Our path forward with the extended digital accessibility compliance deadline
Dear colleagues,
While this upcoming Friday, April 24, had been previously established as the original compliance deadline for the updated digital accessibility regulations under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Department of Justice issued a new rule on Monday that extends the compliance timeline. For the class of institutions K-State falls within, the deadline has been extended to April 26, 2027.
What does this mean for faculty and staff?
We want to assure you that our strong trajectory will remain steadfast and unchanged. The university community has achieved incredible progress to date, making academic course materials, websites and all forms of digital content more accessible — and we must continue to advance that effort. Many units and individual faculty and staff members have built plans to ensure continual progress and sustained accessibility-focused practices in their digital content creation — that is our path forward, and the institution will continue to provide guidance, trainings and resources to support this effort.
We want to acknowledge that we understand this work is not without its challenges — in many ways, the law is ahead of the solutions, especially when it comes to specialized digital content. Please know that we continue to monitor the landscape for ongoing solutions to those particularly difficult remediation challenges — and this deadline extension provides us further opportunity to do so.
Will the task force continue its work?
The task force has been instrumental in mobilizing and supporting several units to operationalize training, provide support and deliver resources for faculty and staff, including the suite of resources offered by the Center for Academic Innovation's instructional design team and the Division of Communications and Marketing's web services team. These examples of institutionalized support will continue on in perpetuity — and the tactical goals and guidance they have helped establish remain intact.
That said, the task force is set to have its final meeting next week, where the team will finalize its recommendations for how the institution should continue to oversee this important work, not just over the course of the next year, but as a sustained, embedded component of our institutional culture. We look forward to receiving those recommendations and ensuring continued support.
Making the most of the gift of time
As we shared in our last update to the university community, continued intentionality and commitment to progress are critical to our ongoing success. The beauty of the original deadline is that it gave us a hard target — and one we approached with great momentum. Now our challenge is to keep the momentum going.
We still have many institutional support efforts ongoing, including the PDF remediation RFP, and we will continue to listen to feedback from the university community around ongoing challenges and needs.
Thank you for your continued support of this important initiative.
Go 'Cats!
Jesse Perez Mendez
Provost and executive vice president
Thomas Lane
Vice president for academic success and student affairs and dean of students