Reactions to the ADA Title II Updates are Failing Disabled Students, Instructors, and Staff

When I learned about the Department of Justice’s new ruling on the ADA Title II requirements for online accessibility some time in the fall of 2024, I knew Bad Times™ were coming. And not because of the ruling itself. I am always glad to see any progress in the way of disability rights, and requiring digital learning materials to be accessible is frankly long overdue considering the prevalence of their use. I am also keenly aware that not everyone feels the same way that I do about these things. I knew that once university instructors were made aware of these changes and the implications for remediating their inaccessible course materials, there were going to be unhappy people saying horrible things about accessibility. I especially feared that faculty would once again question the need to support disabled students—perhaps not realizing that these changes would benefit any student who can make use of more accessible content in order to advance their learning. Despite our office’s efforts to bring awareness about this ruling, I watched university leadership drag their feet on sending out any messaging or making plans to help our instructors meet this new mandate. I knew then that their delay, reducing the time to complete remediation efforts, was only going to make the situation worse—both for instructors and those of us who would be tasked with supporting them in that work with insufficient staffing and resources.

I am an educational developer who works in a teaching center at a public university and identifies as being queer, female, neurodivergent, and disabled with a history of trauma/cPTSD. Before landing in this position, I received worked my ass off to finish a PhD in German Studies in 2016.1 I subsequently burned out of my first teaching job within two years for reasons that were not entirely clear to me at the time, aside from the ridiculously poor pay and toxic department culture.

The missing piece of the puzzle back then was probably an autism diagnosis, which I only received a little over two years ago, in my late thirties.2 What I experienced at the end of my second year teaching was likely an extreme case of autistic burnout, which is basically neurotypical burnout on steroids and also includes symptoms like skill regression and increased sensitivity to overwhelming stimuli. I was unable to function in such an unsupportive environment and ended up fleeing back to my home state to teach online for a semester before they cut off my contract entirely—because online instruction wasn’t a viable form of learning in their estimation.3

When I left that job, many in my life—lacking the understanding and awareness of the autistic neurotype and its impact on how my brain works—judged my decisions harshly, thinking I just quit my job one day and flushed my career down the toilet. Not having the language to express what I was experiencing at the time also didn’t help and left me feeling like I was a fraud and a failure. It took a long time to recover from the burnout and the judgment I faced, and some days I’m probably still not fully there.4 But this experience and what I’ve learned since then inform how I approach my work with instructors now, the values that I hold both personally and professionally, and the advocacy that I do on a regular basis on behalf of folks like me, be they students, instructors, or both.

My work has shifted extensively to supporting instructors in making the updates to their digital course materials to be in compliance with the ADA Title II changes. I’ve worked with a colleague to design a workshop series we run regularly; I have lost count of the number of custom virtual and in-person workshops we’ve done for individual departments and other groups on campus. Additionally, we expanded and updated our asynchronously available resources on accessibility to better serve the needs of instructors making these updates.

I’m certainly empathetic to the fact that the ADA changes are new information for a lot of instructors, their workload is already high, and universities do not do enough to support them in this and other work they do. But when our visits with folks start to feel like we’re being put before a firing squad simply for delivering an important message, it’s difficult to keep up morale and to present our most energetic selves. And, in classic autistic fashion, I struggle to control my face when instructors make out of pocket comments that would certainly not fly if we were discussing any other marginalized group. It’s startling at times what people are willing to say out loud because we’re discussing disability and not a different “ism.”

The highlight reel of appalling comments includes:

• “Why should I spend time on this for students who don’t exist?”

• “This [accessibility] is just busy work.”

• “What about my intellectual property?” (Regarding providing transcripts or captions.)

• “I’m just not going to put anything online then.”

• “I can’t fathom how a blind person could even comprehend [STEM discipline] because I only learned through the diagrams.”

• “I only have three students in my class, so I don’t have to worry about it.”

Sigh.

