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Get ReportAre Higher Education Websites Required to Be Accessible Under the ADA?
Yes, but the real question is which law applies. Nearly every U.S. college and university has to make its website accessible. This post breaks down how ADA Title II, Title III, and Section 504 apply to different institutions, and how to avoid the accessibility issues that most often trip schools up.
Author: Jeff Curtis, Sr. Content Manager
Published: 06/29/2026
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A university’s website now does the work a campus tour used to do. Students apply, submit coursework through the LMS, read syllabi posted as PDFs, and handle the entire enrollment process online. When any of that is unusable by a student with a disability, the institution is not just providing a poor experience. In most cases, it’s violating federal accessibility law.
So, are higher education websites required to be accessible? The short answer is yes. Most U.S. educational institutions are legally required to make their websites accessible. The only real question is which law applies to your institution, and for most schools, more than one does.
Below, we’ll walk through each of those obligations at a working level, explain how to tell which law applies to you, and what enforcement actually looks like. With 2026 and 2027 being the inflection years for higher education website accessibility, understanding your obligation now is the difference between a planned compliance program and a reactive scramble.
Which Law Applies to Your Institution?
The fastest way to find your obligation is to start with your institution type. Here’s how the Americans with Disabilities Act(opens in a new tab) (ADA) maps:
Across the table, the pattern is clear. Public institutions fall under ADA Title II; private institutions fall under ADA Title III; and federally funded institutions of either kind are additionally covered by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Because the overwhelming majority of U.S. colleges and universities participate in federal student aid programs, Section 504 ties almost every institution into a digital accessibility obligation, regardless of whether it is public or private.
The rest of the page breaks down each law in more detail.
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ADA Title II: Public Colleges and Universities
Title II of the ADA covers public institutions as government entities. Under the Department of Justice's 2024 rule(opens in a new tab), the standard for compliance is WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and the compliance clock is already running. Public universities serving populations of 50,000 or more must comply with ADA Title II by April 26, 2027 and smaller public entities by April 26, 2028.
ADA Title III: Private Colleges and Universities
Title III of the ADA covers public institutions as places of public accommodation. In the eyes of the law, a private university open to the public for enrollment functions is considered a public accommodation. This also means that its website, which is treated as an extension of the institution, must also be accessible. There is no single regulatory deadline attached to Title III the way there is for Title II. The obligation is ongoing and already in effect.
Title III does not specify a specific standard as the 2024 Title II rule does, but courts and settlements have consistently cited WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the benchmark for what an ADA-compliant website looks like.
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act
This is the statute most institutions overlook. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act requires any institution receiving federal financial assistance, including most public and private universities through federal student aid, to make its programs accessible, and that includes its digital programs.
More simply, if your institution accepts federal student aid, processes Pell Grants, or participates in federal loan programs, Section 504 almost certainly applies, even if you’re a private institution.
Section 504 is also easy to confuse with Section 508, which governs federal agencies and their direct contractors rather than funding recipients. For higher education, Section 504 is the applicable provision because it applies to the federal funding that nearly every institution already receives.
Combined, Title II, Title III, and Section 504 leave very few U.S. higher education institutions without a digital accessibility obligation.
What Happens if Someone Files a Complaint?
Accessibility obligations are enforceable through more than one channel, and the one institution that tends to underestimate is the Office for Civil Rights(opens in a new tab) (OCR). The OCR investigates disability-access complaints against funded institutions and can require a corrective resolution agreement, making accessibility an enforceable obligation independent of any lawsuit.
The path is straightforward. A student, applicant, or member of the public files a complaint, and OCR investigates. If it finds barriers, the institution enters a binding resolution agreement committing to specific fixes, timelines, and reporting. Separately, individuals can sue under the ADA or Section 504. More simply, an institution can face enforcement from two directions at once, which is why treating accessibility as a one-time legal checkbox tends to backfire.
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Where Higher Education Websites Most Often Fall Short
Higher education has a significant accessibility risk profile because of the amount of content and the number of third-party tools within a typical digital estate. The most common higher-ed accessibility failures involve inaccessible PDFs, uncaptioned lecture videos, barriers in learning management systems, and embedded third-party tools.
A few patterns are seen across institutions:
Inaccessible PDFs: syllabi, course readings, financial aid forms, and research documents are routinely posted as untagged PDFs that screen readers cannot navigate. Because volume is so high in higher ed, this is often the single largest barrier.
Uncaptioned lecture videos: Recorded lectures, event streams, and promotional videos frequently launch without accurate captions, locking out students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Captions are non-negotiable for course content.
Learning management system barriers: The LMS is where the academic experience actually happens, and accessibility there, in quizzes, discussion boards, and gradebooks, hits students directly.
Embedded third-party tools: Proctoring software, library databases, payment portals, and interactive widgets are often bolted on without an accessibility review.
Are Institutions Liable for Third-Party and Ed-Tech Tools?
For CIOs and procurement leads, the most important thing to know is that accessibility requirements do not stop at the tools you built. Institutions remain responsible for the accessibility of third-party and ed-tech tools they procure, making VPAT review a required part of the purchase process.
A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is a document a vendor provides that describes how its product conforms to accessibility standards. Building VPAT review and accessibility clauses into purchasing decisions is the single most effective preventative control an institution has, because it stops inaccessible tools from entering the digital estate in the first place.
However, a glossy VPAT is not a guarantee of conformance, so the strongest programs pair it with their own verification. But making accessibility a procurement requirement, rather than a post-purchase discovery, is where compliant institutions separate from reactive ones.
Building a Program that Keeps Up
For most institutions, the question was never really whether the ADA or Section 504 applies. It’s how to keep up with it.
The statues are clear enough once you map them. Still, the day-to-day reality of higher education is a digital estate that never stops growing: new course content every term, new tools every procurement cycle, new microsites for every department and initiative. Compliance is not a project you finish. It’s a standard you have to hold across everything, continuously, while everything keeps expanding.
That’s exactly where most institutions get stuck, and it is exactly what AudioEye is built to handle. AudioEye combines automated monitoring across your entire digital footprint with Expert Audits for the harder problems, like PDFs, captioning, and embedded third-party tools, so accessibility holds at the scale at which higher education actually operates. Instead of chasing high-risk issues one audit at a time, your team gets a sustainable program that keeps pace as new content and tools ship, meets accessibility requirements, and reduces risk.
See how AudioEye supports higher education; schedule a demo to see our platform in action.
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