Miranda Lacy and Harold Rogers met as undergraduates at West Virginia State University and later enrolled together in West Virginia University’s online Master’s in Social Work program. Both are blind and say much of WVU’s online coursework — module pages, PDFs, readings and other digital documents — frequently fails to work with screen readers, the software that turns on-screen text into speech for blind users.
Rogers, 34, and Lacy, 43, describe encountering files with missing or mislabeled text, unlabeled images and poorly structured PDFs that make automated narration skip or garble essential material. Rogers demonstrates a course PDF that triggers repeated screen-reader errors and omits sections; Lacy says the problems have been so demoralizing she sometimes wants to throw her computer out the window. They say they spend more hours troubleshooting access barriers than learning the course content.
After trying to secure accommodations and negotiate with WVU for nearly two years — and after Rogers says he faced disciplinary action following an accommodation request — the two, with support from the National Federation of the Blind, filed a lawsuit alleging the university systematically denies blind students equal access to education. WVU declined to comment on pending litigation.
Their case comes as the Department of Justice issued a major update to the Americans with Disabilities Act requiring public entities, including colleges and universities, to meet specific technical standards for digital accessibility by following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). The rule is intended to make websites, mobile apps and other digital materials usable for people with diverse disabilities by improving color contrast, requiring captions, ensuring keyboard navigation and enforcing clearer structure and labeling for images and documents.
Jennifer Mathis, who led digital accessibility work at the DOJ and helped write the rule, called digital accessibility “a crisis” and said addressing it became a top priority for the department. While the ADA already applied to web content, the new rule supplies technical benchmarks that were previously lacking.
The rule sets staggered compliance deadlines: publicly funded entities serving 50,000 or more people must comply by April 24, while smaller institutions have until April 26, 2027. ADA compliance officers and accessibility consultants say the timeline has triggered intense planning at colleges, but implementing the standards is complex and resource-intensive. Ella Callow, an ADA compliance officer at UC Berkeley, says the rule overturns a longstanding model in which disabled students request accommodations after barriers arise; instead, content must be “born accessible.” Remodeling large, decentralized universities to meet that standard can take years.
Many campus accessibility teams are small and underfunded. Corbb O’Connor of Level Access, an accessibility firm, notes that teams often lack adequate budgets, staffing and authority to make institution-wide changes. Judith Risch, who worked on the rule at the Department of Education, points out that accessibility improvements—clearer structure, labeled images and captions—also improve usability for all students.
The rule also creates clearer legal criteria that could change how responsibility for accessible content is assigned across campuses, shifting ownership to faculty, web administrators and procurement staff. But there is no federal inspection program that will systematically audit compliance; enforcement will largely depend on complaints, litigation and advocacy. Disability-rights advocates worry that accountability may continue to fall on the people already most affected: disabled students who face barriers and have limited options.
That prospect helped drive Rogers and Lacy to sue. “If it’s not us to fight, then who’s gonna do it?” Rogers says. They are asking WVU to adopt policies that ensure digital course materials are accessible and to compensate them for the time they lost trying to access their education.
As the compliance dates approach, campus administrators report a surge of concern and questions. Accessibility officers say progress requires institutional commitment: dedicated budgets, centralized processes for creating and procuring accessible content, faculty training, and technical fixes across learning management systems and document workflows.
Rogers and Lacy, who still consider their undergraduate campus home, are continuing their degrees while pressing for change. They hope the new ADA rule will make digital learning truly equitable for future students and look forward to walking together at graduation this summer.