TL;DR: Title II compliance is not just a regulatory requirement; it is a strategic lever for retention, risk reduction, and institutional competitiveness. Investing in accessibility improves the student experience, supports persistence, and delivers value beyond compliance.

Shifting focus: Compliance & Student Retention.

When leadership understands the relationship between Title II compliance and student retention in higher education, regardless of the deadlines, they rush to comply. Title II compliance supports retention, reduces risk, and improves competitiveness.

Higher Education is greatly affected by the ADA. Recent activity in Title II rulemaking and changes in deadlines have brought accessibility into acute focus for many colleges. The focus, however, is on compliance. What’s not discussed or always understood is the great benefits that complying with Title II brings to the institutions.

Why Student Retention is important

 In 2010, U.S. higher education reached a peak in student enrollment. It has fallen steadily since that peak, increasing the importance of student retention.

• Total postsecondary enrollment fell about 15% between 2010 and 2021, leaving roughly 2.7 million fewer students than a decade earlier. This decline is documented in national education analyses drawing on NCES/IPEDS data.
• NCES enrollment‑rate change for 18–24 year‑olds: The college enrollment rate for 18– to 24‑year‑olds dropped from 41% in 2012 to 39% in 2022, showing a measurable decline in the traditional college‑going population.
• COVID‑19 accelerated declines in 2020–2021, but National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) reports show undergraduate enrollments grew in 2023–2024, driven by continuing/returning students and community‑college gains; however, freshman (first‑time) enrollment remained down in preliminary fall reports (e.g., freshmen down ~5% in early fall 2024 estimates).
• Demographers and higher‑ed analysts warn of a shrinking pool of 18‑year‑olds (projected declines in high‑school graduates through the 2030s), which will further pressure enrollments and institutional finances. Multiple analyses and forecasts (WICHE, Ruffalo Noel Levitz, and others) document this risk.

One of the biggest questions I hear from my higher-education clients and at higher-education conferences is, ” How do we increase student retention?” With a decline in enrollment, keeping students through to graduation is more important to higher education. If retention is a strategic priority, the next question is whether accessibility, as is required by Title II, meaningfully affects the student experience that drives persistence.

How Title II Compliance Supports Student Retention.

A report by the National Disability Center for Student Access, Access Leads to Achievement national report: A National Report on Disabled College Student Experiences, shows that students who experience fewer digital barriers report better overall campus experiences, and positive student experience is one of the strongest predictors of retention. The report found that accessibility challenges are systemic and strongly shape the “full campus experience.”

• The report also found that institutions with stronger accessibility practices score higher on the Campus Accessibility Measure (CAM), and students at these institutions report factors linked to persistence. A correlation that the researchers noted.
  • fewer barriers
  • better engagement
  • more positive academic experiences.
• Students frequently report that technical issues and inaccessible digital environments directly impact their learning experience. In one multi‑institution study, Tech Troubles: How Technology-Student Interaction Impact Retention, 70% of in‑person students and 79% of online students said technology problems affected their learning. These issues included outdated software, poor connectivity, and digital literacy barriers. These barriers disproportionately affect students who already face retention risks.
• Research on emerging educational technologies demonstrates that digital access and usability influence student performance, retention, and ethical engagement. While not exclusively about accessibility, the findings reinforce that digital friction, whether from inaccessible tools or poor design, undermines persistence.
• Students with disabilities report that inaccessible course materials, LMS structures, and campus systems create ongoing barriers that accumulate over time, increasing frustration and reducing academic belonging, two well‑documented predictors of withdrawal. This theme appears repeatedly in interviews and qualitative findings from the Access Leads to Achievement report.  

All these points strongly support retaining students with disabilities, and that should be enough. Supporting students with disabilities is the right thing to do, but there are also strong business cases for supporting this market:

• According to the World Health Organization, 16% of the global population has a disability. That is 1.3 billion people worldwide.
• The global market was estimated at $13 Trillion in 2025.

This demonstrates that there is a significant segment of the market with significant means that higher education can open its doors to. All leading to:

• Improved market perception that attracts more students.
• Improved loyalty that encourages retention.
• Improved satisfaction, pride, and community involvement for faculty, staff, and students.
• Open access to a new and loyal learner base.
• Competitive advantage

While we’ve always understood that shutting out people with disabilities is a human rights issue, we now see that it is also a business issue with a potentially high impact on the students that can be attracted and retained.

However, if we dig just a bit deeper, we uncover the likelihood of compliance with Title II of the ADA having implications that go far beyond students with disabilities.

Title II’s Effect on All Students

It’s been clearly shown that when accommodations are made for people with disabilities, those accommodations improve things for people without disabilities as well. There is even a name for it, “The curb cut effect.” The curb cut effect is a phenomenon whereby the curb cuts created for wheelchair users were observed being intentionally used by non-wheelchair users for strollers, shopping carts, and roller bags, and, in many cases, without an obvious reason. Since then, the phenomenon has been observed in many other ways.

It’s common now to have televisions in bars and restaurants. Because of the crowds and noise, the sound is typically off, and the closed captions are on. Closed captions are intended to ensure people with hearing impairments can understand the auditory content of a program. However, if you hear fine but have kept up with a game or the news while enjoying a drink or a meal in a restaurant, I’m sure you appreciate them as well.

Further, a 2025 AP-NORC Center poll found 33% of U.S. adults always or often use subtitles when watching TV or movies. The reasons for this are myriad, including:

• Noisy environments
• Improved comprehension
• Understanding accents or foreign language content.

