VIENNA — Ray Barry from AQM Information Technology in Franklin County visited with Maries County Commission on March 23 to share about the importance of local governments making their websites accessible for those with disabilities.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in April 2024 released technical requirements for Title 2 of the Americans with Disabilities Act for state and local governments to follow.  All state and local governments must make their websites compliant so that those with disabilities can access content on their websites or mobile apps. This includes visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive and neurological disabilities.

The DOJ requires that websites and apps follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium.

These rules apply to courts, public parks, public schools and colleges, public libraries, police departments, benefits programs, elections offices and public transit entities. 

The compliance deadline is April 26, 2027, for governments with under 50,000 residents and special district governments. The deadline is April 24, 2026, for governments with more than 50,000 residents.

According to the ADA website, inaccessible websites can make it more difficult for residents to take care of government-related tasks, such as submitting forms, paying taxes, registering to vote, collecting benefits, reporting potholes and watching public hearings.

The DOJ makes limited exceptions to these rules, including pre-existing archived web content, documents and social media posts, as well as password-protected individualized documents. But local governments must still provide reasonable accommodations so that people with disabilities can access government resources.

Barry warned the commissioners that noncompliance could lead to someone filing a lawsuit to get paid.

He said that the county needs to be careful to avoid legal trouble and that images and files need to be accessible, too. For example, images in files should have tags describing what it is. To make the Maries County website and media compliant, Barry recommended using a service like ReachADA.

“A lot of times it’s not even so much your main pages and stuff, but it’s the content you’re attaching to it,” Barry said. “One thing a lot of counties and municipalities do is they upload PDF documents for the public. Now if those documents have been scanned, they’re not compliant.”

However, he warned against the county taking down non-compliant files in the meantime to avoid public backlash for being non-transparent.  He said that Franklin County removed their non-compliant files.

“They just pulled everything off. The community’s outraged. You used to be able to see budgets, meeting minutes,” Barry said. “They just removed it all, which I thought was kind of short-sighted. I’m like, wow.”

Barry said he presented a cybersecurity message at a meeting with about 250 Missouri municipalities. When he mentioned ADA compliance, about 25 percent of attendees had never heard of the new requirements, despite it being a “big deal.”

At a meeting with another county, the deputy clerk told Barry about a man who owns multiple Airbnb properties who got sued by a Florida company because his website was not ADA compliant.

“A lot of the reasons they’re doing this with the laws is eliminate these frivolous lawsuits,” Barry said. “And basically, you’re not going to win. You can settle for X.”

Learn more about the DOJ’s new ADA requirements at https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule.