ADA Title II Ruling: What it Means

On this episode, we are diving deeper into the recent ADA Title II ruling. This ruling impacts your experience when visiting websites, apps, and other digital content.

• Paul Schroeder, American Printing House for the Blind, Vice President Impact and Outreach
• Sarah Malaier, American Foundation for the Blind Senior Advisor of Public Policy and Research Institute
• Cynthia Curry, Director of the National Center on Accessible Digital 
  Educational Materials & Instruction at the Institute for Disability Research, Policy & Practice (IDRPP) at Utah State University.
• Jan McSorley, Accessibility consultant for Knowbility

Additional Links

• ADA website
• American Foundation for the Blind
• NCADEMI (pronounced "N-cademy") website
• A Primer on ADA Title II and WCAG for State Educational Agencies and School Districts
• Meeting the ADA Title II Web and Mobile Accessibility: A Roadmap for State and Local Educational Agencies
• Quality Indicators for the Provision and Use of Accessible Materials in PreK-12 Systems
• Including Accessibility in All Components of Procurement: A Guide for State Educational Agencies and School Districts
• EdTech Accessibility Directory

Transcript

Narrator 0:00

Welcome to Changemakers, a podcast from APH. We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or have low vision. Here's your host.

Sara Brown 0:14

Hello and welcome to Change Makers. I'm APH's public relations manager, Sara Brown, and on today's episode, we are diving deeper into the recent ADA Title II ruling. This ruling impacts your experience when visiting websites, apps, or other digital content. To better explain what's happened, I have Paul Schrader here to lead this episode with some of his colleagues.

Paul Schroeder 0:38

Hello, this is Paul Schroeder, the Vice President for Impact and Outreach at the American Printing House for the Blind. Part of my job is to look at what's happening in the policy environment. And for this podcast, we're going to be talking about a new rule under the Americans with Disabilities Act and some changes to that rule that recently occurred. Just to set the stage, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires accessibility steps for services programs and activities conducted by state and local government. Now, most of you know that Title II, like the rest of ADA, was enacted in 1990. Now that preceded a lot of the work that is now routine for all of us in the online world web, internet, mobile apps, social media, etc. So those things were not addressed in 1990. But ADA, like most laws of its kind, has a provision for regulations to be established. And so in the immediate days and years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, several regulations were put in place to cover the various requirements of the law: transportation, employment, public accommodations, private businesses, et cetera. There were a number of regulations covering lots of different areas related to accessibility. However, there were not clear regulations set for web and internet accessibility, even though it was generally agreed and understood that the Americans with Disabilities Act does cover websites where there are accessibility efforts being taken that would be similar to what would be done under any other circumstance. For example, a government service that might be conducted via the web. However, without regulations in place, there was a lot of confusion about what actually governments should be doing to address accessibility and to ensure that their websites were accessible. That was the purpose of a long process to get to a regulation that was published in 2024. And by the way, probably for this podcast, at least I will use the word rule or regulation interchangeably for the purposes of being clear, this is a regulation that we're talking about that was published by the Department of Justice in April of 2024. That regulation set a certain standard for how state and local governments should be carrying out anything related to their service programs or activities via the web, via mobile app, via internet presence. The deadline was supposed to be coming up this year, and in fact, it was supposed to have been in April of 26th for that to start. I'm thrilled on this podcast to have three experts who can help us navigate through what this rule means, what has changed recently about it, and what you should do now going forward. I'm going to start my questions and I'll introduce each person as I ask them a question with Sarah Malaier, who is with the American Foundation for the Blind Public Policy and Research Institute. Sarah is a longtime strong advocate around website and app accessibility, and in fact did a lot of the work related to the comments on this proposed rule back in 2023 and 2024 that got us to this place. So, Sarah, I'm going to start with you to ask about what's in this rule. What did it purport to do to start with and why would we be interested in the outcome of it?

