The effective date of federal web accessibility requirements to implement Title II of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) has been pushed back a year by the Department of Justice. The federal announcement comes too late to update the Commonwealth’s Information Technology Access Act (ITAA, Va. Code 2.2-3500 et seq.), which was amended in 2025 to require compliance with the ADA’s accessibility regulations by 2026 and 2027. Until the federal regulations are in effect, localities will be subject to the ITAA’s requirements, but it will be unclear what standard must be met.
The ADA was enacted in 1990, guaranteeing equal access to places of public accommodation, without specific reference to the internet. The ADA was later amended to generally address equal access to the increasing use of information technology and the internet. In 2024, standards were proposed to be added to federal regulations to clarify accessibility requirements for websites and mobile applications, and localities and other government entities were given until April 2026 or 2027 to comply (localities with populations less than 50,000 have the later compliance date). After much public comment, this week the Department of Justice announced a one-year delay in implementing the standards.
Virginia’s ITAA has been in place since 1999 and focused on non-visual access to technology. In 2025, the ITAA was rewritten to ensure access to all persons with disabilities, reflecting the broader language of the ADA. This followed workgroup recommendations made by the Public Body Procurement Workgroup. A key provision of the 2025 legislation (HB 2541 (Tran)) was to require compliance with the ADA regulations which are now in limbo.
VACo Contacts: Julie Whitlock, Esq. and Jeremy R. Bennett