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Digital Accessibility Law and Regulation: Current Status and What to Do About It
Authors:
Jarret Cummings
Published:
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Columns:
Policy
min read
To help members navigate the often confusing compliance environment for digital accessibility, EDUCAUSE asked a legal expert to review last year’s major developments, explain what they mean, and identify key steps that institutions should consider in response.
Colleges and universities have often found the legal and regulatory environment for web and IT (or digital) accessibility confusing. Developments in this space—or to some extent, the lack of such developments—over the course of 2018 did little to clarify the situation. With that in mind, the EDUCAUSE Policy Office asked Teresa Jakubowski, a legal expert in the field, to provide an overview of what happened in digital accessibility law and regulation last year, what it means, and what steps institutions should consider as a result. Key takeaways include the following:
- The US Department of Justice (DOJ) essentially reconfirmed its intention to avoid issuing digital accessibility regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
- DOJ’s unwillingness to set regulatory standards for digital accessibility has not changed its long-standing position, however, that the ADA covers digital accessibility.
- In the absence of regulatory [...]