Sarah Malaier 4:04

Thank you, Paul. So happy to talk about the interim final rule.

Paul Schroeder 4:08

Well, let's start with the actual rule itself from 2024. What did it cover?

Sarah Malaier 4:13

The actual rule, the 2024 rule went into effect, was released in the Federal Register in April 2024, and it required state and local governments that provide web content websites and mobile applications to make those websites and applications accessible to people with disabilities. And in doing so, they set a standard and they adopted the uh WCAG 2.1 level ANAA standard. So it's the web content accessibility guidelines. It's an international standard and you know, so why widely used, widely recognized, and it it lays out what it means for a website to be accessible. In that rulemaking, they also identified certain circumstances in which entities would not have to make their content accessible. And I believe there were five exceptions, and they were for things like pre-existing social media content. So if you had posts back from 2025 or 2015 or 2022, you don't have to go back and fix the accessibility of those.

Paul Schroeder 5:13

We'll get to some of those uh in a little bit more detail in a second, but this really is everything, right? So if if a government, if a state or local government has tax records, is uh sending you information, uh things that you need to do as a citizen, actions you need to take, or information that you want to get, these are all the things that now are typically online. And I presume all of those would have been covered by this rule.

Sarah Malaier 5:37

Yes, yes. It covered really all of the content that, or pretty much all of the content that the state and local government entities um in that kind of broad sense of state and local government would have to do. So it's everything from your water district to, you know, the the county government to the school district to you know state government.

Paul Schroeder 5:56

And we're gonna get right into uh schools in a little bit because obviously that's of critical importance to our audience. You mentioned this thing called an interim final rule that uh was published by the Department of Justice who set the original rule back in 2024. What is that? What did it do?

Sarah Malaier 6:12

Yeah, so an interim final rule is um something that I've had to learn a lot about in the past few months, um, not something I was super familiar with. And that's because they're typically used only in emergency situations. So it is a process by which a agency can forego a public comment process and issue a final rule, but then ask for comments after they issue the final rule. So that's what we have here. On, you know, just before that 2024 rule was to go into effect, the Department of Justice issued an interim final rule saying that they are extending the deadlines for compliance by one year. So there were two compliance deadlines. The first one for large entities that serve 50,000 or more people was set to go into effect in April of 2026. That will now be in effect in April 2027. The other category was for smaller entities, entities below 50,000. They were supposed to go into compliance next year in 2027. They will now have until April 2028 to comply with the rule.

Paul Schroeder 7:15

Um we're gonna come back uh a little bit later to talk about what else might be happening with this interim final rule and what people can do with it. But right up front, I do want to say, Sarah, there's there is a something called a comment period that people can take advantage of if they have thoughts on on these kinds of things.

Sarah Malaier 7:34

Yes. Yeah, so just like uh you know a normal rulemaking process, there is a comment period. And we were fortunately have 60 days to respond. Um, so until June 22nd, any entity or individual can file comments on this this interim final rule.

Paul Schroeder 7:51

And um, I don't know if you want me to go into to some of the messages yet or um we'll come back to that and we'll add a link so that people can find uh the where the rule is in uh where it's published and available if you want to comment on it. Um I want to shift to another uh expert who has joined us, and that's Cynthia Curry with the National Center on Accessible Digital Education Materials and Instruction, which thankfully they now abbreviate to Academy, um, a lot easier to get out. It's a technical assistance center funded by the Office of Special Education under the U.S. Department of Education. It supports uh state and local education agencies in particular in this accessible work. And of course, Cynthia herself has been a longtime expert working in and around schools, working with teachers uh on accessible materials. Cynthia, thanks so much for joining us.

Cynthia Curry 8:47

Thanks for the invitation, Paul. It's uh um I wish we were here talking about the implementation or that we are, you know, kind of beyond the deadline. But I am so appreciative of the opportunity to continue this conversation and stress the importance of the final rule.

