Your Guide To Accessibility in Higher Education

Colleges and universities have always had to think about accessibility. But right now, there's a lot more pressure — and a hard deadline — pushing schools to act fast. A new federal rule is changing what "accessible" means for digital content, and most campuses are still racing to catch up.

Whether you work in disability services, teach online courses, or manage campus communications, this guide covers what you need to know.

Key updates at a glance:

• In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice updated Title II of the ADA to include digital accessibility requirements.
• Public colleges and universities in areas with a population of 50,000+ must comply by April 24, 2026.
• Smaller institutions (in areas under 50,000 people) have until April 26, 2027.
• The technical standard is WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which covers websites, mobile apps, course content, PDFs, and more.

What Is Accessibility in Higher Education?

Accessibility in higher education means making sure all students — including those with disabilities — can fully participate in campus life and learning. That covers everything from making campuses physically accessible with ramps and elevators to digital tools like your school's website, learning management system, and lecture videos.

The goal is simple: a student who uses a screen reader, relies on captions, or has a cognitive or learning disability should have the same access to course materials as everyone else. Accessibility isn't a special accommodation for a few people — it's a baseline expectation for how colleges and universities should operate.

Who Do The Accessibility Guidelines Apply To?

Accessibility guidelines apply to every type of school: public colleges and universities, community colleges, state universities, and even private schools. However, the specific guidelines vary by institution type.

The new DOJ rule directly applies to publicly funded institutions, which fall under Title II of the ADA as state and local government entities.

And since almost every private college accepts federal financial aid, they're subject to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act — and that law requires similar standards. Private schools also face real litigation risk if they don't meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA benchmarks, since courts often use those standards when settling disability access lawsuits. 

In short: if you run a college of any kind, these guidelines are relevant to you. And there are big consequences if you fail to meet these standards on time.

“The legal and financial consequences for schools whose websites don’t comply with A.D.A. accessibility standards are real, yet many schools fail to take them seriously enough,” says Lidija Elezovic, School Counselor and Professor of Psychology at Education World Wide. 

“In the first quarter of 2025 alone, there were more than 2,000 ADA-related cases against schools. Settlements can range from $50,000 to $85,000 before legal fees, and any reputational damage can deter potential students and funding.”

How To Meet Key Accessibility Standards For Higher Education

There's no single switch you can flip to make a campus accessible. It takes work across multiple fronts. Here's a breakdown of the main standards and what they actually require.

ADA Title II (Updated 2024)

The Americans with Disabilities Act has been around since 1990, but the 2024 update added something new: a specific technical standard for digital content. For the first time, public institutions have a clear rulebook rather than vague guidance.

Under the updated rule, your school's digital content — websites, mobile apps, online course materials, student portals, registration systems — must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. That includes content your school creates directly, but also content made available through third-party vendors. If you contract with an online course platform or a library database provider, you're responsible for making sure their products are accessible as well.

WCAG 2.1 Level AA

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the technical standard schools now have to follow. Level AA is the middle tier — not the bare minimum, but not the highest possible bar either. 

It includes 50 specific criteria across four categories, often called the POUR framework:

• Perceivable: Can users see or hear the content? (Think: captions on videos, alt text on images)
• Operable: Can users navigate with a keyboard, not just a mouse?
• Understandable: Is the content clear and consistent?
• Robust: Does the content work with screen readers and other assistive tools?

For in-person and online learning, this means adding captions to recorded lectures, making PDFs screen-reader friendly, ensuring enough color contrast in slides, and providing text descriptions for charts and images.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act

Section 504 applies to any school that receives federal money. It's been in place for decades and has always required schools to give students with disabilities equal access to programs and activities. 

What's changed is enforcement — and awareness. Disability and higher education advocates have pushed for clearer standards, and the 2024 DOJ rule gives the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights sharper tools to act on complaints.

New Accessibility Guidelines: What You Need To Know

The April 2024 DOJ rule is the biggest update to ADA compliance for schools in years. What makes it different from the old rules is its specificity — schools now have a named standard (WCAG 2.1 AA) they must hit, not just a general duty to accommodate.

The rule covers a wide range of digital content: websites, mobile apps, learning management systems, course videos, PDFs, and student services portals. It even applies to social media posts published after the compliance deadline. Password-protected course content is included in this, too.

One major shift is the move away from "accommodation on request." Previously, many schools only made content accessible after a student asked for it. Under the new rule, content has to be accessible from the start. That's a big operational change for most institutions — and a meaningful one for students who shouldn't have to ask for access to their own coursework.

For schools in high-population areas, the April 24, 2026, deadline is very close. Campuses that haven't started auditing their digital content should move quickly. Institutions in smaller areas have until April 26, 2027, but waiting isn't a smart move — the scope of work is substantial.

