OER and the New Accessibility Timeline: What Institutions Should Know
The Department of Justice announced that it is extending the compliance deadline for ADA Title II digital accessibility requirements by one year. Public institutions serving populations of 50,000 or more now have until April 26, 2027 to bring their digital content into compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA standards, and smaller institutions have until April 26, 2028. This change does not impact the separate May 11, 2026 deadline for compliance under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act for institutions funded by the Department of Health and Human Services.
DOJ is accepting public comments on its revised timeline through June 22, 2026.
Regardless of any deadline, students need accessible course materials now. Institutions should use the extra time to go beyond compliance and build accessibility into how they select, create, and deliver course materials.
Open educational resources (OER) — course materials that can be freely used, adapted, and shared under open licenses — are well positioned to support that shift. Unfortunately, misconceptions about OER and accessibility have steered some institutions in the opposite direction.
Let’s separate the myths and facts:
No course material is guaranteed to be accessible for every student. Student needs vary widely, and no creator, whether a commercial publisher or an OER author, can anticipate every one of them. When a student's needs aren't met, what matters is the ability to make adaptations, which is where OER has an advantage.
Open licenses make adaptation possible. When commercial materials have accessibility problems, copyright restrictions can make it harder for faculty and staff to reformat content, add alt text, or produce alternative versions. Because OER carry open licenses (such as Creative Commons), the permission to fix the problem is already built in.
With OER, accessibility work benefits everyone. Under traditional licensing, the same remediation work often gets repeated institution by institution, term after term, restricted to individual students with documented accommodations. When someone remediates an OER, that improvement can be legally shared with every student and every institution, forever, for free. Accessibility features such as captions, structured navigation, and audio versions can benefit all learners, not only those with disabilities.
Commercial materials don't eliminate accessibility work. Accessibility is an institutional responsibility regardless of who created the materials. Commercial materials regularly need to be remediated—just ask any accessibility office—and faculty routinely assign supplemental materials alongside the main text, so even courses using compliant commercial content need additional accessibility review.
OER are often built with accessibility from the start. Many OER are born-digital and created through open publishing programs that train authors in accessible design practices before they begin writing. Across the OER ecosystem, major platforms publish accessibility statements, maintain public conformance reports, and build WCAG compliance directly into their authoring tools. This accessibility-first approach to content creation is increasingly standard in the OER community.
At least one in five undergraduates report having a disability, and every student will encounter barriers to accessing course materials at some point. The extended timeline is a chance to build accessibility into how institutions work, not just check a compliance box. OER should be at the center of that approach, not excluded from it.
For more on OER and accessibility, including common myths and practical guidance, watch the recording of our recent webinar, OER and Accessibility Compliance: Separating Myth from Facts and visit our OER Accessibility Resources page.
