The Other Regulatory Time Bomb

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Most higher-ed leaders have at least heard that new federal accessibility rules are coming in 2026 under Title II of the ADA, but it is apparent from conversations at the WCET and Educause annual conferences that very few understand what that actually means for digital learning and broad institutional risk. The rule isn’t some abstract compliance update: it requires every public institution to ensure that all web and media content meets WCAG 2.1 AA, including the use of audio descriptions for prerecorded video. Accessible PDF documents and video captions alone will no longer be enough. Yet on most campuses, the conversation has been understood only as a buzzword, delegated to accessibility coordinators and media specialists who lack the budget or authority to make systemic changes.

And no, relying on faculty to add audio descriptions en masse is not going to happen.

The result is a looming institutional risk that few presidents, CFOs, or CIOs have even quantified. Producing or retrofitting described-audio versions of thousands of lecture and educational videos is neither cheap nor fast. LMS vendors and media platforms aren’t fully ready either, meaning universities could soon face federal enforcement exposure and reputational fallout at once. The new Title II rules are not a distant policy discussion. They are an operational and financial reality with a countdown clock already ticking.

Background

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted in 1990. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability by public entities (Title II) and by public accommodations (Title III). From its inception, Title II applied to “all services, programs, and activities of state and local governments.”

However, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the ADA’s regulations and enforcement were largely focused on physical accessibility (ramps, buildings, transportation) rather than digital content.

This started to change in 1998, when the Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was enhanced, requiring federal agencies to make electronic and information technology accessible.

With the rise of the internet and web services, the need to consider accessibility of websites and apps became more prominent. For example, the first version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 was published in 1999.

Prior to the most recent digital-access rule, there was longstanding guidance that the ADA’s nondiscrimination/effective-communication requirements applied online (websites) even if there were no explicit technical digital standards in the Title II regulations.

On April 24, 2024, the DOJ published a Final Rule under Title II (again, for state and local governments/public entities) setting out technical requirements (rather than only general obligations) for web content and mobile applications (apps). The rule adopts the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for websites, mobile apps, digital documents, and importantly also mentions video and audio content (media) as within scope. This is the rule in question with the following compliance timelines:

• For public entities serving populations of 50,000 or more, compliance begins April 24, 2026.

• For smaller entities (less than 50,000 population), compliance begins April 24, 2027.

I don’t intend for this post to provide an extensive summary of the full requirements, but the key point is that in roughly six months, unless the rules change,¹ for the first time public colleges and universities across the country will have a new accessibility compliance rule requiring audio descriptions. And there will be consequences.

What Are Audio Descriptions?

Audio descriptions, sometimes called audio summaries or described video, are narrations added to a video’s soundtrack to convey important visual information that isn’t otherwise communicated through dialogue or sound. They describe actions, scene changes, on-screen text, or other key visual elements so that people who are blind or have low vision can fully understand the content. Audio description first appeared as a formal accessibility requirement in WCAG 1.0 in 1999 under the “equivalent alternatives for visual content” principle, and was refined into explicit success criteria in WCAG 2.0 (2008) and WCAG 2.1 (2018). It is now a required component of digital accessibility compliance under ADA Title II’s 2024 rule, effective in 2026.

At WCET, CEO Marcus Popetz from Harmonize Learning introduced the keynote speaker (who is blind) while wearing a dinosaur costume (let’s hope this is from No Kings or Halloween). The idea is that without an audio description of what was happening on stage, a blind person would not understand why people were laughing or the point being made.

This principle applies to digital videos, as can be seen in these examples. Note that audio descriptions should fit within spoken audio for this concept to work in practice.

I have not seen any numbers, but I would be surprised if more than 10 - 20% of educational video content has been evaluated for audio description requirements and remediated as appropriate.

There are additional resources with two of the vendors who seem to have the deepest knowledge on the subject: see this page from 3PlayMedia and this page from Harmonize Learning.

