2026
In 2024, The Department of Justice released an update to Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The updated regulations will go into effect in spring of 2026. While there are many facets to the update, we focus here on crucially important new requirements for digital course content. Satisfying these new regulations will require a new approach to digital course content accessibility. Starting in April of 2026, all digital course materials provided to students – even materials inside password-protected course sites like bCourses – will need to be in compliance with accessibility standards ab ovo. Specifically, all of the digital course materials will need to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards.
Impact on Course Content Accessibility
Requiring that digital course materials meet accessibility standards from the moment they are made available represents a seachange in the scope, roles, responsponsibilities, and timing of dealing with course content accessibility. For years, course content accessibility has been encouraged but not legally required for course content behind password protection in systems like bCourses. Presently, only when a student with a formal accommodation enrolls in the course do legal requirements come into play for the course materials in that specific course. In the current approach, a student’s Letter of Accommodation (LOA) entails responsibilities for the instructor, but also typically involves engagement by the Disabled Students Program(DSP) for help in remediating course materials in order to render them accessible for a specific student.
WIth the new ADA Title II Update regulations, the sort of just-in-time content remediation model we are accustomed to will no longer be adeqaute. Although the DSP Alternative Media Team will remain as busy as ever fulfilling alternative media request in response to LOA’s, the work of rendering of all course content accessible the moment it’s made available to students will require a whole new approach, one that we are just beginning to figure out but will undoubtedly require a more active role by individual instructors.
Since the new requirement encompasses all digital course materials being accessible as soon as they are made available to students, all content hosted on learning management systems like bCourses, as well as content from third-party vendors, including textbook companies and other learning applications, will need to meet the WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards.
Resources for Instructors
In this new paradigm, instructors will be responsible for ensuring that their digital course materials are accessible in terms of the WCAG 2.1 standard. To facilitate compliance, Research, Teaching, & Learning already provides tools, resources, and training for faculty and staff. For example, we offer several key tools (e.g., Ally, Sensus Access) and accessibility workshops (e.g., Accessibility and Inclusion in Teaching learning path). And we are in the planning stages for seeking other tools and developing more training resources in anticipation of meeting the needs around the ADA Title II requirements.