In the moments when I could, I have pushed back on comments like these. I remind instructors that diagnoses are protected by the ADA and Section 504; even if a student has not presented an accommodation letter, they may still be disabled and just not be sharing that information with the instructor.5 I have reiterated the importance of access for everyone. We’ve discussed how online learning resources are there for a reason and taking them away only creates greater barriers that this change in rules is trying to eliminate. We’ve repeated over and over that this change is a federal law that applies to everyone at the institution and at other, similar institutions. For our advocacy efforts, we’re often rewarded with rolled eyes, anger, or disparaging remarks about us not always having answers to all of their questions. (Primarily because we focus on teaching and are not legal experts, nor are we a compliance office.)

We’re just trying to help instructors know what to do.

I’m so exhausted. My colleagues are exhausted. And there’s no end in sight. We know some instructors are ignoring this until the summer, compliance be damned. And, as we’ve also tried to reiterate again and again, there will have to be new workflows for course design because accessibility doesn’t go away once you’ve fixed your current materials. The training we are doing now will need reinforcement down the road.

So far, in our case at least, no one else is stepping up to help.6

In a recent session, an instructor came up to me after we were finished and said that they wanted to make sure that I understood that they weren’t “against accessibility.” They were the same person who had indicated that they were going to remove a large portion of their course content rather than ensure that it meets the accessibility guidelines. I couldn’t bring myself to call them out on how “not being against accessibility” actually requires doing the work of making the learning experience accessible, primarily because there had already been so many head-scratching moments. (Also: I was overstimulated and in desperate need of fleeing the too-hot classroom we were using.) But it left me wondering why they felt they had to tell me that. Their phrasing also took my mind immediately to “I’m not a racist, but…”

Let me be clear: This isn’t everyone. Maybe not even a majority. And some of them might even say something different if they set aside their stress and thought about the implications of their ableist statements. I have often been amazed by the instructors I work with and their commitment to providing the best learning experience for their students. It’s heartwarming to hear them advocate for their students and brag about how talented they are. They say that they are invested in student success, and we have often framed this legal change as a step toward improved student success in our conversations with them. Yet, the degree to which folks can compartmentalize accessibility as something unnecessary or extra when they would otherwise advocate for inclusive teaching practices is truly mystifying. I know that remediation can take time and effort, but academics have historically found ways to do a lot of hard work for a lot of other reasons, so the reluctance around doing accessibility work feels all the more performative. Oh, and also flat-out ableist.

It’s no secret that the academy as we know it is ableist, for students, faculty, and staff alike. In fact, much like the racism, sexism, classism, and every other “ism” and/or phobia, ableism was baked into higher ed from the start. It’s a feature of the system, not a design flaw. In his book Academic Ableism, Jay Dolmage puts it very succinctly: “Disability has always been constructed as the inverse or opposite of higher education. Or, let me put it differently: higher education has needed to create a series of versions of ‘lower education’ to justify its work and to ground its exceptionalism.” Connected to exceptionalism, Dolmage discusses how American universities were instrumental in promoting eugenics, a concept and movement that eventually brought us Nazis and genocide in the name of a “master race.” In fact, the Nazis looked to examples of eugenicist practices and research in the U.S. when they began their genocidal campaign.

The alarmist think pieces that suggest setting our hair ablaze over the increase in student accommodations conveniently overlook this history.7 The unwillingness to imagine those needs to be real stands in stark contrast to ample research showing that disabled students continue to experience inequitable educational outcomes compared to non-disabled students. They do not get the resources and support that they need in order to be successful in college. Because of these gaps in support, disabled students are more likely to experience stress and low self-esteem. Part of the problem is that most accommodations necessitate having a medical diagnosis and some kind of paperwork to “prove” the need for the accommodation, which many students lack and cannot afford to obtain. Our most vulnerable students are then most likely to suffer in silence.

One potential upside of the new Title II requirements, coming April 2026 or 2027 (depending on the size of your institution), is that some of students’ accommodation needs could be met without students having to ask for them—if, of course, colleges and universities make providing accessible content a priority. While accessible digital content does not and cannot meet every possible accommodation need students may have, providing that upfront could alleviate the number of individual accommodations instructors receive and must address once a semester is underway. There is also the added benefit that providing this content without students having to ask for it also means that those who may not have access to medical diagnoses to acquire accommodations may still get some of their needs met. The whole purpose of this ruling, after all, is to reduce the number of barriers disabled folks face to access information and services.