Paul Schroeder 9:02

Well, let's start with this uh this thing that's affectionately known as WACAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Some of us are quite familiar with them, but many people may not be. That was used uh and incorporated into the rule as the standard that would be used to uh set what accessibility for web and mobile and online uh content would be, right? So what is that?

Cynthia Curry 9:26

So the web content accessibility guidelines or WACAG were established internationally by the Worldwide Web Consortium or W3C. They have been in evolution for decades. So we were thinking about this concept of digital accessibility as new, but as you've established, Paul, the Americans with Disabilities Act has been around for decades, as have these, these, you know, they weren't necessarily well, they are standards. They're there were have not had not yet been adopted by the by the US, but they had been adopted elsewhere as guide as guidance for what do we mean when we say something uh is accessible to an individual with a disability who's using assistive technology. So uh the the web content accessibility guidelines, WACEG, have been around since uh 1997. Sarah or Jen may be able to confirm that, but let's just say decades. What the final rule called out with the US Department of Justice selected as the standard is version 2.1. So that kind of tells you that we've been through multiple versions of these guidelines at level AA, and there are or double A, there are three three levels. Um they kind of it starts at A, then goes to A, and the top tier level is triple A. And those levels just indicate essentially the um the kind of the robustness of the of the standards. Um they get a little bit more and more uh ambitious as the levels go from A to AAA. But double A means that all of the uh success criteria that are fall under A also fall under AA accounts for everything that is under A. So 2.1 A is the standard. They could have, you know, the US Department, the Just Justice Department could have gone to a higher level. For example, they could have gone to 2.2 at that time, but they chose, uh but they chose not to. We are at 2.1 AA. You can think of the of WACAG from a really helpful framework or model that was uh established by the W3C to describe the to describe WACAG, and that's the POR framework or POR model. OR is P-O-U-R, and it stands for perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. So these are these are accessibility concepts that you could apply to a website, to a mobile app, to a digital document, to a video, pretty much any digital content, and kind of run it by these three principles. It's perceivable if people with wide-ranging sensory abilities can access it. So multiple ways for people to perceive that information. So alt text for images, transcripts for audio, uh, ensuring that anything that is that is provided in content that uh may be through site is also available through audio, for example. Anything that's visual is also available through a text description. So multiple ways for people to perceive the content. Operable meaning that people who use assistive technology are able to navigate the uh the content. Understandable. Uh, this would mean that uh the thinking about plain language and ensuring that people are able to enter the content cognitively and be able to understand the information. And then finally, the R is for robust, and that means that the website or the digital content works with current and future assistive technologies. I think a lot of time people are looking at content and assessing its accessibility based on today's assistive technology or the technology that maybe they have available to test. But we have to remember that there are various versions of assistive technology and various AT is in levels of maturity. So Robust really covers ensuring that regardless of what model or version of assistive technology I have, I have access to the content.

Paul Schroeder 13:21

So the the intent really of these guidelines, and they are they are called guidelines because they're published by a the worldwide body, but not a but not a governing, not a government body. Uh, but the intent, I gather, is to help website developers and individuals or entities setting up a website to know this is what we should be doing in order to make sure that people with disabilities can make use of our website. So besides the principles, there are some very detailed uh instructions for what need to do. You mentioned a couple of things like alt text.

Cynthia Curry 13:53

That's right, Paul. And I would I would say you could kind of think about this standard for for websites and mobile content and apps, the same way we'd think about a standard for a physical building. Imagine that we had gone, you know, the ADA was signed in 1990, and maybe we had gone all these years without having a standard for how wide a door should be, in order for a wheelchair user to pass through it. So just because we didn't have that standard for ensuring that people who use wheelchairs can access a public building doesn't mean that that person doesn't have the right to file a complaint or argue that they're being discriminated against. So it'd be the same thing here. What the final rule did was not change, it didn't create the the obligation for accessible websites for state and local governments. What it did do was specify and clarify here's you know, here's your standard, here's what we're using. Uh if a complaint is filed, here's what everybody agrees is is the standard that is to be met.

