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A last-minute change from the Department of Justice (DOJ) has outraged disabled people and disability rights groups and could affect access to the ballot box come the midterm elections this November. The agency issued an interim final rule on April 20, pushing back a planned April 24, 2026, deadline for large municipalities to ensure their apps and online offerings are accessible in accordance with certain technical standards.

“It is outrageous that the Justice Department thinks that they can delay this regulation for one more year,” Chris Danielsen, a spokesperson for the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), told Truthout. “This is a real betrayal of the promise of the ADA and the promise of equal access to our government that applies to all Americans.”

Ensuring access to the websites and mobile apps of government entities is required under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, which forbids discrimination based on disability in state and local government services. Since 1996, the DOJ has consistently held that the law applies to digital content.

A vast number of state and local government services are now online, including forms, payment processors, and information from election offices, courts, public hospitals, parks, libraries, utilities, transit agencies, school districts, universities, and more. Those online services often lack basic features, such as zoomable content, high-contrast text, keyboard navigation, autocomplete options, or compatibility with screen readers, which would make them accessible to users with certain visual, motor, or cognitive disabilities. Over 70 million Americans have a disability; 7.6 million have a visual disability.

The DOJ, which is responsible for issuing regulations to clarify the rights and obligations of those covered by the ADA, has been slow to issue specific regulations for online content. The rule that was meant to take effect this April was only finalized in 2024, more than three decades after the landmark disability rights legislation was signed into law. Initially, the new rule gave state and local governments in cities of 50,000 or more residents until this April to comply. Smaller municipalities were given until next April. Under the interim final rule, both deadlines have been extended by a year.

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The change comes after some school districts, small governments, and other affected entities lobbied for it. The National Association of Counties, an organization representing over 3,000 county governments, cited costs and “technical difficulties” in a March letter to the Office of Management and Budget advocating for a deadline extension and other changes to the rule, including exemptions for municipalities with less than 10,000 residents and a cure period that would allow out-of-compliance municipalities to address issues without penalties.

The DOJ has not made further changes at this point but indicated that it “plans to........

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