What I Heard at the Conferences

The WCET and Educause conferences were quite useful in terms of gaining insight into the state of readiness and allowing useful hallway conversations to dive deeper. At both conferences, I heard the word accessibility as well as direct references to the April 2026 implementation timeline. A lot. In fact, I doubt there are many colleges or universities that do not have this issue on their radar, at least at the Director level.

And there were two good sessions describing a new joint initiative between WCET and 1EdTech, with a workshop series planned to help member schools and vendors understand and deal with the deadline.

However, once you dig under the covers, there are real signs of the higher ed community not understanding how significant these new rules are going to be.

• While audio descriptions are probably the biggest challenge for compliance, the main focus for compliance is trying to make PDF files (mostly from faculty and designers or content publishers) accessible. The second focus appears to be audio captions for videos. That’s all well and good, but the solutions here are fairly well known with the exception of change management and staff support - particularly given the unrealistic nature of assuming that individual faculty can or will just make the fixes.

• The tougher challenge of audio descriptions is just not being discussed very much at a level to understand how to address compliance. At one panel telling others what a particular university is doing as an exemplar, I asked about audio descriptions, and the response was essentially we bought us some accessibility from a platform and are letting faculty know.

• At two sessions, there were real-time survey questions about institutional readiness, and my favorite answer (the one that was the top in a word choice sharing) was “Not”.

• Even among vendors who are aware of the issue and the general needs of audio descriptions, there tended to be an attitude of either relying on other vendors, or talking about partial compliance or progress. But without many details or urgency.

I don’t plan to go into the technical details of solutions to the new compliance needs in this post, and my observations on the conference panels is meant to highlight reality, not as criticism per se. But there was no way to come away from conversations over the past two weeks thinking that many colleges and universities will be able to meet requirements by April. Pockets of progress and useful workshops, but not concrete implementations as will be required.

An Unacknowledged Institutional Risk

My real point is that I do not believe that college and university presidents, provosts, CFOs / Business Officers, legal counsel, and even CIOs understand that the game is changing.

What I’ve heard is that many university leaders, when pressed, take a sanguine attitude thinking they can hopefully avoid any legal issues and continue pushing for progress. After all, most schools do not have solid coverage of video captions and accessible PDF documents, and most have not been sued by the DOJ. The 2016 DOJ lawsuit against UC Berkeley for inaccessible online content (much of that video-based within MOOCs) was resolved in 2022 - college and university leaders know about that lawsuit by and large but don’t think it will happen to them.

The reason I think this situation is different is fourfold.

• The 2024 rules are the first time accessibility has been defined with technical requirements, not just general concepts with loose interpretation.

• The FVT & Gainful Employment rules from the Biden Administration provided the Trump Administration conceptual cover and a tool to use to implement Do No Harm institutional accountability. Many observers mistakenly assumed that the Trump Administration would just deregulate in this area, but instead they leveraged the rules to help implement the full accountability agenda.² Likewise, the Trump Administration could easily use the new Title II rules in its negotiations and actions against higher ed institutions. If I were at UCLA and facing huge loss of funding and serious negotiations for a settlement, I would not want Title II violations thrown in the mix.

• A more likely risk, however, is not with DOJ lawsuits; rather, it is from a ramp up of nuisance ADA lawsuits from private legal and activist groups. New rules in place with specific requirements and very low compliance will make for legal liabilities.

• And I would expect direct DOJ lawsuits purely on the accessibility front and not just part of broader Trump Administration actions, but probably not right away.

A six month countdown. These new rules, if not delayed or modified in implementation (see footnote), will matter in terms of real institutional risk management. Expect to hear a lot more about this subject as we get closer to implementation.

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1  On September 22, 2025, DOJ’s Regulatory Agenda explicitly listed plans to conduct a Section 610 review of its ADA Title II (and Title III) regulations, with an NPRM “to be determined.” None of this, however, rescinds the April 24, 2024 Title II web/app accessibility final rule; its compliance dates remain in place unless and until DOJ completes a new rulemaking.

2  Yes, the institutional accountability movement is bipartisan in nature, but I wanted to highlight that the current administration already has a history of leveraging previous rules while redirecting them.