Paul Schroeder 14:55

So you uh have your center is a technical assistance center. I assume that means you have uh some resources and materials to help people understand uh how to make digital content accessible. What kinds of things might you offer in a in a you know fairly brief fashion? We can certainly point people to Academy uh in the show notes.

Cynthia Curry 15:15

Sure. So uh first of all, we're funded, as you mentioned, by the U.S. Department of Education. So all of our resources are at no cost. Everything is creative commons. So everything that uh that somebody finds on our website is open to be adapted. You know, please take it, thinking of the understandable uh principle at Academy. We're always trying to we're striving for under to make our content understandable, but it's creative commons. So you take it and adapt it. We just ask that you attribute uh whatever derivation you have back to the center. We have an ADA Title II roadmap for states and school districts. We have quality indicators for providing and using accessible digital educational materials in schools. We have learning modules on how to create accessible content, uh, whether that's video or digital documents. We have procurement guidance for engaging with vendors and making sure that accessibility is part of that, part of that process. Uh and then we also have uh live synchronous technical assistance. We have a virtual professional learning group that meets monthly that state and and district teams are welcome to enroll in at any time. It's rolling enrollment. Uh, once a team uh starts in the PLG, we have a year of targeted technical assistance that's provided by our team. And then there's an option to go into a community of practice to continue, uh to continue improvement because we know this is not, this doesn't stop, right? It's a continuous, it's a continuous process.

Paul Schroeder 16:45

Yep, it's definitely so great that um this kind of technical assistance is is available. I want to bring Jan McSorley into this conversation. Jan is a longtime consultant in uh access to educational technology. She's worked in the corporate sphere, she's worked in the nonprofit accessibility sphere, and she's worked with schools uh on implementing accessibility. Jan, welcome to the program. And maybe you can talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the education world, because that of course is of critical importance to our audience with respect to this rule, even though the deadline has been pushed back. Maybe there's some good work that's been happening anyway.

Jan McSorley 17:24

Yeah, hi, Paul. Thanks so much for inviting me to participate. I'm glad to be here. Uh, there is a lot of activity, I think, that is going on in schools. It's uh, of course, you know, mixed results. Some schools are a lot more familiar with what's happening with this regulation than others. And of course, the delay is is a little bit disappointing for those that have been really working hard to get their organizations, you know, in line with the requirements of the regulation. But in terms of what's happening in schools, I'm seeing them starting to educate their staff about the importance of accessibility and how it's going to impact student learning. I think the most important thing for schools to emphasize when they're when they're talking to people or making comments about this extension, for example, if they wanted to make a comment, is that students really only have one opportunity to get their education. And so if they're locked out of learning resources or materials, they're losing their opportunity to learn that content at the time of their life when they are supposed to be learning that content. So this is not something that's trivial, it's something very, very important. And it does require schools to be intentional, to plan properly. And that's the thing that I think is most important that I would like to get across for everyone who's listening to this podcast, is you need to start first and foremost with a plan and governance and how you're going to work together to make this happen.

Paul Schroeder 18:55

And we just heard there's a roadmap available from Academy that might be uh one way to help you uh start to work on such a plan. And of course, it's important to note, right, that even though uh a deadline for use of this final rule has been uh put back by a year. Again, I go back to the Americans with Disabilities Act has covered uh website accessibility. It's just that we didn't have a clear standard. So there is still a good reason to keep working uh on accessibility for lots of reasons, including the fact that, as you pointed out, you got one shot at education. I want to come back to you, Sarah, and ask if you know why was this pushback a year? Was there was there a group pushing for more time? Were they worried about implementation? Do you do you have some insights on that?

