Complying with Digital Accessibility Standards

March 23, 2026

To: John Jay Faculty and Staff Members
Fm: Karol V. Mason, President
Re: Complying with Digital Accessibility Standards 

This memo shares John Jay’s initiatives to comply with federal and New York State digital accessibility standards, which apply to digital materials that a state or local government provides or makes available. 

As many of you know, the April 24, 2026 federal deadline applies both to legacy digital content and to the expectation that all new digital materials going forward be accessible. This includes image, PDF, Word, Excel, Google Slide and video files on or uploaded to a site as well as hyperlinks. It also includes content on webpages linked to from another site (like Dropbox or Google Drive). 

While we may not complete every aspect of this work by April 24, the college is working toward establishing clear prioritization for implementation, developing an implementation plan and demonstrating progress toward full compliance. We therefore ask each area of the College to work toward compliance in a thoughtful, practical and sustained way. Our goal is to ensure that the College has clear processes in place to identify, prioritize and address accessibility barriers as they arise. 

Implementing the new standards will help us support 

  • Student success and equity: about 20% of undergraduates report a disability, and more accessible websites help everyone access resources independently.
  • Research: federal grants increasingly require accessibility commitments.
  • User experience: Accessible design features, like clear navigation, high contrast, and alternative text, improve website usability for everyone. 

To support this effort, the College is focusing on several guiding principles: 

  • Prioritizing legacy materials that are essential for instruction or frequently used by students and the campus community.
  • Ensuring that all new digital materials created or uploaded going forward are accessible at the time they are posted.
  • Reviewing older or low-use content and considering whether it should be remediated, archived or replaced with accessible versions when needed.   
  • Developing processes for faculty, staff and students to report accessibility barriers so they can be addressed promptly.
  • Encouraging departments to consider how their units will prioritize and address accessibility of their digital content over time. 

Here are details about compliance of two key John Jay digital assets: 

  • Brightspace: ​​​Read FAQs about accessibility of materials on Brightspace​​​. 
     
  • Main John Jay website (www.jjay.cuny.edu): The web team is working with a vendor to identify and remediate issues that can be addressed on the back-end. This work should be completed by April 24, 2026. They are also working with site editors to do the same for front-end site content. The deadline for this is February 26, 2027. 

If you have questions or concerns about accessibility at John Jay, please email legalcounsel@jjay.cuny.edu.  

This is a significant amount of work, and I sincerely appreciate the time and effort it requires. Thank you for your patience and collaboration as we work to ensure compliance across the College.