On May 22, 2024, the Department of Justice (DOJ) published a guide specifically for small entities covered under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
What’s curious is that it’s mostly the same information written in the same way as the Web Rule Fact Sheet published on March 8, 2024. The new section that stands out is Planning for Success which includes a recommendation for training. Below are the key bullet points from the Planning section.
Read our ADA Title II website accessibility rule explainer to get the key takeaways from the new rule.
Our ADA Title II Resource Center contains numerous resources, guides, and explainers on how to actually become compliant.
Table of Contents
Planning for Success
- Starting these practices well before the date that you have to start complying with the requirements of the rule can help ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible.
Creating policies on how you will make sure that your web content and mobile apps are accessible
- You can help set your government up for success by creating policies on web and mobile app accessibility.
- These policies could identify specific actions that your government will take to start complying with the rule and stay compliant in the future.
There are lots of topics that you might include in your government’s policies:
- Explain what your government’s staff should do to make sure that the content they are posting is accessible.
- Identify a staff member to coordinate your government’s efforts to comply with this rule and answer questions from other staff members about how to make content accessible.
- Describe how staff will regularly test your government’s web content and mobile apps to make sure they are accessible. This may include working with people with disabilities to test the content.
- Explain the steps staff will take if a person with a disability asks them to make accessible content that falls under an exception to the rule.
- For example, a policy might say that if a person who is deaf asks for a captioned version of a video that falls within the archived web content exception, the government will send the person a captioned video.
- The policy might also discuss how your government will make sure that it responds quickly enough if the request for accessibility is urgent.
Creating processes for people to make accessibility requests and report accessibility issues
- Letting members of the public know, in prominent places on your website, how they can ask your government to make content accessible when the content falls within an exception to this rule.
- Providing an email address, accessible link, accessible web page, or other accessible way for people to let your government know if there are any accessibility issues with its web content or mobile apps.
Training your staff
- It is important that staff receive training about how to ensure that content is accessible.
- Training may look different depending on the specific duties and responsibilities assigned to staff members. Some of examples of trainings might include:
- A training for a web developer that focuses on coding web pages that meet the requirements of WCAG 2.1, Level AA.
- A training for a public university professor that focuses on making sure that course materials meet the requirements of WCAG 2.1, Level AA.
- A training for a procurement staff member about how a local government plans to make sure it buys web content and mobile apps that meet the requirements of WCAG 2.1, Level AA.
Summary
This add-on small entity guide is rather clumsy. While, yes, there is some solid information in this new planning section, the majority of the content was copied and pasted from the original fact sheet so the release could have just been its own post on guidance for planning.
Also, if anything, the fact sheet should have been added to because both large and small entities will need help understanding the requirements and exceptions.
If you need help with training or digital accessibility services, Accessible.org offers everything you need.
Read our write-up specifically on WCAG 2.1 AA training for ADA Title II compliance to find out the best way to train your staff, employees, and contractors how to make content and digital assets WCAG 2.1 AA conformant.
