Accessibility & WCAG

Accessibility is not an extra feature you add to a finished product. It's a property of the structure of the UI — there for free if you build the right thing, expensive to bolt on if you didn't. About 1 in 4 adults in the US has some form of disability; on the web that translates to people using screen readers, screen magnifiers, switch devices, voice control, eye tracking, keyboard-only navigation, high-contrast modes, reduced motion, captions, and a long tail of assistive tech you've never seen. A site that doesn't work for them is broken for them, fully.

The legal frame in 2026 (already-in-force obligations, not future):

• ADA Title II — DOJ final rule (April 2024) requires state and local government digital services to conform to WCAG 2.1 AA. Compliance for entities ≥50,000 population took effect April 24, 2026 (already passed). Smaller entities (<50,000 and special-district governments) must comply by April 24, 2027.
• ADA Title III — private business; courts continue to find websites are places of public accommodation. No specific federal standard cited, but WCAG 2.1 AA is the de-facto litigation benchmark.
• Section 508 — US federal procurement; references WCAG 2.0 AA (a Refresh aligning with 2.x is in proposed-rulemaking, not yet final).
• EN 301 549 v3.2.1 — EU public-sector procurement standard; references WCAG 2.1.
• European Accessibility Act (EAA) — Directive 2019/882; enforcement began June 28, 2025 for products and services in scope (e-commerce, banking, e-books, transport ticketing, ATMs, smartphones/computers). EU member states implement nationally; e-commerce sites serving EU consumers are now subject.

For US higher education, Title II of the ADA plus Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act apply. Vanderbilt's clinical and university web properties operate against WCAG 2.2 AA as of 2026 — vendor procurement increasingly demands 2.2 even where 2.1 would technically satisfy.

The technical baseline in 2026 is WCAG 2.2 AA, not 2.1. WCAG 2.2 was published as a W3C Recommendation in October 2023 and added 9 new success criteria; modern procurement and remediation work targets 2.2. WCAG 2.1 AA remains the regulatory floor in many statutes (ADA Title II rule, Section 508 still on 2.0); meeting 2.2 satisfies both. WCAG 3.0 remains in working draft and will not be a regulatory standard for years.

What WCAG 2.2 added (the 9 new success criteria)

Memorize the AA additions; the AAA ones are aspirational.