Department Of Justice To Strengthen Website Access For Disabled People
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The Department of Justice took a major step this week towards ensuring website and mobile app access for disabled people under federal disability law.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland signed a final rule on Monday that will clarify obligations of state and local governments to make their websites and mobile apps accessible by creating technical standards for guidance on how to achieve this.
The website access rule falls under Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which bars disability discrimination and requires state and local governments to provide disabled people equal opportunity and access to public services, programs or activities.
Website and app barriers such as poor color contrast, lack of alternative text, inaccessible online forms and no captions on videos can prevent disabled people from accessing information on voting, up-to-date health and safety resources, public transportation schedules and other services that are vital to their daily life.
“This final rule marks the Justice Department’s latest effort to ensure that no person is denied access to government services, programs, or activities because of a disability,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement on Monday.
“By issuing clear and consistent accessibility standards for state and local governments’ digital content, this rule advances the ADA’s promise of equal participation in society for people with disabilities.”
The finalization comes two years after the rule was first proposed by the Department of Justice following public calls for more guidance on how to ensure websites are accessible, according to the DOJ website. According to Forbes, only 3% of the Internet was accessible to disabled people as of 2022, and a majority of business owners didn’t know how to make websites accessible.
“For too long, ADA rules lagged behind in ensuring disabled people had equal access to electronic communication and information. Now, disabled people will be able to have greater access to voting, health care, safety net benefits, emergency information, education, transportation, etc,” Mia Ives-Rublee, director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, said in a statement in response to the finalized rule.
She continued: “As the disability community has continued to significantly expand, it’s more important than ever to ensure the ADA keeps pace to ensure disabled people are able to access and utilize information and services online.”
The rule on Monday follows less than a month after the Center for American Progress and disability groups wrote a letter urging the Department of Justice to finalize its pending rules and regulations impacting disabled people in the U.S.
Several other rulings that impact disabled people are still waiting to be finalized by other federal agencies, such as to strengthen prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of disability in health care and human services programs.
Ives-Rublee previously told HuffPost that members of the disability community worry that these regulations, if not finalized quickly, could fall victim to the Congressional Review Act and be wiped away under a Donald Trump presidency.
“If there is a change in administration for the following year, that administration could just strip all those changes with sort of a stroke of a pen,” Ives-Rublee explained to HuffPost in March. “So we want to try and get these things done as soon as possible, and that means that we need the… agencies to act as soon as possible so that we aren’t running into that deadline.”
