Governments nationwide are working to make digital services accessible to all constituents, in part as a result of the April update to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires state and local governments ensure accessibility of all digital content over the next two or three years.
The update came by way of a final rule from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), refreshing 1990 ADA legislation to support access to government in the digital age. For jurisdictions serving 50,000 residents or more — like the state of Virginia — the updates must be made within two years of the publication of the rule.
“The first step, of course, was to get ahead of it from the governance standpoint,” said Joshua Jones, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency’s (VITA) program lead for website modernization efforts, who explained the state revised its policy to align with federal Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Website modernization is a major lift, and to complete this initiative, Jones said VITA is partnering with other state agencies and providing an oversight role.
“With this effort in particular, we want to take that a step further and be more of a helping hand in actually providing the tools and providing the resources to agencies,” Jones said.
Agencies “didn’t know what they didn’t know,” Jones said, indicating he observed a need for focused analyses of how websites were performing and how they could be made more accessible. To help improve this understanding, VITA used an accessibility testing software tool to scan websites and identify actionable improvements to ensure an accessible user experience. Now, agencies can use the tool to see the end target as defined by WCAG.
The DOJ update transformed the process of meeting accessibility standards, Jones said, as previously, there was not a well-defined, national standard for accessibility: “Now, there’s clear guidelines that we can see, and we can push out to the agencies and make sure they understand — so policy, training, guidance and clear understanding are all big parts of it.”
The major constraint state agencies face is limited resources. To comply with the DOJ rule, Jones said, agencies must now “do more with less.” For the state of Virginia, Jones is helping manage this challenge by leveraging the project budget to purchase an accessibility tool all agencies can use, so that their budgets can remain focused on critical operations. By centralizing the tool and support, all agencies have the necessary resources for this work.
With tools in hands, agency staff must also learn how to integrate accessibility best practices into processes. To tackle this challenge, Jones is aiming to add accessibility training as a requirement for any employee who creates public content.
The broader website modernization effort includes other functions such as search engine optimization and analytics, but accessibility is a key part.
The next step is translation. According to Jones, only around 30 percent of Virginia's state websites currently have language translation. Virginia’s most common languages have been identified in state standards as the ones that should be supported, and VITA will provide a translation tool to make content available in those 10 languages on all websites.
Adding multilingual content, Jones said, should help the state connect with populations that weren’t already engaged. His advice for other agencies as they work toward the April 2026 deadline established by the DOJ rule is to get started right away. The creation of a strategic plan can guide that work, and it starts with conversations.
Work thus far has made it clear, Jones said, that modernization is not a project that a government can complete and walk away from — but rather, an ongoing effort that will require consideration any time new content is created or added to government websites.
“This is how folks engage with your agency,” he said, “so, make it a priority, and start today.”
