An institution's website is more than a marketing tool. It's core infrastructure. Accessibility compliance is the practice of making sure that this key piece of infrastructure can be used by everyone, including people with disabilities.
To meet that goal, the DOJ has mandated that all public entities, including public colleges and universities, are required to comply with WCAG standards. But accessibility is more than a regulatory requirement: it governs usability, clarity, and increasingly, whether the website shows up in the places where students are looking for information.
Website accessibility compliance means that all pages should not create barriers for people with disabilities—regardless of the type of disability. The standards are set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which uses four categories to measure the usability of a website. Under these standards, websites must be:
In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires public entities—and certain private organizations—to ensure their digital content is accessible to people with disabilities.
In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a final rule under ADA Title II establishing, for the first time, a specific technical standard for web and mobile content. In April 2026, the DOJ extended the compliance deadlines by one year, with large entities required to comply by April 2027 and smaller entities by April 2028.
While the timeline shifted, the requirements themselves did not.
Institutions may be breathing a sigh of relief after hearing about the DOJ's extension for compliance. But despite the extension, many underlying dynamics are still at play:
Accessibility is no longer just a compliance issue. It's a discoverability strategy. Effective accessibility implementation will help surface the institution and make sure it shows up where students actually are.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. Under Title II, public institutions must ensure that their programs, services, and activities—including digital content—are accessible to people with disabilities.
While the ADA does not prescribe specific technical standards, the DOJ now explicitly identifies WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the benchmark for digital accessibility.
ADA compliance in higher education can be met by following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide a framework for making digital content accessible. They are organized around four principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. WCAG defines three levels of conformance:
Most public institutions aim to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which balances accessibility impact with practical implementation.
WCAG 2.2, released in 2023, builds on 2.1 with additional guidance—particularly around mobile usability and cognitive accessibility. While current regulations reference WCAG 2.1 AA, many institutions are beginning to incorporate 2.2 as part of a forward-looking accessibility strategy.
It’s usually good enough to meet Level AA compliance standards. However, institutions should strive for comprehensive accessibility so all users can access content.
These usability measurements are crucial because 11% of university and college students have a disability—that’s 11% of a site’s total potential traffic. To have content that is inaccessible means that the message is omitting a sizable group from the target audience.
Image courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control.
Building strong accessibility practices will help reach 11% of the student population who report having some kind of disability.
Accessibility barriers like inadequate color contrast, inaccessible images, videos without captions of transcripts, dense blocks of text, and/or small clickable areas make it hard for students with disabilities to access and navigate the website, which creates a bad user experience.
Having a website that meets accessibility standards will help the institution be ADA compliant and steer clear of legal action, but that's not the only benefit. An accessible website is more usable for students using it every day, and importantly, it's also more discoverable for AI tools and other discovery systems.
In 2026, students are increasingly using AI tools to find information that helps inform their enrollment decisions.
This dovetails with accessibility. The practices that make web content accessible are the same elements AI systems rely on to understand and surface the institution:
In short, content that meets accessibility standards isn't just compliant. It's more likely to show up in the places students are increasingly using to find information.
The easiest way to solve common website accessibility issues is to implement a content management system (CMS) like Modern Campus CMS that has built-in accessibility checks. Not only will Modern Campus CMS help identify accessibility issues, but it will also enforce standards to keep the same issues from popping up in the future.
The most common accessibility issues include the following:
Modern Campus CMS equips higher ed leaders with tools to identify accessibility issues and fix them. It also has tools to check and enforce proper header nesting (H1, H2, etc.), which not only addresses accessibility but helps with SEO.
Content and design are separated in Modern Campus CMS, so if a change to a template is required for compliance reasons, that change will be reflected on every page of the website that uses that template.
When new guidelines are published, Modern Campus CMS updates automatically so content is always checked against the latest standards.
Modern Campus CMS requires users to enter alt text when including images. This helps those who can not see the content on the website. With Alt tags, they can hear the description of the images and graphics used on the website.
These include:
From accessibility concerns to broken links, misspellings, and SEO issues, our Modern Campus CMS Insights module scans the website and then provides a list of problems and recommendations on how to fix them.
This helps institutions take a proactive approach to accessibility by continuously scanning content for issues such as accessibility gaps, broken links, and SEO errors. By surfacing these issues directly within the CMS, teams can identify and address problems as they work—making it easier to maintain accessibility standards over time.
Modern Campus CMS Insights is a web accessibility tool that scans for accessibility issues on an institution's site and recommends fixes.
Accessibility isn’t a one-time fix. it’s an ongoing process. While internal teams can use best practices to flag issues and help prevent new ones, it can be time-consuming and resource-intensive to address accessibility at scale.
Modern Campus Managed Services adds a critical remediation support layer, providing ongoing support to identify, prioritize, and fix accessibility issues across your site. By extending internal teams with dedicated expertise, institutions can make consistent progress without adding headcount.
Addressing website accessibility can feel complex, but building awareness is the first step. Understanding current standards, identifying gaps, and creating a plan for ongoing improvement can help institutions make meaningful progress toward accessible, inclusive digital experiences.
The DOJ’s extended deadline may feel like a moment of relief—but accessibility is no longer just about compliance. It’s a discoverability strategy.
Fast-moving institutions are using this opportunity to rebuild their overall digital foundation. They're making their websites both accessible and AI-readable so that they show up in the places learners are searching today.
If you're ready to explore what an accessibility transformation could look like for your institution—or just looking to benchmark your website's accessibility and see where you stand—book a demo with Modern Campus today.
Last updated: April 28, 2026