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Accessibility Industry Update: February 2026

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away, there’s no shortage of urgency in the accessibility world. From enforcement actions ramping up on both sides of the Atlantic to a growing legislative tug-of-war over who gets to sue who, this month’s update has plenty to dig into. Let’s get to it.

As always, let us know if you think we’ve missed something, or share the link with your colleagues or partners who may benefit from some or all of this information. You can also sign up to receive these accessibility updates via email.

Contents:

Upcoming Conferences
and Events

  • axe-con 2026: February 24-25, 2026 – Virtual, Free. Deque’s annual accessibility conference returns with speakers from GitHub, Microsoft, Meta, Red Hat, Atlassian, and AWS across four tracks: Design, Dev, Org Success, and Wildcard. With over 35,000 confirmed registrants across over 12,000 organizations, if there’s one accessibility adjacent conference you attend this year, it should probably be this one.
  • CSUN Assistive Technology Conference: March 2026 – Anaheim, CA. The premier assistive technology conference.

The Title II Countdown: Two Months to Go

The biggest story in accessibility right now is the approaching deadline for ADA Title II web accessibility compliance. State and local governments with populations of 50,000 or more must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA for their websites, mobile apps, PDFs, and other digital content by April 24, 2026. Smaller entities have until April 2027.

This is the first time the DOJ has adopted a specific technical standard for digital content under the ADA, and the clock is ticking. Despite questions about how the current administration might handle enforcement, there has been no indication of delay or rollback.

Who’s Scrambling

Schools and local governments are among those working hardest to meet the deadline. K-12 Dive reports widespread unpreparedness across school districts, with the largest barriers being a lack of staff awareness (97%) and expertise/training (95%).

When it comes to guidance, the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) published new digital accessibility guidance to help state and local governments meet the requirements. Notably, the report warns agencies to “be wary of vague and/or AI-generated responses” in VPATs – a sign of how pervasive AI-generated compliance documents have become.

The ADA.gov first steps guide was updated in late January and remains the best starting point for entities getting their bearings. If you work with public sector clients, now is the time to start those conversations.

Our Thoughts

Two months is not a lot of time for organizations that haven’t started. The harsh reality is that many won’t be fully compliant by April 24. That said, demonstrating a good-faith effort and having a documented plan matters immensely.

We have spoken to countless organizations and institutions that have unique approaches to meeting the deadline with preparedness varying wildly throughout. Uncertainty abounds, but the worst posture is the vague hope that government enforcement will be minimal, so why improve?

For those of us in the testing and remediation space, this is the most significant compliance deadline we’ve seen in years next to the EAA.

2026 Predictions: Where the Industry Thinks We’re Headed

The start of a new year means prediction season, and several voices across the accessibility space have weighed in on what they believe 2026 will bring.

WebAIM’s John North published a grounded six-point forecast, while Mantis & Co. assembled perspectives from Anna Thielke, Damian Sian (Adobe), Eric Bailey (GitHub), and Kai Wong (Teladoc Health). Despite coming from different corners of the field, the themes are remarkably consistent.

  • AI will help, not replace. This is the one prediction everyone agrees on. AI tools are making accessibility testing faster and helping practitioners prototype solutions they couldn’t build before (Sian describes building custom accessibility tooling with Cursor AI that would have previously required an engineering team). However, no one trusts AI to evaluate whether an experience actually works for a real person. As WebAIM puts it: “Organizations that pair smarter tools with knowledgeable human reviewers will gain speed and consistency. Those that expect AI to do it for them will continue to miss critical barriers—just faster than before.”
  • Compliance pressure is real, but so is the risk posed by performative accessibility. The EAA deadline has passed, ADA Title II is two months out, and WCAG 2.2 is becoming the procurement baseline. Bailey draws a sharp parallel to GDPR cookie consent banners, where organizations that couldn’t get their house in order spawned a cottage industry of third-party solutions that often failed to deliver what they promised. He warns the same pattern is emerging for accessibility, with overlay-like “managed solutions” running in to fill the gap. The shared fear here is that compliance activity is all too easy to fake at the sacrifice of genuine improvement.
  • Vibe coding is accelerating the problem. Thielke raises a concern that cuts across the AI optimism: as AI-assisted development concentrates more power with fewer individuals, fewer voices inform what gets built. Speed amplifies existing accessibility gaps, and accountability becomes harder to pin down when code is generated rather than authored thoughtfully.
  • The human element matters more than ever. Wong predicts accessibility education will hit an all-time high, with fresh voices continuing to push the field forward. Authentic storytelling and lived experience will become key differentiators as AI-generated content floods the space.

