On April 8, 2024, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a federal rule to ensure web content and mobile apps are accessible for people with disabilities. The update to regulations for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) were subsequently published on April 24th by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

The update calls for all state and local governments to verify that their web content is accessible for those with vision, hearing, cognitive, and manual dexterity disabilities. To do so will require public K-12 and higher education institutions to do a thorough inventory of their digital materials, including mobile apps and social media postings, to make sure they are in compliance.

Presently, students, staff, and parents who are deaf may be not be able to access information in web videos and other digital presentations lacking captions. Similarly, those with low vision might not be able to read websites or mobile apps that do not allow text to be resized or provide enough contrast. Likewise, people with limited manual dexterity or vision disabilities who use assistive technology can find it difficult to access sites that do not support keyboard alternatives for mouse commands. To that end, the new DOJ rule aims to make sure that no person is denied access to government services, programs, or activities because of their disability.

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Concerns over negative impacts to students’ out-of-school public insurance benefits appear to be delaying the release of a U.S. Department of Education (USDE) final rule that is supposed to ease the process of obtaining parental consent for Medicaid school-based health services. While some worry that children’s school-based services can adversely affect outside services, there appears to be no concrete examples of such. In fact, parental consent forms allowing for school-based Medicaid billing explicitly state that such permissions will not affect lifetime coverage or any other insured benefits.

However, last August 26th organizations said in a letter to the USDE that, “Parents are routinely informed, sometimes even after services in other settings have already been rendered, that the Medicaid agency has deemed them duplicative with school-based services and their coverage is denied.”

The final rule was expected to be released in January and there is still no release date in sight.

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On March 22, 2024, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona sent a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) informing schools that “there is still more work to do” to address chronic student absenteeism as the 2024-25 approaches.
Thus far, many school districts have increased home visits and utilized dashboards to effectively track attendance.
In his letter, Sec. Cardona urged schools to use accountability systems to measure chronic absenteeism to identify schools for support and improvement. He also enjoined each state to commit to helping students attend and engage in school daily, ensure more students attend regularly for the rest of the 2023-24 school year, and to lay a foundation now for more progress in the 2024-25 school year.
Click here to access the DCL.