Publicly available school websites — caption or censor?

On May 9, the Justice Department issued a Supplemental Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking postponing issuing regulations addressing website accessibility under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. DOJ previously postponed proposed rulemaking for websites under Title III until it completes Title II rulemaking. DOJ solicited additional public comment through August 8, putting off new web accessibility regulations until at least 2018, after the next president takes office. But DOJ's notice made clear its current view of web accessibility requirements for both public and private postsecondary institutions. Even more importantly, DOJ has asserted its position in litigation brought by the National Association of the Deaf against Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, seeking to establish by court ruling what it has not yet made law by rulemaking. Stated simply, DOJ believes that unless postsecondary institutions preemptively caption before posting any audiovisual or audio web content made available by anyone to the public on their websites, the schools violate the ADA unless they can prove that to do so for particular content would be an undue burden.