Community college officials spending this summer preparing to implement a litany of new federal regulations have another to add to their to-do list. The U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) final rule defining accessible web and mobile content under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) goes into effect on June 24, though institutions will have between two and three years to come into compliance.
Title II of the ADA requires that all services, programs and activities of state and local governments and their affiliated entities be accessible to people with disabilities. Although DOJ had previously considered Title II to be inclusive of web content and mobile apps, it had not set forth a specific technical standard for web- and mobile app-based ADA compliance until now.
The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) endorsed comments submitted by the American Council of Education on the proposed rule in October. The comments expressed support for more accessible online platforms but urged DOJ to provide a five-year compliance time frame for institutions of all sizes and to reconsider an exception to the standards for password-protected websites, such as course websites. In the final rule, DOJ retained their proposed compliance timelines but removed the password-protected website exception.
The standard to meet
As public entities, under the new regulations community colleges will need to ensure the websites, web content — including text, images, sounds, videos, controls, animations and conventional electronic documents — and mobile apps used at or by the institution meet Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 published in 2018.
To conform to WCAG, and therefore federal regulatory requirements, colleges’ web pages must meet a series of “success criteria.” WCAG 2.1 Level AA has a total of 50 success criteria, which include:
- Content should not be limited to a single display orientation, such as portrait or landscape.
- Captions are provided for all live audio content in synchronized media.
- Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media.
- Audio description is provided for all prerecorded video content in synchronized media.
- Non-text content should have an equivalent text alternative.
- Colors used are bold enough to be seen on the screen.
In certain circumstances, the regulation does not require web content to meet the specific guidelines. These exceptions are for archived content, conventional electronic documents that were available on the app or website before the compliance date, content posted by a third party not acting on behalf of a public entity and password-protected individualized documents.
Compliance dates
Community colleges will have two or three years to comply, depending on the size of their governing jurisdiction. Small public entities, defined as those with a Census-determined population of fewer than 50,000 people, will have three years to comply. States or localities with a Census-determined population of 50,000 or more will be considered large public entities and will have two years to comply. Special district governments regardless of size will have three years to comply.
The compliance date for community colleges is not the population of the college itself but rather “the combined decennial Census population estimates for any State or local governments of which the public entity is an instrumentality,” according to the regulatory text.
Clearly, many factors will play into a college’s ease or difficulty in complying with the new regulations. These include the amount of web content it has and produces, the level of web accessibility currently in place and the number of staff with the necessary technical expertise. In any case, colleges are encouraged to begin thinking about implementation sooner rather than later.
If you have any questions about the regulations, please contact Alexis Gravely, AACC legislative analyst.
