By Eve Hill

In a win for disability rights and accessibility equality, the Department of Justice issued new guidelines requiring state and local government entities to make websites and mobile applications accessible for people with disabilities. This rule is a long-anticipated update of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title II regulations and includes two- to three-year deadlines for compliance.

The Justice Department adopted the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA, a set of technical standards that includes 50 points required to make websites accessible. The required improvements to accessibility aim to help users with a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. They include criteria such as ensuring good color contrast, keyboard (non-mouse) navigation, and tagging pictures and documents so they can be read with assistive technology by people with vision and other print disabilities. In addition, videos must include captions for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

The new rule will apply to government agencies and departments and will require them to ensure the companies they hire to design websites make them accessible. It covers both websites and mobile apps of all kinds of public services, from police departments and courts to public hospitals, schools, universities, libraries, and transit agencies.

The team at Brown, Goldstein & Levy are fierce advocates for accessibility in the workplace for all. We’re proud of our continued work with organizations like the National Federation of the Blind, seeking justice and equality for people with disabilities. Learn more about our disability rights practice here.

Read here for more details on the ruling from the Department of Justice.

About BGL:

Founded in 1982, Brown, Goldstein & Levy is a law firm based in Baltimore, Maryland, with an office in Washington, D.C. The firm is nationally recognized in a wide variety of practice areas, including complex civil and commercial litigation, civil rights, health care, family law, and criminal defense. Above all else, Brown, Goldstein & Levy is a client-centered law firm that brings decades of experience and passionate, effective advocacy to your fight for justice.