The Converge Accessibility January 2026 legal update is out and packed with developments.

New Jersey signed S 1016 into law on January 20 (Governor Murphy’s last day in office) requiring state agencies to meet WCAG 2.0 or the latest version at level A/AA . This represents another state codifying web accessibility standards for government, and a trend worth watching.

On the litigation front, the anti-accessibility-lawsuit movement continues to gain steam. Utah introduced SB 68 in January, creating a cause of action allowing businesses to challenge web accessibility lawsuits as “abusive” and seek attorney’s fees and punitive damages. This follows Missouri’s batch of roughly 10 near-identical bills introduced in December 2025. Converge notes that Utah’s bill may be something of a “political stunt” given that the state has among the lowest web accessibility lawsuit numbers in the country, but the pattern of state legislatures pushing back is an undeniable one. At the federal level, Congressman Graves from Missouri introduced the Protecting Small Businesses from Predatory Website Lawsuits Act in early February, which would give businesses a cure period before ADA website litigation can proceed.

In another federal development, Karl Groves analyzed the newly introduced “ADA 30 Days to Comply Act”, a bipartisan bill from Rep. Mike Lawler (R, NY) and Rep. Lou Correa (D, CA) that would require a formal notice-and-cure process before ADA lawsuits can proceed. Businesses would get 30 days to respond with a remediation plan after receiving written notice of barriers. Groves acknowledges the appeal of a structured pathway but raises concerns about potential abuse (bad actors could use the cure period as a perpetual shield), and the burden of initiating the process falls on people with disabilities rather than on businesses to be proactive.

Meanwhile, the DOJ made waves by filing a rare statement of interest opposing the Fashion Nova ADA class action settlement. The department argued the proposed $5.15 million settlement directed too much money to attorneys ($2.52M) and too little to actual accessibility remediation. In a particularly ironic twist, the settlement claims website itself (fashionnovaaccessibilitysettlement.com) has numerous accessibility issues that materially impact blind screen reader users (as confirmed in mid-February 2026). In addition, there’s the fact that the lead attorney had filed over 500 near-identical class actions between 2019 and 2023. The overwhelming signal here is that the DOJ under the current administration is actively scrutinizing plaintiff-side settlement practices, which could chill some litigation activity.

The courts continue to wrestle with the nexus question, which essentially asks whether a business’s website or app has a sufficient connection (a “nexus”) to its physical brick-and-mortar location to warrant accessibility requirements.

In Wisconsin, a federal judge issued back-to-back default judgments in Cazares v. Acro Int’l and Hippe v. Me Too LLC, affirming that the ADA covers online-only stores without a physical location – consistent with the 7th Circuit’s longstanding position. But in Missouri, the same judge dismissed two cases on the same day: one against a restaurant with a purely informational website (ruling the site didn’t offer goods or services), and another where the plaintiff lived 250 miles away with no concrete plans to visit. The circuit split on website accessibility jurisdiction shows no signs of resolving.

Across the Atlantic, EAA enforcement is picking up. France saw disability organizations file legal action against four major grocery retailers for inaccessible digital services. Norway’s health authority imposed daily fines of approximately $5,360 on a medical app that failed to fix accessibility issues. Sweden and the Netherlands are conducting compliance reviews, and the Czech Republic plans to publish lists of non-compliant products. Overall, enforcement is still ramping up, even as the absence of high-profile penalties has created a false sense of security for some.

Finally, nine states led by Texas renewed their challenge to the Section 504 integration mandate, targeting Olmstead protections that ensure services are provided in the most integrated setting. This is a significant legal and policy battle that extends well beyond digital accessibility but speaks to the broader landscape disability rights advocates are navigating right now.

What We’ve Been Reading

Jobs and Opportunities

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That’s a wrap for this month. As always, let us know if you think we’ve missed something, or share the link with your colleagues or partners who may benefit from some or all of this information. You can also sign up to receive these accessibility updates via email.

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