Farther along the ADA road

Last week, I wrote about all the good things that the Americans with Disabilities Act has brought for people with disabilities. I also wrote that Universal Design and Access have continued to expand access opportunities for everyone.

In other words, ramps, automatic doors, and digital information displays have been major improvements in getting where we all need to go, but we haven’t reached the end of the road. Not by a long shot.

In 2024 the Department of Justice updated part of its regulations of the ADA requiring that “web content and mobile applications (apps) are accessible to people with disabilities.”

What does this mean exactly? Well, if you’ve ever wandered into the settings on a TV, looking for closed captions and clicked the wrong option, you may have heard a voice begin to describe what was happening on the screen.

I listened to this feature once, and it was an exhaustive description of the scene’s action, but it also described some background elements. I know how helpful closed captions can be, so I could well imagine how this assistive technology would help a person who is blind.

So, that’s one of the features that state and local governments are expected to provide on websites and any third-party application software they use. Public colleges and universities must also comply. Private colleges and universities that receive federal funding should also offer such technologies.

Where things can get sticky is in the usage of third-party applications. The third party doesn’t necessarily have to meet these requirements, but the state or local government or college or university does. In other words, the state or local government or educational institution has to figure how to make the apps comply or work with the vendor to accomplish this.

The way that you and I interact with web content and mobile apps, whether we find them easy to use or not, is known as User Experience or UX. The irony of complying with web and app accessibility is that user experience can become clunky or unsatisfying.

If this sounds like a hassle and a headache, it surely must be. The consequences of compliance can have the effect of making a worse user experience.

One of the apps I regularly use hosts Buena Vista University’s digitized campus newspapers and alumni publications. While the app would never have rated a gold star as a stellar user experience, it worked well enough. A few updates over the years made it better.

A couple of weeks ago, though, the app suddenly looked completely different. Bright blue and green had replaced the more traditional landing page. When I tried to execute a search, it balked. I tried again and again and yet again several more times.

Finally, after waiting long, twitchy seconds, the page loaded, but trying to filter my search by a smaller date range proved equally annoying. It was like a horse who did not want to be ridden that day. Nope, no way, uh-uh. Neigh.

I put it down to an internet goblin that rears its head sometimes. It would get better, I reasoned. A few days later, a colleague in another department contacted me, expressing great displeasure as he was trying to use the app.

His unhappiness was enough to stir me to contact the vendor. “Why the change? This is pretty awful. Please roll back the changes.”

The changes could not be rolled back; they were done in the name of access compliance.

“The updated platform is designed to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards, the globally recognized benchmark for digital accessibility and ADA Title II compliance, and is built to work effectively with assistive technologies, support multiple methods of interaction and navigation, and improve overall readability, visibility, focus, and usability for all users.

These accessibility improvements benefit a broad range of users, including aging populations, individuals with temporary impairments, users navigating on mobile devices, and anyone who benefits from clearer and more flexible ways of interacting with digital content.”

OK, but why does the interface feel so bad to use, I asked. Everything felt awkward and difficult. The vendor admitted that there were kinks to work out, which seemed like an understatement.

Later, I happened to talk to a digital learning designer who works for the University of Minnesota. Let’s call them “Morris.” Morris said that if U of M’s learning tools aren’t compliant, it causes them no end of frustration.

Technical compliance (with the WCAG standards) and usability for people with (and without) disabilities are sometimes at loggerheads, Morris said. Features that many of us have come to love, like sliders (to increase size, for example) and drag-and-drop functionality, aren’t that easy to make accessible.

And if someone like Morris does manage to make them accessible, ease-of-use might suffer, which explained what was happening for me and my colleague at Buena Vista University.

For a while, I groused about these changes. It’s not the first time an app’s been updated when the changes felt like a backward step, but then I got a grip. Struggling with apps when you’re

1. colorblind or

2. prone to seizures or

3. ADHD and need a page free of distracting elements or

4. dyslexic and need to easily switch fonts to make letters clearer,

made me realize that a couple of days of frustration is nothing compared to what many students and adults with disabilities deal with on a daily basis.

Change is hard, and it’s going to be bumpy for Morris, who’s struggling to figure out how to balance compliance with usability; for vendors, who will need to step up their game and figure out how to do better by everyone; for people like me and my colleague, who will need to take a breath and be patient with the growing pains on the way to providing better access for everyone.

Joan Zwagerman writes from Storm Lake.