About ADA Title II and IMT-1300

Compliance with ADA Title II and UC policy IMT-1300 is being coordinated by the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity (OEOD) in preparation for the upcoming DOJ and IMT-1300 deadlines. OEOD is working in conjunction with the Office of Information Technology (OIT), campus leadership, schools, and department heads to ensure the campus meets or exceeds required standards. UCI's Information Technology Accessibility Workgroup (ITAW) meets monthly to coordinate efforts, provide guidance, and educate the campus community about digital accessibility requirements and concerns.

All media, systems, and communications are expected to meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards unless qualified for exception (see below). Although these requirements have existed for many years, compliance enforcement has not been consistent. The new DOJ rule and recent revision to IMT-1300 are clear and cite specific compliance standards and deadlines.

While the intent of the law is to have everything fully accessible, it isn't practical to assume that everything can be made accessible by the given deadline, so certain exceptions are allowed. See Action Step 6: Refresh your understanding of the rule’s exceptions to see what may qualify for exception. For example, non-active archived content for record-keeping purposes created or last modified prior to the 2026 deadline is probably eligible for exception. If such a document were changed or modified after the deadline, however, it would need to meet accessibility standards.

NOTE: Although we should assess what qualifies for exception and follow-up accordingly, we should also keep in mind that the goal is to maximize accessibility for as much as possible by subscribing to these 3 accessibility principles:

1. First, we should train staff now so everything produced, procured, or published from this point forward is accessible.
2. Second, we want to prioritize 'important' things in existing content and systems such as anything which is required, related to safety, or frequently accessed, e.g. home pages and navigation.
3. Lastly, we want to make it easy for people to report accessibility issues to us and ask for help by linking to accessibility.uci.edu or a custom accessibility information page.