Sarah Malaier 19:44

Yeah, um, there were a few entity groups um that expressed some concerns about the implementation date. I think the first real effort that we saw was I believe it's the American Council on Education, which is a higher education group, um, that was concerned about the number of public institutions, public universities, and colleges that that needed to do a lot of work to get things done by the April 2026 deadline. So they were a part of um pushing this back. There was also an opportunity to meet with the Office of Management and Budget on some of the either support or opposition um to changes to the rule. And so we got to see a little bit of what entities were thinking about when they were advocating for a delay of the rule. Um so we saw the that some of the cities and the county groups um were very concerned, in particular, about PDFs. They were also concerned about very small entities, um, those serving less than 10,000 um people. And they were uh another big thing that popped up was the vendors. There's still a lot of concern um kind of across the board that whereas like a school district or a county government might be doing work to make the content that they create more accessible, you know, the the services that they're buying from um either an ed tech provider or just a web services um provider are not accessible and those vendors are are slower to adapt to the role than the entities themselves. So that those were some of the concerns that were raised. I will say that for the most part, entities seem to be interested in having more time to comply, um, and that the kind of the only kind of substantive concerns that I really was seeing were around those kind of PDFs and and vendor concerns, um, and then interest in exempting the very small entities, um, which personally I think is is problematic.

Paul Schroeder 21:43

It it's interesting, of course. We have always, those of us who have been around the Americans with Disabilities Act regulatory process, we've always heard people want more time. And I often say it's it's like my kids always wanted a little more time to get their homework in and never started working. On it when it was uh actually given to them, they started working on it like I did, uh just a shortly before it was due. And I feel like that sometimes we see the same thing in agencies. They probably weren't paying that much attention uh as they should have been, perhaps, to this rule. Let me ask, starting with um Jan and Sarah, and then Cynthia, feel free to chime in. You Sarah, you just mentioned vendors and the people who provide and support content. That's a really important issue in the education world. And as I recall, when this rule was first proposed, and there's there's a whole process, people, for how rules and regulations are made final. There's a proposed rule, and then there's comments, and then if things go well, the agency publishes a final rule incorporating those comments. There was a lot of discussion about education, these things called exemptions uh or exceptions that uh uh an entity could could have to uh ensure to not make something accessible if it was going to be a problem. There's been a long set of these, uh there's a set of these that are in the Americas with Disabilities Act around fundamental burden and undue uh hardships uh in certain cases and alterations, and we we can talk about those. But I want to specifically ask about the discussion around education because there were things like password-protected content, and that's not uncommon in uh in schools, uh, to have content that's password protected that's only available to the students. And there was uh, I believe, uh, an effort to say, well, that content doesn't need to be made accessible until someone actually needs it, which is frankly kind of laughable. But Sarah or Jan, uh maybe dive in here on what what was discussed around education and what the exceptions might be that are still available to the schools.

Jan McSorley 23:48

Uh Sarah, I'll let you go first, but I have because I have a few things to say. Do you want to make any comment about it?

Sarah Malaier 23:55

Yeah. Well, in the 2023 notice of proposed rulemaking, so this is before they finalized the rule. The Department of Justice did propose um a number of exceptions, and two of them in particular touched education, and it was the password-protected educational content, unless there was a student with a disability in the course or a student with a parent with a disability in the course. Now, we appreciated the shout out to parents with disabilities. That's great, and it's not often recognized.

Paul Schroeder 24:25

Yes, we did.

Sarah Malaier 24:27

But it but it was still really problematic because it kind of puts us in the status quo position where schools and colleges then are not making content accessible until a student says, yes, I've signed up for the course. Now everything needs to be accessible. It's a lot harder to do accessibility in the five days before class starts, in between your sign-up time and and when you actually start class or when you want to change classes or or whatever it might be than it is to do it in advance. So there was a big push from the community to get rid of that educational exemption. And um we were really, really grateful that the Department of Justice did remove um those two exemptions.

