Website accessibility remains ‘slow-moving crisis’ despite rule delay, experts warn

The Department of Justice’s announcement last month of a one-year delay on its rule for accessible government websites had some leaders breathing a sigh of relief. But the decision left disability advocates furious at what they felt was another instance of kicking the can down the road.

DOJ gave governments of all sizes another year — until April 26, 2027, for those with more than 50,000 people and until April 26, 2028, for those with less than that — to comply with a rule that their websites meet various internationally recognized standards from the World Wide Web Consortium under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

While government groups had argued previously that the cost and time needed to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 were prohibitive. The standards, known as WCAG, include that websites be easily navigable; provide services like text captions for audio and video; add alternative text for images; and not be designed to provoke seizures or physical reactions. But disability groups said it means continued unequal access to government services.

“The effort to weaken and delay this rule is a betrayal of the promise America made when it enacted the ADA, which guaranteed our rights to participate fully in the mainstream of American life," Mark A. Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind, said in a statement. "The organized blind movement will not stand idle while the Department of Justice undermines the very regulation we fought so hard to achieve. Blind Americans deserve timely access to government services."

Numerous problems remain unsolved, too. Brandon Biggs, founder and CEO of accessible digital map company XR Navigation, who is legally blind, said the delay is “absolutely horrendous” for the disabled community and noted they will still be at a disadvantage when interacting with the information on government websites and services. That information might be as simple as road closures, which is easy for able-bodied people to navigate, but can turn into a nightmare for a disabled person, he said.

“If you're a blind person, you don't know how to walk around to the other route because you never got trained on it, and it's really scary going into an area you have no comprehension of and then try and walk around that road closure,” Biggs said. “Oftentimes, blind people will prep hours beforehand to just go on one route. If they are allowed and able to access that road closure information, they will plan for that. They can't just change their plans on a dime.”

Previous research has shown thousands of accessibility issues with government websites, with this proposed rule designed to solve those issues. Compliance is likely to remain a staffing and financial headache for governments moving forward, but some experts said they should use the one-year extension to supercharge their compliance efforts.

“This extension helps create space to plan, budget and implement this work more thoughtfully, but it does not reduce the importance or urgency of the work itself,” officials at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University, which hosted a webinar ahead of the extension, told attendees in an email. “Accessibility remains a fundamental part of delivering effective, equitable government services.”

Indeed, website accessibility issues remain a “slow-moving crisis” that governments may not realize will hit them until they face an enforcement lawsuit, Darryl Polk, director of education at the Public Technology Institute, said during a recent webinar.

He compared it to being hit by a Zamboni while being on ice, although what the future holds on the enforcement front remains uncertain. DOJ has repeatedly declined to outline its strategy for when the rule goes into effect, and Barry Condrey, PTI’s director of technology consulting, said officials were tight-lipped when he asked them recently for clarity.

Brenden Elwood, vice president of market research at local government software company CivicPlus, said in an interview he hopes the extension can be seen as an “accelerator moment” for better compliance. But Elwood also noted that there is still a lot of work to be done raising awareness among smaller governments, whose agencies may not be as plugged into federal rulemaking and DOJ’s requirements.

Some states and localities were already “ahead of the curve,” Elwood said, including in Colorado, which has implemented its own version of the DOJ accessibility rule in the form of its Colorado Accessibility Law.

Governments must view it as a project without a completion date, he added, and agencies must be honest with themselves about where they are on the compliance journey. Doing that is half the battle, he said, even amid limited budgets and staffing.

“Accessibility needs to be treated as an ongoing governance responsibility,” Elwood said. “This is not one project tied to one deadline. We have to be honest with ourselves that this is something that we have to do. It's the right thing to do for our community, because you don't want to disenfranchise or — intentionally or even unintentionally — cut people out of the democratic process.”

Whatever happens at the federal level, local officials said governments cannot afford to ignore the push for accessible websites, especially as it just represents good policy and inclusivity, even though it may still take a while to be fully compliant.

“It’s a marathon not a sprint,” Kimberly Conroy, an IT project manager for the Franklin County, Ohio Clerk of Courts, said during the PTI webinar.