Inside the government website accessibility lobbying push

The impending April 24 deadline of a federal accessibility rule and a new review has set off a frantic lobbying blitz from disability advocates and government groups looking to shape the future of that mandate.

The Department of Justice referred a rule to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs requiring that government websites comply with various internationally recognized standards from the World Wide Web Consortium under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But it did so with amendments as an Interim Final Rule, which would become effective immediately after publication and does not have a pre-publication public comment period. The rule had initially been put forward under the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by the Biden administration in 2024, which required a public comment period before a final rule was issued.

The tweaked process has set off furious lobbying from groups on both sides of the website accessibility issue as they seek to influence the final rule, either before or after this month’s deadline. Minutes of any meetings between groups and the federal government are not public, and an OMB spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the process or future timeline. Meetings are scheduled on the topic into mid-April, per the OIRA website.

But documents and letters give a sense of where some organizations stand. In letters to OIRA after its joint meeting with staffers from OMB and DOJ on the rule, officials with the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties raised a number of concerns about the effort, including the cost of compliance and remediation, technical difficulties and ambiguity about enforcement, among others.

NACo’s letter called these issues “significant barriers,” even as its members “strongly support the goals of accessibility.” And other government groups raised similar concerns.

“Cities continue to work hard to provide information and services to their communities using the Internet,” said a letter from the League of Minnesota Cities. “Many cities have expended substantial resources developing accessible websites and apps. However, this priority is one of many competing for the scarce resources of cities, especially those with populations less than 50,000.”

Cost of compliance is a big barrier for government groups, the letters say. When it first rolled out this rule in 2024, DOJ estimated counties could face a bill of around $967 million nationwide just to comply with the new standards, while cities could expect to pay upwards of $2 billion. States would be spending around $275 million to comply. Annual compliance costs after implementation were expected to be in the millions too.

NLC said full compliance is “unaffordable and out of reach” for most governments, especially those smaller municipalities with limited budgets but also larger ones too. They cited one-time PDF remediation costs for small communities of between $5,000 and $10,000, and ongoing annual costs of $70,000. Meanwhile larger cities, with lots of PDFs, also face resource challenges as they need more staff time to comply.

“A normal annual budget for these small communities could be $2 million or less, which [sic] the majority of that committed to expenses such as police and fire, water and sewer services, and retirement obligations,” says the letter, signed by NLC’s Legislative Director for IT and Communications Angelina Panettieri. “Most of these cities outsource information technology functions entirely, and may have an annual IT budget of $10,000 or less for these services. That makes the expense necessary to comply with the rule’s technical requirements financially onerous or even impossible for these small communities.”

NACo also warned that uncertainty over how the DOJ plans to enforce the new rule is making compliance difficult for county leaders. The group warned that, while digital accessibility can be measured and scored, there is less clarity on how that compliance is enforced, which then creates budgetary uncertainties. The DOJ has previously been tight-lipped on how it will enforce this rule.

“Beyond the physical world, where for example a curb ramp may reasonably constitute physical accessibility to a crosswalk, the digital world is constructed of many disparate elements that continue to evolve and change with the emergence of new technologies,” NACo’s letter says.

Disability advocacy groups said clarifying the requirements for government websites under the ADA are necessary, however. Mark Riccobono, president National Federation of the Blind, said in a letter that further delays or amendments to the rule would “severely harm blind and other disabled Americans,” and that it provides a “clear, transparent shared understanding of the applicable legal requirements.”

And the Autistic Self Advocacy Network said in its letter to OIRA that the rule’s “qualitative benefits,” including “independence, ease of use, self-determination … far outweigh the costs.”

NLC, NACo and others asked OIRA for several remedies to the current situation, including delaying the rule’s implementation; a complete exemption for those governments with less than 10,000 people; more flexibility on content exempted from compliance with the rule; and assistance in liability exposure, including more time to cure identified non-compliance.

In his letter, Riccobono rejected those claims and said governments of all sizes have had plenty of time to get into compliance.

“There is no basis for reconsidering the website rule, which has already gone through fourteen years of consideration, public input, and adjustment, and which is based on a requirement in existence for nearly fifty years,” his letter says. “Additionally, public entities have had nearly thirty-six years to prepare for the requirements that were initially established in the ADA, clarified by the final rule, and have been actively requested by stakeholders on all sides.”