The US Department of Justice (DOJ) added digital accessibility requirements to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for Minnesota’s state and local government entities. This new rule puts into writing practices that the DOJ has been following for decades. It also spells out specific exceptions and other guidelines to help government entities plan their digital content strategy. 

This article is aimed at people who work for state and local government entities who need to know how the new rule impacts them and how to get started on their accessibility journey. 

Digital Accessibility Enforcement isn’t New 

The DOJ has pursued settlements and consent decrees with local governments and businesses for much of the 21^st century. The difference is that now instead of just being case law that has impacted some cities and counties, it’s spelled out as a detailed rule that applies to all state and local government entities. 

ADA Title II Background  

The official rule is 320 pages long. However, they provide a very helpful fact sheet that everyone should read. Here’s a quick summary: 

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 is the technical standard.
• The rule applies to web content and mobile apps that a state or local government provides or makes available, regardless of whether it is created by the government or a third party. 
• Web content includes electronic documents, videos, and other embedded or downloadable content. 
• Non-web software is not covered under this rule. 
• There are some exceptions: 
  • Archived web content. 
  • Pre-existing conventional electronic documents.  
  • Content posted by a third party that’s not part of a contract or licensing arrangement.  
  • Individualized, password-protected (or otherwise secured) electronic documents.  
  • Pre-existing social media posts.  
• There’s a phase-in period: 
  • April 2026 for entities with populations of 50,000 or more. 
  • April 2027 for entities with populations under 50,000.

Next steps to Prepare for the Deadlines 

If your government entity doesn’t have an active digital accessibility program, what should you do? 

Policy 

Engage with your leadership to draft and adopt a policy. Put a summary in writing on your website as an accessibility statement. 

This is not a claim that you’re in conformance with the rule. The primary roles of a policy are to: 

• State intent – you are aware of your responsibilities and have plans and/or processes to address them.
• Provide a contact – if people experience issues, they can let you know about them.
• Enable action – staff can use the policy to justify resource allocation toward improving accessibility.

Recognize it’s a journey, not a task list 

Accessibility works best when it becomes part of the organizational culture. There are many similarities between security and accessibility. For example, teaching everyone to watch for phishing emails and how to use two-step or multi-factor authentication builds a culture of secure operations just as teaching everyone how to create accessible documents and emails builds a culture of accessible content. 

Share the responsibility 

Make sure your organization staff understands that digital accessibility is a shared responsibility. For example, it’s not solely an IT issue. Web content, applications, and documents all start out as an idea, get framed as a set of goals or requirements, then become a project that involve the work of designers, writers, editors, developers, and others. For the product to be accessible, it needs to be a consideration from the beginning – at the idea stage. Otherwise, you risk expending extra money and resources re-doing the work to ensure accessibility. 

Get to know digital accessibility 

Accessibility is measurable and testable. There are some relatively simple steps you can take to learn more. All digital content, whether a web page, document, or mobile app, share common traits: 

• Structure: This includes properties, headings, and other content structure such as bullets and lists.
• Navigation: The interface and content need to be consistent, predictable, and support multiple access methods, such as mouse, keyboard, or assistive technology (AT).
• Images and non-text elements: Always provide means for visual elements to read out to non-visual users. For example, many phone users don’t automatically download pictures in emails. Accessible emails will include a text description of the picture instead.
• Color contrast: All text should be distinct from background, and adjoining colors (such as in charts) from each other. There are specific tools to help you with this.
• Meaningful links: Don’t use the full URL except for paper media. Use text to tell the user what the link is about, as we do in the list of resources in the following paragraphs.

Learn more about the basics of accessibility: 

• How to create accessible Word documents (7 short modules).
• World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) introduction to web accessibility.
• WebAIM’s introduction to web accessibility.
• Use color with intention.

How do you know if your content is accessible? 

There are some simple tools and tests you can do to find out where you are in your journey. For example, Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat Pro have built-in accessibility checkers. While not a guarantee of accessibility, they give you a good idea of what you need to know and do. 

More about: 

• Microsoft Word’s checker
• Adobe Acrobat Pro’s checker

Other free tools help you evaluate your web content. And the keyboard-only test can help you determine in minutes whether assistive technology users and others without a mouse can navigate your site: 

• Some helpful testing tools.
• Basics of keyboard testing.

What About a Quick Fix? 

Suppose you run a few of these tests and discover that your sites present a lot of challenges to users with disabilities. Is there a quick fix? 

Some vendors would say yes. They offer solutions that add code to your site to “fix” the accessibility issues. For example, if you were to run one of the testing tools from the previous section, it may come back with a perfect score. All that means is that the code hid the issues from the testing tool. It did not solve the issues and may have made the site more challenging for some users.  

Such quick fix tools are called overlays: 

• Introduction to overlays and how to evaluate them.
• Overlay fact sheet.

What needs to be done if your website needs a lot of work? Again, start with a policy. Get an idea of what you’re dealing with. Then develop a road map and communicate it to everyone. Engage your residents by asking for their feedback. 

Start now and show your progress. Then when 2026/2027 rolls around, you’ll be in much better shape.