Update (April 2026): The Department of Justice has extended ADA Title II digital accessibility compliance deadlines by one year. Learn more about the update.
Given the accelerating rate of ADA lawsuits, it is more important than ever to conduct regular accessibility reviews of digital properties. Federal lawsuits under the ADA have increased by over 300% from a decade ago, highlighting the need for vigilance and proactive compliance.
To comply with ADA Title II web accessibility regulations, organizations must proactively assess and enhance the accessibility of their digital platforms. Here are five essential actions to guide organizations in building capacity to achieve and sustain compliance.
1. Perform Regular Accessibility Scans with Automated Monitoring
One of the first steps you should take is to learn more about the accessibility of your website, application, or digital products. Conducting an accessibility audit provides an in-depth overview of your website’s accessibility and guidance on what needs to be fixed to make it ADA-compliant.
Regular accessibility reviews of websites and mobile apps are essential to identify and address accessibility issues that may have arisen since prior remediation efforts. This is one reason why you’ll want to leverage the power of automation when embarking on your accessibility journey.
With automated accessibility testing, you can quickly run domain accessibility tests, as well as monitor specific user journeys most critical to your customers, to continuously detect accessibility barriers across all your digital assets. Be aware, though, that automated testing tools can only test against a proportion of possible barrier types, so you shouldn’t rely only on automated tools for your accessibility strategy.
2. Manual Audits Offer Expert Guidance for Comprehensive Accessibility Review
Manual accessibility audits provide a more comprehensive accessibility review of your digital products, testing for accessibility issues that can’t be identified through automated means.
For instance, testing for screen reader usability can be challenging without expertise in how screen readers function. Our screen reader testing tool, JAWS Inspect, simplifies this process by providing developers and QA testers with a clear understanding of the JAWS screen reader user experience, offering valuable insights into your manual audit data.
Audit reports provide invaluable insights into your digital accessibility status, uncovering critical data to help you advance toward compliance with ADA Title II requirements. However, one issue with audit reports is that the detail provided can often overwhelm teams, leading to delays in remediation efforts. Therefore, audit results should include information that enables product teams to prioritize what to address first and what to leave for later.
When audits are only conducted late in the product development process, remediation efforts often translate into additional work for developers already stretched thin with impending deadlines.
Accessibility tasks may be deprioritized in favor of more urgent business needs, leaving organizations vulnerable to legal risks. The perceived time and cost associated with rebuilding components can deter progress in accessibility. This is why you may want to partner with accessibility consultants who can support your team with the resources and guidance they need to remain agile.
3. Conduct Usability Testing of Critical User Journeys
After remediating the issues you’ve identified through automated and manual testing, you need to know if your efforts paid off and if people with disabilities can actually use your website or app. This is why you’ll want to have people with disabilities participate in usability tests to verify you’ve created accessible and usable experiences for all your customers.
One way to quickly gather feedback is with Assistive Technology (AT) User Flow testing. This testing solution provides first-hand perspectives from everyday AT users on the usability of your digital product(s).
AT User Flow Testing can verify whether your remediation work after an audit was successful. It can also be integrated into sprint cycles, identifying where barriers may exist, helping teams prioritize remediation efforts.
Conducting usability tests with people with disabilities can help verify that your products are usable before you launch or publish a digital resource. As your accessibility program matures, you should consider conducting usability testing earlier in the product development lifecycle to ensure you identify usability issues early and increase your ROI.
Early and frequent testing can help identify and address potential issues before they become major barriers that are difficult and expensive to fix.
4. Training and Development: Build Your Team’s Accessibility Knowledge and Skills
As organizations build and maintain the accessibility of their digital resources, everyone who works with these resources must have the knowledge and skills necessary to ensure web conformance. Relying on one or two team accessibility specialists is a risky strategy and is unlikely to be scalable or sustainable.
Role-based accessibility training is a vital component of any accessibility strategy. Ensure that your team is well-versed in the core concepts around digital accessibility and disability inclusion and is familiar with role-based best practices.
One approach is to provide your team with a repository of rich, role-based content for on-demand education, like the ARC Tutor courses found in the ARC Knowledge Center. Additionally, you provide your team with instructor-led training sessions, allowing them to speak with a trusted expert and receive immediate answers to their questions.
As technologies and accessibility requirements evolve and as new people join your team, continuous education is essential. Changes in accessibility best practices and updates to laws and regulations underscore the importance of keeping your team informed about the fundamentals of digital accessibility, best practices, and legal obligations.
Regularly update training materials and offer refresher courses to keep accessibility top of mind for your team. This way, you’re fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement within your organization.
5. Streamline the Management of Your Accessibility Program
Effective accessibility program management ensures that your efforts are organized and aligned with your overall business objectives. To achieve this, you must manage your entire accessibility program across all domains, including data tracking, team coordination, and progress monitoring, from a single central location.
It’s also important to be able to provide evidence of progress towards improved accessibility quickly. An Excel file is just not going to cut it, especially if you have multiple digital products to manage.
That’s why you’ll need a solution that can maintain detailed records of your accessibility efforts and track improvements over time. This centralized approach makes storing, finding, and sharing critical information fast and easy, ensuring your team can efficiently manage accessibility projects and track progress over time.
BONUS: Create and Maintain a VPAT Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR)
A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is a valuable tool for organizations to produce Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs) of digital products, using a standard format that can be shared with customers and users.
VPAT ACRs are used by U.S. federal and state governments, and other entities, to assess how well digital content conforms to WCAG guidelines and Section 508 requirements.
Creating an accurate VPAT can be complicated and time-consuming, especially for organizations without substantial accessibility experience. And for reliability, it’s often best to commission a third party to produce a VPAT ACR for your product rather than do it yourself.
Long-Term ADA Title II Compliance with Vispero
Ensuring ADA Title II compliance is not just your goal but a step towards ensuring your digital products can be successfully used by people with disabilities. Making use of automated scanning, conducting regular audits, implementing training programs, streamlining program management, conducting usability testing, and publishing VPATs are core steps organizations can take to make progress in their accessibility efforts.
By utilizing tools like the ARC platform, you can ensure that your digital content is compliant with the latest regulations and accessible to everyone.
Have questions about ADA Title II? Speak with a digital accessibility expert today