It’s also not helping the situation that a certain prominent newspaper (which shall not be named) recently published an article framing compliance measures for ADA Title II as merely “increased instructor surveillance.”8 While I know there are many other legitimate reasons faculty at various public universities in particular might have to complain about recent bouts of politically motivated and other forms of censorship in what they can teach, lumping accessibility in with the academic freedom argument fundamentally misunderstands the importance of accessibility for equitable learning.9 It also simply doesn’t apply because academic freedom does not supersede federal law and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I also find it disappointing that I have not heard anything about how Title II can benefit disabled instructors and staff. There is not a lot of data out there on the faculty and staff experience of being disabled in higher education (which is telling in its own right), but the numbers from the few studies that exist make it clear that disabled faculty and staff woefully underreport their status to their places of employment, considering that CDC data now says roughly 1 in 4 adults in the US reports having a disability. The bottom line is that the academy associates disability with a lack of intelligence and weakness, and so there is truly no incentive to disclose our disability status to the institutions where we work. Faculty and staff are subjected to the same burden of proof and processes as students are in order to obtain accommodations, and many do not have the time, capacity, or financial resources to take that on, especially if they do not already have a medical diagnosis or other documentation.10 It’s also the case that the people managing employee accommodations are often not the same people who manage student disability accommodations; there are a raft of stories of faculty and staff having their privacy and rights violated by university staff members unfamiliar with the ins and outs of ADA law. (And let’s face it: institutions aren’t likely to accommodate faculty and staff just because they say it would help them do their jobs.)

It’s difficult to measure the impact this lack of access has on our colleagues across the US, but having heard anecdotes and observed the lack of access firsthand, I know the impact is significant.11 Complying with the Title II changes across an institution would help faculty and staff in similar ways to students by making accessible materials easier to come by across different offices on campus and in shared course content without having to specifically ask for them. Instructors and staff members who might otherwise be reluctant to make these requests and risk “outing themselves” to their colleagues would no longer have to choose between having what they need and sharing their disability status.

While I cannot condone the horrible ableist things I’m reading and hearing from some of our instructors on a daily basis, I do think that instructors who are feeling stressed by the new accessibility requirements and their implementation have a right to be upset. At most of the institutions I’ve heard about, they are being put into the position of needing to implement accessible practices on their own without enough guidance and help. And that is a big ask when the institutions themselves are not accessible, have never been accessible, and are not providing resources (like additional staffing of folks with accessibility expertise, more robust remediation software, models of accessible content, etc.) to help make this task more approachable. If our office had not decided on our own to offer training and resources regardless of when the institutional leadership decided to acknowledge the looming deadline, our instructors would have no support available to them. It’s also a large part of the reason why we are taking the brunt of the pushback, even though institutional leadership will ultimately be responsible for ensuring compliance.

The fact that accessibility is not consistently part of the general pedagogical training that graduate teaching assistants and faculty receive (if they receive any at all) is indicative of just how much accessibility remains an afterthought in our society and in higher education specifically. Accessibility is also not often a significant part of the training when it comes to learning software and other digital tools, so using accessible practices is almost never introduced as part of a typical workflow. I can imagine this trend comes from the systemic ableism in higher ed and the lack of value placed on accessible learning experiences. As our office experienced first hand, putting the word “accessibility” in a workshop title before this new ruling came about was the quickest way to make sure no one attended.12 While I can see how an already overwhelmed instructor might think “this doesn’t apply to me,” the truth is that anyone can become disabled at any time, and more people are identifying as disabled than ever before. Accessibility applies to everyone sooner or later.

