Your Customers Are Now Accountable for Your Product’s Accessibility

Date
Categories
Accessibility
Product strategy

The ADA Title II rule change binds school districts, public universities, and any government agency to a clear standard for accessibility of digital content. While schools are working to update their own content, they also rely heavily on publishers and third-party service providers for curricula, instructional resources, interactive tools, assessments, learning experiences, and other online and digital materials, all of which must be accessible for the school district to be compliant with ADA Title II. So while the rule change doesn’t apply to private entities directly, it likely affects your customers. We’re seeing procurement rules already shifting; you can expect school districts to curtail purchasing of inaccessible materials in the next buying cycle and beyond. 

Here’s a quick guide to common questions we’re fielding from clients about the rule change. Consider the answers our informed opinion based on our analysis of the full text of the rule and is not legal advice (because we are not lawyers). 

What actually changed?

The 2024 ruling by the U.S. Department of Justice made the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 at level AA the compliance standard for all web content and mobile apps offered by any state and local government agencies, including public universities and public school districts.

The rule change removed an ambiguous definition, where everyone agreed accessibility mattered but no one could say precisely what it required. The new rule makes explicitly clear what accessible means for digital content, meaning it’ll be easier to identify and litigate noncompliance. Compliance takes effect on April 26, 2027 for public entities serving populations of 50,000 or more, and a year later for those serving smaller populations.

If the new rule applies to public agencies, like schools and universities, why does this matter to my company?

The accessibility compliance obligation of a school district extends to any product or service they use to conduct business. This includes any third-party digital curricula, online assessment, supplemental learning resources, the apps pushed to a Chromebook fleet, and every piece of digital content the district creates, whether that’s for administrators, educators, staff, students, or parents. The best (and really only) remedy school districts have to reduce their risk of noncompliance is to purchase only solutions that comply with WCAG 2.1 at Level AA moving forward. Put simply, if you’re selling to public schools, it’s in your best interest to be accessible.

Our older material is archived. Doesn’t that get an exception?

There is an exception for archived web content, and it is narrower than the word suggests. Content qualifies only when all four conditions are true:

  1. It was created before the relevant compliance date;
  2. It is kept solely for reference, research, or recordkeeping;
  3. It lives in a section of your website set aside for archived material; and,
  4. It has not been updated since.

Miss any one of these and the exception no longer applies. For example, even if the material is older and no longer maintained but is still used by schools to perform an action, complete an assignment, or interact with it in some fashion, it’s not, by definition, archived for reference or recordkeeping.

What will my customers ask for as evidence of accessibility compliance?

Accessibility is moving from a post-award survey question to a pre-qualification requirement. The accessibility conformance report (ACR) is no longer something you produce after winning an RFP. Accessibility compliance is becoming part of what determines whether you are eligible to compete at all. Expect school districts to:

  • Ask for your current ACR or VPAT written against WCAG 2.1 Level AA with a plan for remediation (with timetable); 
  • Add accessibility compliance language to every RFP and contract; and, 
  • Ask for a named individual responsible for accessibility inside your organization.

The best move is to get ahead of the curve and publish your ACR online with a stated accessibility policy that lets your customers know you have:

  • A process for handling accessibility requests and complaints
  • A plan to prioritize remediating high-use areas of your solution (e.g., keyboard navigation, color contrast, captioning and alt tags, and interactive forms)
  • A transition strategy for legacy content (with a realistic timetable)
  • A list of known exceptions and workarounds
  • A regular cadence of retesting after material changes to your solution

We have a VPAT. Is that enough?

A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is a type of accessibility conformance report (ACR), which is a point-in-time evaluation of compliance against each of the criteria in the WCAG 2.1 Level AA standard. If your VPAT is based on that standard, you’re on the right track. Make sure your VPAT (or ACR) itemizes the areas where your product is noncompliant or partially compliant, and your remediation plan (with expected timeframe) is regularly updated. Being transparent about this being a work in progress builds trust with your customers, especially as they review and test your product to confirm its accessibility.

Can an accessibility overlay or widget handle this?

Overlays (or widgets) are a class of technologies that attempt to improve the accessibility of a website. They use JavaScript to make improvements to the front-end presentation of a website. While the use of an accessibility overlay may improve compliance with a handful of provisions of the WCAG 2.1 at Level AA, full compliance cannot be achieved this way. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission agrees. School district procurement and technology leaders have largely stopped accepting them as evidence of accessibility compliance.

What if an RFP asks if my product is 100% accessible?

This can be frustrating, since 100% compliance is exceptionally difficult to achieve. Most digital curriculum tools, for example, are complex web applications that to be 100% compliant means every web page, component, interactive element, screen and device variation, and all the end-to-end workflows—not merely a subset of screens that were evaluated— must pass all the success criteria of the WCAG 2.1 at Level AA. This could be hundreds of different circumstances to test.

The best remedy is to proactively communicate and educate your customers about accessibility being a process and a goal, not a binary yes/no checkbox on a request for proposals. To help them understand the difficulty involved, share with them the VPATs from two of the most popular tools in education: Neither Microsoft Word nor Google Docs are 100% compliant. 

Where do I get started?

Develop an accurate picture of where you stand today. Have an evaluation conducted to identify the major gaps and work remediation into the roadmap so that you can share a realistic timetable with customers for eventual compliance.

Our team has spent decades building, sustaining, and rehabilitating edtech solutions. Reach out to talk through where your product stands and we can offer you tailored advice on where we can help get you on the path to accessibility remediation.