WCAG 2.1 Documents

[Stephanie]

Hi Everyone,

I am an Institutional Research Analyst at my institution.  I also manage our department's website and dashboards.  

Hopefully many of your are aware of the upcoming federal legislation that will require stricter accessibility requirements for digital media (websites, downloadable documents, etc.) mandatory over the coming year, starting in late April 2026.  I am with a large public university, so I am not familiar with the requirements for private institutions, but I'm sure this affects many of us in this group.

The new legislation means that our digital documents must be compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA standards, which have numerous additional requirements beyond what we have been bound by for so many years.

I am wondering if the CDS Initiative is planning on providing documents that better meet these standards to reduce the burden on the institutions to fix the current form.  I'm also inquiring if anyone has found any tricks that makes this process a little easier.

[Kerri Ford]

Good afternoon, Texas Tech University is also monitoring this question.