Accessibility is all about improving access, but it can sometimes feel like a balancing act between compliance and capacity. When this happens, it’s critical to remember the impact on real learners, especially if your L&D content reaches a wide audience through a public partnership. Whether it’s a resource library asset, an open webinar or recording, or a variety of K–12 support materials, you may be discovering your content is part of a much broader accessibility picture.

At Vivayic, we believe accessibility is a key part of building inclusive learning experiences that benefit everyone. It’s a value reflected in our broader DEIA commitment and the impetus behind our baseline standards on all e-learning assets. However, we also understand that full compliance may require incremental change leading up to the deadline. That’s why we focus on equipping L&D Agenda Movers with the right information to make thoughtful, informed decisions. In our first article of this series, we explored the questions of “why now?” and “does this apply to me?” regarding the ADA Title II WCAG compliance mandate. Now, let’s go a step further with some hypothetical situations.

Based on our understanding, these are a few ways the ADA Title II ruling could show up in a variety of L&D settings:

• Privately Built but Publicly Used: A city department for youth programs offers an online certification to become a “Community Youth Advocate.” This certification includes participating in a set of online Rise modules about teen mental health issues, which were developed by a regional nonprofit using a non-federal grant.* These courses, while technically owned by a private entity, are linked on a city website as a required element of a city certification. Therefore, the Rise modules must comply if the city wants to continue using them as part of the certification. If the city chooses to remove the modules as part of the certification program, there is no obligation for the nonprofit to update the modules— they are now unlinked/unaffiliated with the public certification.

*Hypothetically, these items were not connected to federal dollars or agencies, so they did not have to meet Section 508 compliance in the initial build. 

• Public School Curriculum or Lessons: A private organization creates an open-access series of online modules for middle school STEM education. While students can take the modules independently, this organization hopes that educators will also integrate them into interactive classroom lessons. Since these modules are free and open to the public, the school district is not contracting, licensing, or otherwise arranging with the organization to use their educational materials. Therefore, the school cannot compel this organization to meet standards. However, this gets tricky. We are still not clear on whether public school teachers can use the online modules (or any web-based tool) in their physical classrooms if it does not meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards. We do believe that if the teacher intends to use the modules in either a personal-device setting (each student accesses the modules on an individual tablet) or a virtual school setting (via Zoom or similar remote platform), the modules would have to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards.
• Live and Recorded Webinars for Public Audience: A public health research and policy center has created several virtual ILTs and webinars in the past. Since this policy center is funded by the state, going forward, all live webinars and virtual training must meet accessibility standards and accommodations, such as sufficient color contrast on slides, live captioning functions turned on, and a speaker giving a clear, audible description of graphics, charts, and images that are non-decorative. Live-captioning settings may not have been used in the past, and it might take some re-training or auditing of presenter notes to emphasize the need to “narrate” important visual or text elements in webinar presentations.
• Instructure Canvas Professional Development: A state agency uses Canvas LMS to deliver and track annual compliance training for anyone who participates in their state-branded agricultural products program. The training uses a combination of embedded interactive elements, a state manual in PDF form, and recordings of expert videos. While the Canvas accessibility checker helped flag items like alt text and color contrast, and they researched the embedded tools to ensure they meet accessibility standards, the course still needs a thorough review for WCAG 2.1 standards. Things like text-on-screenshots, heading hierarchy and text styles, PDF document accessibility, and audio-described versions of certain videos are requirements under these standards, but wouldn’t have been flagged by the internal checker. Automated tools like Anthology Ally can assist in identifying accessibility issues; however, they should complement, not replace, manual reviews and assessments.

Do any of these scenarios feel familiar? While not exhaustive, they illustrate just how far-reaching the new ADA Title II compliance requirements can be, impacting not only state and local government entities but also their partners and vendors. While many organizations have aimed to make their materials “accessible,” the expectations haven’t always been clearly defined. Now, the ADA Title ruling makes WCAG 2.1 Level AA the explicit standard for public entities—no more guesswork or being open to interpretation. For L&D leaders working in or with public sector organizations, it’s critical to understand which learning assets are affected and how.

If you’re part of a public organization, now is the time to assess what development and review processes need to evolve to meet the 2026 deadline. If you work with public entities and realize through these scenarios that you may be affected, schedule a Discovery Call with us. Vivayic can do a sample audit and assess some of your e-learning materials to uncover areas for improvement in compliance. You might also consider whether this is the moment to fully adopt WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards for your e-learning assets—not only to stay competitive, but to demonstrate your commitment to inclusive, accessible learning.

In our next article, we compare the process, lift, and expense of remediation vs. redesign to update the accessibility of existing materials. Read the article here.