Key Takeaways:
- Shift from reactive to proactive: Institutions can no longer wait for a student to ask for help, they must now ensure all digital content including social media, apps, and websites. All content must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards before the semester begins.
- Triage the document mountain: Prioritize large-enrollment foundational courses and public facing content to protect the most students and reduce legal risk immediately.
- Share the responsibility: Accessibility should be a campus-wide culture. Use a hub-and-spoke model, where a central office provides the tools and training, but individual faculty and staff take ownership of the content they create.
For decades, digital accessibility in higher education was largely waiting for a student with a specific disability to enroll and then reactively remediate course materials.
That era is over.
The 2026 ADA Title II updates have introduced a definitive technical standard, WCAG 2.1 Level AA and a strict timeline for compliance. To cut through the noise, Genio’s Josh Hartrick sat down with three heavyweights in the field:
- Jon Avila, Chief Accessibility Officer at Level Access, a leader in digital accessibility solutions.
- Michael Canale, Assistant Director of Student Disability Services at UMBC, bringing a decade of on-the-ground implementation experience.
- Davida Dorosh, Alternative Media Specialist at Wake Forest University, an expert in navigating the practicalities of learning access.
Here’s what the 2026 ADA Title II update means for your institution and how to stay ahead of compliance.
1. Moving beyond inclusive best practices
In the past, accessibility was often treated as a best practice. Today, it is a mandate.
Jon Avila explained that the 2026 update changes the math by explicitly adopting WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the legal standard.
"What’s unique about the latest rulemaking is the emphasis on following a specific technical standard for digital accessibility. Specifically calling out that standard has made a difference. It makes it clear what types of things are covered, like social media, mobile apps, and third-party apps."
- Jon Avila
Michael Canale uses the ‘carrot and the stick’ analogy to describe the shift. While institutions have always wanted to do the right thing (the carrot), the law now mandates a proactive approach.
The takeaway:
Colleges are now required to be accessible before a student with a disability enters the classroom. This includes social media, mobile apps, third-party vendor platforms, and even legacy documents.
2. Taming the document mountain
Most colleges are sitting on thousands of legacy PDFs and documents. The thought of remediating all of them is enough to cause compliance paralysis.
The panel suggested a highly effective prioritization strategy:
- Start with high-impact courses: Start with your foundational classes. These often have hundreds of students across multiple sections.
- Target public-facing content: Focus on high-contact areas like admissions, financial aid, and housing. These are the front doors to your institution.
- Question the format: Instead of spending hours patching a broken PDF, ask if it could be converted to a web page or a simpler google document.
Davida Dorosh noted that Wake Forest University has seen massive success by simply moving away from PDFs toward more inherently flexible, editable web formats.
The takeaway:
Colleges must prioritize high-impact content starting with large-enrollment courses and public-facing portals to protect the most students and reduce legal risk immediately.
3. Holding vendors to a higher standard
Colleges rely on external vendors for everything from LMS platforms to student housing portals.
However, a vendor's lack of accessibility is now the institution's legal liability. Jon Avila highlights a common blind spot: Acquisition.
When dealing with official vendors, Michael Canale warns against blindly trusting a VPAT (Accessibility Conformance Report). He advises looking at the vendor’s roadmap for actual proof of progress.
The takeaway:
Review the VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) or ACR (Accessibility Conformance Report). If a product isn't compliant, demand a roadmap with an expiration date. If the vendor won't budge, it may be time to leverage your collective purchasing power and find an alternative.
4. The hub-and-spoke model: Distributing the burden
Accessibility cannot fall entirely on a small IT team or a single disability services office. It must be a community responsibility.
- The hub: A centralized office that provides the budget, high-end tooling, and specialized training.
- The spoke: Empowering individual faculty and staff to run basic checks.
- Training with impact: Showing faculty exactly what an inaccessible document sounds like through a screen reader like JAWS or NVDA.
The takeaway:
By using a hub-and-spoke model, colleges can centralize expertise and tools while empowering faculty and staff to take ownership of the content they create.
5. The hidden costs of waiting
Beyond the risk of Department of Justice intervention or OCR (Office of Civil Rights) complaints, there is a significant reputational cost.
In the digital age, word travels fast. If an institution is seen as indifferent to the needs of students with disabilities, trust is eroded.
Davida Dorosh pointed out that this isn't just about students, it's about faculty and staff too.
The takeaway:
An inaccessible campus creates a culture where students and faculty with disabilities are excluded from the basic programs, services, and communications that everyone else can access.
Your next step: Make an inventory
If you feel behind the curve, don't panic. The panel agreed on one single, most impactful action you can take this month:
Take an inventory.
Identify who is making content, what tools they are using, and where your most critical digital barriers currently live.
At Genio, we believe that education must adapt to student needs by empowering them with beautifully simple tools. Whether through AI-enabled transcription or UDL-aligned platforms, the path to accessibility starts with a commitment to unlocking learning for everyone.