Paul Schroeder 25:06

Dan, you want to address it?

Jan McSorley 25:07

Yeah, no, I I am I'm 100% in agreement with that. I mean, that was a very unfair uh rule or you know, an exemption on multiple levels. It was an unfair exemption because uh it requires a person with a disability to identify themselves as having a disability, you know, for one thing. And that should not be required for you to get access to your education. Um, so there were a lot of things wrong with it. It was great that the community kind of uh, you know, came together and stood up and said this is not right. With respect to the other exemptions, I do want to give a shout out to an article by uh Sherry Byrne Habern, who she has an article that she wrote called um the archived content exemption under Title II, what it covers and what it doesn't. Uh, it has a lot of good things to say. If people are wondering, oh well, should this be exempt in education? You know, no, it's most likely not something that you can exempt unless it's just absolutely not in not in use and used for historical reasons. So as Sarah mentioned, a lot of the concerns that people had around were around their PDF content, their uh long list of archived PDFs that they have from you know decades of educational activity. Um but if you're still using that really old thing, um, it's not something that you can exempt. And that's a really good article to learn about.

Paul Schroeder 26:34

That is an interesting point, and it really goes back to why regulations can be necessary because it spells out all of these kinds of situations that are very specific to certain needs. And and archival, there is a need perhaps to to look at that in certain contexts, especially for historical government material, perhaps.

Jan McSorley 26:55

I I do want to say something about the vendors, though.

Paul Schroeder 26:58

Please, yeah, please do.

Jan McSorley 26:59

Um the ed tech industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, like hundreds of billions of dollars um are spent in ed tech. And for years, the but the burden of proof for accessibility has fallen on the educational institutions or the state and local government. So the concern that these entities had about the vendors is real because the vendors do tend to be slower to respond to these regulations. And that's why the procurement uh policies that you have in these organizations is so important. As Cynthia mentioned, uh, Encademy has resources around how you can work with your vendors. Um, but it is it's so important for vendors to take responsibility for the accessibility of their products and to not hide behind, oh, well, this is too hard, or oh, we can't really do that because we have third-party content coming into our product. Um, at some point, people need to take responsibility, and that's why this regulation was so needed and so important, because you can't just leave it up to people to sue and continue to sue over the lack of content. As I mentioned before, there's a finite amount of time that a student has to be in school, and their parents may not have the energy to go and file a lawsuit. Um, but they shouldn't have to, because we as organizations, as educational institutions, as state and local governments, should be making sure that this content is available to them, and vendors need to take responsibility for making their products accessible.

Paul Schroeder 28:37

That's Jen McSorley. Thank you so much for that. I want to uh make sure that we address one piece of important information, and that is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That is a long-standing law that that is specific to the education system, essentially the K-12 or pre-K-12 uh school system. Cynthia, I or Jan, or really any of you who might want to talk about this, nothing changes, right, with IDEA. That was not connected to this uh Title II uh final rule that was published by the Department of Justice. The accessibility requirements and et cetera, in IDEA still remain, I hope.