Common Accessibility Barriers In Colleges And Universities

Even schools with good intentions run into the same obstacles. Here are the most common barriers students face, along with what schools can do about them:

• Barrier: Inaccessible PDFs and documents. Scanned files, untagged PDFs, and complex layouts often don't work with screen readers. 
  
  • How to fix: Use accessible document templates and tag all PDF exports properly.
• Barrier: Videos without captions. Lecture recordings, virtual events, and campus communications often go up without captions. 
  
  • How to fix: Add accurate captions to all video content, not just public-facing material.
• Barrier: Websites with poor color contrast or no keyboard navigation. Students with low vision or motor impairments can't access content that requires a mouse or uses low-contrast text. 
  
  • How to fix: Run a WCAG audit on your site.
• Barrier: Inaccessible third-party tools. Vendors often don't build accessibility in by default. 
  
  • How to fix: Add WCAG 2.1 AA requirements to all vendor contracts.
• Barrier: Lack of awareness of disability services. Students don't always know what support is available. 
  
  • How to fix: Make disability services easy to find and reach out proactively to students during onboarding.

“Many public agencies, including schools, operate across separate systems tied to roles, departments, and funding streams,” explains Glenna Wright-Gallo, VP of Office of Strategic Research and Policy at Everway.

“That fragmentation makes system-wide accessibility improvements difficult because digital content lives across websites, learning management systems (LMS), documents, and video platforms that are often managed independently. As new ADA Title II deadlines approach, institutions are recognizing that accessibility must be coordinated across these systems rather than addressed one platform at a time.”

Best Practices For Improving Accessibility In Higher Education

Creating an accessible campus is an ongoing process, not a one-time project. These best practices to improve accessibility in higher education can make a real difference:

• Caption everything: Live classes, recorded lectures, campus announcements, social media videos. Captions help students who are deaf or hard of hearing, but also non-native speakers, students with ADHD, and anyone watching without sound. Learn more about how to accommodate hard-of-hearing students in the classroom.
• Train faculty and staff: Most accessibility problems come from people who didn't know better. Regular training on creating accessible documents, slides, and course content goes a long way.
• Audit your digital content now: Don't wait for a complaint. Run a WCAG audit on your website and LMS, so you know where the gaps are.
• Build accessibility into procurement: Before signing with any vendor, confirm their products meet WCAG 2.1 AA. Put it in the contract.
• Designate ownership: Assign someone (or a team) to own digital accessibility. Shared responsibility often means no responsibility.
• Engage students with disabilities: They know where the pain points are. Regular feedback loops with your disability services office and student community will catch things audits miss.

“An effective, sustainable, and equitable method to enable access without incurring faculty burnout is to use automated native LMS remediation tools,” says Joel Butterly, CEO of InGenius Prep. 

“Embed software that will extract the text written on a screen and upload it as closed captions, or detect image elements that are too similar to the background color. Move the administrative cognitive burden from the professor directly onto the underlying digital architecture and create a frictionless path towards ADA compliance.” 

Resources + Tools For Higher Ed Accessibility

Adhering to ADA requirements takes more than good intentions — it takes the right tools. Here's where to start:

• Rev Education Services: Scalable captioning and transcription for lecture recordings, live events, and campus video content. Easy to use for individual faculty or across an entire institution.
• WebAIM: Free accessibility tutorials, a popular color contrast checker, and the widely used WAVE accessibility evaluation tool.
• ADA Digital Accessibility Guidance: Official guidance from the DOJ on meeting Title II requirements.
• EDUCAUSE Accessibility Resources: Higher ed-specific guidance on building digital accessibility programs.
• Online Learning Consortium: Workshops and resources specifically for accessibility standards in online courses.

The Future Of Accessibility In Higher Education

Accessibility in higher education is moving in a clear direction: less reactive, more built-in. Schools that have treated accessibility as a legal checkbox are quickly learning it needs to be part of how they operate from the start — from how they buy software to how faculty design their courses.

AI is starting to play a role here too. Auto-captioning tools, AI-assisted alt text generation, and smart document converters are getting better and more affordable. But they're not a replacement for human review — especially for technical content like math equations or scientific diagrams, where errors in auto-generated captions can actually mislead students. The best approach is to use AI to speed up the process while keeping humans in the loop for quality control.

The schools doing this well aren't just checking boxes — they're building cultures where accessibility is expected. That shift takes time, but it starts with the basics: captioning your videos, auditing your site, training your people, and making sure every student can actually access what you're putting in front of them.

Start Captioning Before The Deadline Hits

The April 2026 deadline for ADA digital accessibility compliance is coming quickly, and the to-do list for most campuses is long. One of the fastest ways to make real progress is tackling your video content — lectures, campus communications, event recordings — with accurate, scalable captioning.

Rev makes that easy for schools of any size. From individual faculty members to institution-wide rollouts, Rev's captioning tools help you meet academic accessibility standards without slowing down your workflow.