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. Beginning in April of 2026, all digital course materials provided to students – even materials inside password-protected course sites like bCourses – will need to comply with accessibility standards from the start. 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, responsibilities, 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 to render them accessible for a specific student.
With the new ADA Title II Update regulations, the just-in-time content remediation model we are accustomed to will no longer be adequate. Although the DSP Alternative Media Team will remain as busy as ever fulfilling alternative media requests in response to letters of accommodation, the work of rendering 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 ensure 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). We are in the planning stages of adopting other complementary tools to round out our offerings in areas such as PDF and STEM content remediation. As these new tools become available, we will make training resources available as part of their roll-out. Finally, we will soon publish a roadmap of our various efforts and relevant timelines relating to the ADA Title II requirements. Please check back frequently.