Digital accessibility requirements in the United States are moving from guidance to enforceable deadlines, and educational publishers are feeling the effect through their customers. Public colleges, universities, community colleges and school districts are reviewing every digital resource they provide to students, including e-textbooks, courseware and supplementary PDFs.
The two rules publishers hear about
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act applies to federal agencies and the information and communication technology they develop, procure and use. Its standards incorporate WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Publishers selling to federal agencies have worked with Section 508 for years.
The ADA Title II rule, published by the Department of Justice in April 2024, is broader in its reach into education. It requires state and local government entities, which include public universities, community colleges and K–12 public school districts, to make their web content and mobile apps conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
The current compliance dates
In April 2026 the Department of Justice extended the original deadlines by one year. The standard itself, WCAG 2.1 Level AA, is unchanged:
- 26 April 2027 for public entities serving a population of 50,000 or more, which covers most state university systems and large school districts.
- 26 April 2028 for smaller public entities and special districts.
The extension gives institutions more time, but procurement teams are already writing accessibility requirements into contracts and renewals now.
What this means for publishers
Title II places the legal obligation on the institutions, not directly on publishers. In practice, institutions meet their obligation through procurement, so the requirement passes to suppliers. Educational publishers are increasingly asked to provide:
- Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs), usually based on the VPAT template, describing how each product meets WCAG 2.1 AA.
- Accessible EPUB 3 files with semantic structure, navigation and accessibility metadata.
- Tagged PDFs that meet PDF/UA, with correct reading order, table markup and alternative text.
- MathML for equations in mathematics, science and engineering titles, so that screen readers can voice and navigate them.
- Captions and transcripts for video and audio included with courseware.
Publishers who cannot supply these risk losing adoptions to competitors who can.
Where to start
- Inventory the titles and digital products sold to public institutions, and rank them by revenue and adoption.
- Audit a sample of each format against WCAG 2.1 AA using automated tools and manual assistive-technology testing.
- Remediate in priority order, starting with core textbooks and high-enrolment courses.
- Fix production at the source so new editions are accessible on first release rather than remediated afterwards.
- Document conformance with up-to-date ACRs for each product line.
Mathematics and STEM content
STEM titles carry the most risk. Equations delivered as images are unreadable to screen-reader users and fail WCAG. Converting equations to MathML, describing graphs and diagrams accurately, and marking up complex tables correctly require subject knowledge as well as technical skill.
How Studio of Solutions supports US publishers
Studio of Solutions produces and remediates accessible EPUB and PDF/UA files, converts STEM content to MathML, writes contextual image descriptions and provides captioning and transcription for media. Work progresses overnight in US time zones, which shortens turnaround on remediation projects.
STEM & Math Accessibility · Publishing Accessibility · Request a quote
This article provides general information and is not legal advice. Confirm specific obligations with your institutional customers and legal counsel.