A 2019 Verizon Media/Publicis Media study found that 80% of caption users have no learning impairments.

We could keep going with other examples of accommodations used by an audience that wasn’t part of the original intent. Hopefully, it is clear that accommodating people with disabilities has wide benefits across the larger population and does so in ways that are not always predictable. So, when we look at the studies that support the retention and attraction of students with disabilities, we realize that what the study finds is likely only the direct and obvious surface of the benefits. In reality, there is much more going on beyond the direct impact on people with disabilities that may contribute to an even greater increase in student retention.

How Higher Education Can Comply with Title II of the ADA

• The ADA Title II Countdown: Is Your Agency Ready for the 2026 Compliance Deadline?
• How to Take Advantage of the Title II Extension
• Title II FAQ: Top 10 Questions and Answers

Higher Ed’s Unique Challenges

Rather than rehashing the information in the above resources, I want to tackle some of the challenges unique to higher ed. On the surface, compliance can seem basic:

• Archive education content
• Audit educational content.
• Make documents accessible
• Train educators and staff

You get the idea. All good places to start. However, accessibility in practice is way different from theory.  Moreover, the high-level actions that big-box accessibility companies lead organizations to believe are what they need, like audits and training, scratch the surface at best. Again, good places to start, but a commoditized service or platform is not going to be a full solution given the unique and changing needs of a large learning institution.

The Audit & Platform Pitfalls

It’s not that you don’t need audits and platforms; we perform audits and recommend platforms to our higher education clients all the time. The danger is that misuse and overconfidence in these solutions cause even more trouble. Yes, they will all promise that they’re all you need, but if they’re treated like set-it-and-forget-it solutions, which they often are, they can cause as many issues as they resolve.

What Audits & Platforms Do Well

Audits are essential for initially bringing digital assets like course material, documents, and public-facing websites into conformance and gaining an initial understanding of the specific challenges and gaps associated with making and keeping those things accessible. Platforms can be great ways to start organizing some of the efforts and monitor ongoing accessibility.

Where Audits & Platforms Fall Short

We can’t dig into all the issues here, particularly because many of them will be unique to the institution.  We can, however, look at examples that will illustrate the need to think beyond these basic products and services.

Imagine you implement automated testing within your learning management system. Given that all schools have several educators creating content, all with different needs, skills, and abilities, they are going to start to rely heavily on what the automation is telling them. Automation can only catch 30 – 40% of the failures to the WCAG success criteria (even if those magic AI letters are somewhere in the tool). What’s more, what automation can’t catch can mean that the material is not at all accessible. Reliance on that solution alone is a big risk:

• What happens when content passing the automated check isn’t actually accessible?
• What happens when an educator can’t get accessible content to pass the automated check?
• What happens when an educator links third-party content that is hidden from the checker to the course content?
• What happens when an educator knows the content is not accessible but doesn’t know what to do?
• What happens when content that takes 30 minutes to create takes half a day to make accessible?

What’s Needed Beyond the Basics

To truly build a sustainable accessibility practice for conformance to regulations and accessibility for faculty, staff, and students, you need expertise. This may come in the form of an accessibility consultant, or it may be in-house expertise, or both. Regardless of subject matter, experts who understand accessibility and compliance at a deep level will ensure you’re taking the best advantage of your audits and platforms, put in place a strategy that will create efficiency and sustainability, and help you with the edge cases and challenges that arise. Possible activities may include:

• Maturity Assessment
• Strategic Road Map
• Prioritization assistance
• Understanding strategies for risk mitigation and building defensibility
• Technical and strategic help desk
• Embedded support
• Ongoing education specific to the institution’s challenges.

A Case Study

The problem is that everyone was working toward the score and not true accessibility. Further, some of their educators relied on the original format, which created several other issues and an overall resentment of accessibility best practices from the affected group… can of worms all the way open.

In this case, the platform was creating a bigger problem than it was solving. Not the platform’s fault, it was all in the way it was being used and interpreted. The platform itself was not enough. Strategy & additional resources were needed.

To solve this, we brought all the stakeholders to the table: leadership, legal, the educators, and us as subject matter experts. Together, we identified all the issues and concerns. This enabled us to put solutions in place that not only led to accessible learning materials but also to a motivated and appreciative faculty and staff. The accessibility was real, as was risk reduction and sustainable and efficient practices.

I could go on with examples, but I think the point is made. Complying with Title II and making your practice efficient and effective, maintaining that compliance and the overall accessibility of course materials and content, takes more than the commoditized audits and platforms prevalent in the market today. It takes expert strategy, listening to concerns, and putting in a little extra work up front to make things smooth and easy long term.

Conclusion

Compliance with anything can feel like a burden. Unfortunately, negative feelings toward compliance can obfuscate other benefits. In the case of higher education, the implications for higher student retention have given way to inconveniences and panic associated with requirements like Title II. All this has been exacerbated by last-minute extensions, which introduce significant risk for institutions that rushed to meet deadlines and are now wondering what the next few years should look like.

Don’t let indecisive rulemaking get in the way of good business. Work toward sustainable accessibility now. Institutions should be cautious about treating audits, scanners, or platforms as complete solutions. Sustainable compliance requires governance, training, process design, and expert oversight aligned to the institutional context.

Accessibility is not just about avoiding penalties. It is a student success strategy, a retention lever, and a long-term institutional capability.

Take the time to partner with an accessibility consultant who has the skill to understand you and help you build the unique strategies that will lead to success and efficiency. It’s then that doing all you need to, to comply with Title II and other regulations, will be a positive that supports your school, its faculty, and most importantly, its students.