I recognize that what we have at this point is the convergence of multiple forms of access friction. Sarah Silverman has broken down the different ways that this phrase is used. They include describing the act of trying to accommodate a disabled person in an environment that wasn’t designed for them, the disconnect from non-disabled folks trying to accommodate disabled people in ways that aren’t actually helpful, and situations where there might be access needs that appear to contradict one another. The university experience was not designed with disabled students in mind, so providing the access they need can be challenging under the constraints of the system we work in. Our instructors and staff also need better training in what it means to be accessible and how to do the work of remediation, which needs to happen so that they can provide the accessibility students need. Institutions need to make foundational changes to how they train folks on and how they promote accessibility. The likelihood of that happening without a lot of prompting will, of course, vary by institution.

As someone who identifies as disabled, I can attest that doing this work has been all the more disheartening and emotionally draining. And I know I’m not alone. It can be bad enough to know that you work in an environment where access is not valued the way it should be and that stated values do not always align with the actions of the institution or the individuals within it. But to be put in situations where you hear and read comments day in and day out about how accessibility is a waste of time and effort and how students are undeserving of this kind of support, well, let’s just say the irony isn’t lost on me. As someone whose educational journey would have been made far less disabling by there being more awareness and conversation about access needs in general, I know just how detrimental the consequences of ignoring those needs can be.

A couple years ago, our office hosted a panel of disabled students to discuss what had helped them be successful in their learning and what else instructors could do to support them. And while there were some positive conversations, much of what the students shared included their fears about requesting accommodations from certain instructors and how course policies often left them disadvantaged without a lot of recourse. I will never forget a student who used a cane explaining how they had two classes back-to-back at opposite ends of campus, and they were frequently locked out of the room by the second instructor because they did not arrive exactly on time.

The protections articulated by the Americans with Disabilities Act were always meant to be the floor, not the ceiling, of what accessibility could conceivably look like for disabled people in America. But considering how, in many cases, the floor remains unattainable (and HEAVILY gatekept through documentation processes) despite these legal rulings, we are painfully aware that the bar is so low that it’s actually in Hell. Which is where we feel like we’re living most of the time.

You don’t have to take my word for it. You can give Of Many Minds a read and discover the horrible treatment neurodivergent academics have experienced during their higher ed careers, which is the reason why many of them have left, an unquantifiable but devastating loss to our academic community. The opening paragraph of Margaret Price’s Crip Spacetime describes the numerous barriers she experiences just trying to enter a building, teach her students, and find a bathroom she can use on campus. Liz Norell’s piece from the Engaged Learning Collective describes her experience being autistic at work. Cait Kirby has discussed the importance of virtual professional development opportunities for disabled academics and others for whom travel is prohibitive or dangerous, who otherwise miss out on career-building opportunities that in-person conferences provide.

All of this to say that, while some instructors out there may be thinking about accessibility for the first time (or have historically avoided thinking about it whenever possible), they have students and colleagues who think about this every day. We don’t have the luxury of avoiding it (and wouldn’t anyway). And if instructors think they’ve got a lot of work ahead to make your digital materials accessible, I dare them to think for a few minutes about the extra work their disabled students and colleagues put into their days just to function in a world that isn’t designed for them and then still have to do all the other things work and studies demand.

The casual ableism that has emerged in the wake of the Title II update has left me disappointed, saddened, and unimpressed by the mindset some of my fellow academics have expressed regarding the importance of accessibility. While I realize that it may not be their intention, perpetuating this behavior causes harm to our colleagues as well as our students. But we have the potential to do things differently. Instead of debating about the need for the floor, we could consider what it might look like if we collectively decided to build higher and better. The ADA Title II updates are an opportunity to reconsider how we bring equity and humanity into our work with disabled students and colleagues alike. We have the chance to decide collectively what a new minimum standard could look like when it comes to academic instruction and providing access for all learners.

Accessible teaching practices and providing accessible digital content required by Title II reduce barriers to learning that might otherwise keep students from pursuing a college degree. If we truly value student success and the importance of public education, then that means we have to do the work to make that education accessible, in all meanings of the word, but especially for those for whom accessibility isn’t a luxury.

We can do better than this. I know we can.

NOTE: The views expressed in this piece are the author’s alone and do not represent any institution with which they are affiliated.