Op Ed by Mark A. Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has existed nearly as long as the Internet. Since the 1990s, governments – specifically state and local government entities—have moved online. Applying for benefits, getting an education, paying taxes, accessing public records, and participating in civic life increasingly happens through websites and mobile apps. For Americans with disabilities, the ADA promises that those digital doors should be open to them. Yet now, after decades of delay and years of rulemaking, some state and local governments are asking to keep those doors closed longer
Title II of the ADA requires state and local governments—including public universities, public hospitals, and government agencies—to ensure that their communications with individuals with disabilities are “as effective as” communications with nondisabled individuals. The statute does not distinguish between communication formats. Whether information is conveyed on paper, by telephone, or online, the obligation is the same.
For nearly three decades, the federal government has made clear that this obligation includes communications via the internet and mobile applications. As early as 1996, the Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that government entities must ensure their online communications are accessible. In the decades since, courts and other federal agencies have agreed. Furthermore, the DOJ has issued multiple guidance documents explaining how to meet this obligation.
Even so, state and local governments have claimed they needed more regulatory direction.
In 2024, they got exactly what they’d been asking for.
Thirty-four years after the ADA’s passage, the DOJ issued a final regulation governing accessibility of web information and services of state and local governments. The rule was hardly a surprise to Title II covered entities. The Department first announced its intention to promulgate regulations in this area in 2010, when it issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM). This ANPRM sought information from covered entities and individuals on what should be included in the eventual rule. The Department received approximately four hundred comments in response. Then, in 2016, the Department issued a supplemental ANPRM, again soliciting public input, which received more than two hundred comments in response. In 2023, the Department issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on this topic, clearly outlining the Department’s proposal for the final rule and including more than sixty questions for public comment. The Department received nearly three hundred fifty comments in response to the NPRM.
After fourteen years of public process and consideration, and nearly a thousand comments from stakeholders, the DOJ published the final rule on April 24, 2024. Large governmental entities serving populations of fifty thousand or more have until April 24, 2026, to become compliant, and smaller governmental entities have until April 26, 2027.
For disabled Americans who have waited decades for reliable access to government services online, this rule represented long-overdue progress. It also provided exactly the regulatory clarity that public entities had spent years requesting.
Yet, some of those same entities are now asking for more time. Even more troubling, the federal government is entertaining this notion by pursuing an interim final rule—a move that would take effect without public input. After decades of discussion and two years of implementation time, the argument that state and local governments still need more time rings hollow, to say the least.
To put that request for more time into perspective, a blind child who was in diapers when the advance notice of proposed rulemaking was published in 2010, would have been finishing their freshman year of high school when the final rule was published in 2024 and will be preparing to graduate by the full compliance date in 2027. Similarly, I have served as President of the National Federation of the Blind for nearly twelve years, and the rule has been in development for four years longer than that. It is outrageous that our nation cannot get this done. Exactly how much more time do governments need to make their websites accessible?
For a blind college student who cannot submit an assignment because a university website is inaccessible, delay is not an abstraction. Will the university grant her the same indefinite deadline it seeks for itself? For a disabled resident trying to apply for benefits, pay taxes, or access public records, inaccessible websites mean exclusion from essential services. Will their tax deadline be excused because the online payment system is inaccessible?
The legal obligation is not new. The ADA’s requirement for equally effective communication has existed for more than thirty years. The new rule simply clarifies how that obligation applies to the modern digital world.
Reopening the rule now would undermine years of public process and postpone equal access yet again. For millions of blind and other disabled Americans, it is past time to fulfill the promise of the ADA in the online world.