New ADA Requirements

In 2024 the Department of Justice added new rules to the Americans with Disabilities Act. These new rules change the requirements for accessibility from a just-in-time standard for digital materials to a requirement that all digital documents intended for public use be accessible the moment they are made available. This is a huge shift for libraries and higher education as a whole. These changes must be in place by April 24th, 2026. In practice the summer semester will be the first complete semester after this change. Failure to comply can lead to lawsuits.

I’ve been placed in charge of implementing these changes at my library and so I thought I would share some advice.

• These rules apply to all common materials used by employees, the public, and students but make a priority to emphasize items used most often by students.
• There are exceptions to this rule, which can be seen in this article.
• Familiarize yourself with making PDF, Word, PPT, HTML, and Excel files accessible since these are the most common file types. All of these have features to make files accessible.
• Assess whether you can replace PDF files with other file types. PDF files are the most difficult to make accessible by far. For text documents, HTML or Word are much better.
• Emphasize simplicity in documents. The more complex they are the more difficult it is to make them accessible.
• Contact vendors whose software your library uses and ensure their materials are accessible.
• Require staff to attend workshops on accessibility so they can contribute to these efforts.
• Create a plan to periodically check documents for accessibility going forward. This is not a one time change but something that must be standard practice.
• Experiment with AI tools to make documents accessible. My results have been mixed so far but I believe AI has great potential to help make documents accessibile.

I hope this list has been helpful. If you have any questions about accessibility, I’d be happy to offer more advice. Contact me at akirby@pennhighlands.edu