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Government & Education

Website accessibility for higher education

Public colleges and universities run admissions, financial aid, and course registration online. ADA Title II applies, with the deadline tier set by the population of the state or locality served.

The rule and the deadline

DOJ ADA Title II web rule · WCAG 2.1 AA

April 26, 2027
Population 50,000 or more
April 26, 2028
Under 50,000 & special districts

These dates are set by the U.S. Department of Justice's ADA Title II web accessibility rule. Higher-education institutions follow the tier for the population of the state or locality they serve. This is general information, not legal advice.

The pages that matter most

Accessibility isn't abstract — it's whether someone can complete the tasks they came to do. For higher education, we pay particular attention to the high-consequence pages:

  • Admissions and application portals
  • Financial-aid forms
  • Course registration systems
  • Course materials and PDFs

How we assess it

We assess a representative sample of your pages against WCAG 2.1 AA — automated testing plus structured human review — and send you a free, evidence-backed findings report. Automated testing detects roughly 57% of issues by volume; a reviewer checks the rest.

We don't use accessibility overlays, and we don't sell you a badge to make the problem look solved. You get a real report of what to fix. See the full methodology.

The first step is a findings report

Apply and a reviewer will send a free findings report — the specific issues on your pages, and what it would take to fix them.