Cynthia Curry 29:15

Yeah, that's that's correct, Paul. That the two laws really work in parallel. And ADA Title II and digital accessibility from the beginning does not replace ensuring that students who have accommodations as part of their IEP or who request accommodations or provide accommodations in post-secondary or people in the workforce, uh, they still uh have the right and that's still uh well under, sorry, I'm crossing the, I just drifted into post-secondary. IDA is specific. I will say that request for accessible formats remains, and that's called out in ADA, right? Regardless of where somebody is in the lifespan, if they require an accessible format, that gets requested, and the uh agency organization institution uh is responsible uh for accommodating that individual. So that's sort of the the IDA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act model, which is that in under the 2004 reauthorization of IDA, there were uh provisions added to ensure that students with print disabilities, called print disabilities at the time, now called eligible individuals or eligible persons, would be able to have accessible formats in a timely manner. So IDA 2004 requires that states and school districts provide braille, digital text, large print, audio in a timely manner. Most states have defined timely manner as at the same time that students without disabilities receive those materials. At the time it was primarily print because we're talking 2004. Over time, obviously, there was a precipitous shift into digital materials. And that's why ADA Title II is so important because retrofitting a print material or even retrofitting a digital text material that has static text and images, that's possible, taking a PDF and converting it into a digital text or converting it into Braille. But it's not the same as having a learning management system or something that's dynamic, that really is impossible to make accessible once it's gone through the development process. So we need to make sure that uh in K-12 that we are conforming to ADA Title II and providing accessible digital educational materials while at the same time ensuring students who require Braille, tactile graphics, uh, or in other cases where we will fall short, continue to fall short, and those inaccessible PDFs make their way into our system, that we still have very robust processes to make sure that students who require accessible formats receive those in a timely manner.

Paul Schroeder 32:01

And I will note that the American Printing House for the Blind is very pleased to play a role in this with the uh idea that directed uh textbook files to be sent in an accessible standard to be managed in a database by APH for use in creating accessible material. One of the things that maybe I'm a little bit worried about, and I'm gonna pitch this to you, Sarah. So the deadline has been moved back a year for larger entities and two years from now, so 2028 for the smaller government entities, which probably covers a lot of schools, um, though though certainly many public and schools are in and universities uh would would maybe fall into that larger group, depending on how they're structured. Um so it moved the deadline back a year or two. That's not great uh for people who have been waiting for accessibility uh to happen. Uh hopefully uh places are still working toward that because the ADA and other laws do require accessibility. So some of that is is already in place. Do you think there might be other challenges coming, though? This this uh was unexpected, uh, this interim final rule. And I I hear maybe that there might be some other challenges that we uh can speculate might be coming.

Sarah Malaier 33:18

Yeah, uh one of the sentences in the interim final rule um that is most concerning is that they are considering um a new notice of proposed rulemaking. And whereas this interim final rule just changed dates, um, a new NPRM could potentially look at the substance of the rule. So they might be thinking about adding new exceptions, or they might be thinking about changing the entities that are required to comply. We don't know, they haven't given us any um indication. But I will say this is where it's really there, there is a lot of importance in in responding to the comments um or commenting on this rule. Um, because I think we and a lot of entities that are covered want to say, don't change the rule. You know, even entities that are saying, well, we might need more time, most of them at least acknowledge the importance of the rule. Um, so I think that there is a lot of space um to say the rule's really important. We need it to go into effect. And here's the cost to individuals. Um this rule really considered the cost to entities of making their websites and apps accessible. It did not consider the cost to individuals of inaccessibility. And that is the students whose accessible coursework is gonna be delayed by another year, um, you know, as well as all of the other impacts. Um, so I I think we really want to be strongly saying we do not want a new impairment. We do not want to change the rule. We want this rule to go into effect in 2027. Um, there is one other piece. Um, there is another interim final rule that is um potentially going to come out um that would delay the um Department of Health and Human Services section 504 um rule that that was released around the same time as the Title II rule. So that rule is much broader. Um, and it it covers accessibility in the health space. Um, but one thing that required was that entities who receive um federal financial assistance from the Department of Health and Human Services must make their websites, apps, and kiosks um accessible to people with disabilities. Um that rule might have covered some private um higher education institutions, um, in particular medical schools um or um human services schools. Um so we could also be seeing a delay in some of the rules that some of these private higher education institutions were covered by as well.

Paul Schroeder 35:54

Sarah, is this something that AFB is tracking? Can we find it on the website, for example, what what's going on with some of these rules and changes?

Sarah Malaier 36:01

Um I haven't yet gotten it up on our website, but if that it's something, a blog post to that effect is coming. We will provide some update on the HHS role once it's out. We don't actually know the extent of that because you know the frustrating thing about this process is we don't know what's in the final rule until the final rule is in effect. And that's that's pretty frustrating.

Paul Schroeder 36:22

We could do a whole podcast on the vicissitudes and challenges of the federal regulatory process uh and the way it works and sometimes the way it maybe doesn't work that well. We've covered a lot of ground in this discussion. I know there's more to talk about. Um, I'd love to have you all come back and maybe talk about some other elements like uh artificial intelligence. How is AI going to influence uh some of this work around accessibility? And of course, we need to stay uh attentive to other changes that might come for this uh in uh through this interim final rule to the standard setting for accessibility to remind everybody the purpose of this rule in 2024 that the Department of Justice published was really to let government entities, state and local government, that includes schools, uh public schools, know what they were supposed to be meeting when the Americans with Disabilities Act says you need to address it, you need to ensure accessibility in your services, programs, and activities. So that still is true, but what was what's now been postponed is what the standard that you're supposed to work toward. And I hear all the time from uh people involved in the web community, we're okay with accessibility, but we just need to know how to do it and we need to know what to write to. I'm gonna thank um Sarah Millaire with the American Foundation for the Blind, Cynthia Curry with the National Center on Accessible Digital Educational Material and Instruction Academy, Jan McSorley, a longtime consultant and uh who's involved with various entities. And I will give each of you maybe 20 seconds if you have any parting comments that you want to make, and we'll try to have material in our show notes for all of you that you share with us.

Jan McSorley 38:11

This is Jan. Yeah, I would just like to encourage everyone to not just sit back and wait to see what's going to happen, but to start the work of making your content accessible and putting policies and procedures in place within your organization to ensure that regardless of what the regulations come out saying in the final end result, that you are prepared to provide fair and equitable services to everyone. Uh, this matters significantly for um for our communities to have everyone be able to participate.

Paul Schroeder 38:44

Cynthia? Any parting shots?

Cynthia Curry 38:48

Sure. I would say, you know, it's uh having a framework for getting started, uh just building on 100% everything that Jan said, especially just the the critical importance, how essential this is for equal access for opportunity for uh in the context of academy, uh students with disabilities that have a limited amount of time to uh to progress and move on to meet their goals. The framework being choose and you know choose a pathway by which materials reach students, whether that's the procurement process, whether that's the materials that teachers are creating, whether that's the materials that teachers are selecting, and start working on some policies, guidelines for all of those pathways. You know, choose a pathway, focus on it, and just go in continuous cycles of improvement. And I hate to say, I'm sorry I said just because I do realize that this takes coordination and strategy.

Paul Schroeder 39:46

And Sarah, you've been put in the unenviable spot of trying to explain the regulatory process and how it works in this particular context. Any last uh comments from you?

Sarah Malaier 39:57

I just say that that the um the comment period is open and this is a chance to put to to raise your voice. And I do think it is really important in all of these processes to make sure that the costs and benefits to individuals of these various rulemakings um is um just as important as um the cost to entities.

Paul Schroeder 40:19

And we'll link to some other work that uh AFB has been doing as well on somewhat related topics around accessible uh content and online services. This is Paul Frader with the American Printing House for the Blind, and we are so delighted to have been talking about Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and maybe not so delighted, but to at least provide some information about what has changed in a rule that implements the web and mobile app accessibility uh provisions relating to state and local governments. Again, those were delayed by a year. Uh, and there is still a comment period, as Sarah mentioned, uh, to make sure that folks raise their voices about other things that might be important to you in accessible uh online content. I'm Paul Schrader. Back to Sarah.

Sara Brown 41:09

Thanks so much, Paul. For additional information about the ADA Title II ruling and the programs and resources and material Paul's colleagues mentioned are in the show notes. So be sure to check those out. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Changemakers. Do you have a podcast topic suggestion? I would love to hear it. Email me at changemakers at aph.org. And as always, be sure to look for ways you can be a change maker this week.