Programs, Services, and Activities & The ADA

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in everyday activities. Since its enactment in 1990, it has reshaped how government agencies, businesses, and nonprofits operate, from how they build their facilities to how they deliver services, run programs, and structure day-to-day activities.

More than 1 in 4 U.S. adults (over 70 million people) live with a disability. That means nearly one in seven Americans may need some form of accommodation to fully participate in public life. If your organization offers programs, services, or activities to the public, the ADA almost certainly applies, and understanding what it requires is the first step toward genuine compliance.

This article breaks down what the ADA means by "programs, services, and activities," who must comply, and what practical steps your organization should take right now.

Key Takeaways

• The ADA’s reach is broad: Title II applies to all services, programs, or activities of state and local governments, from adoption services to zoning regulation. Title III covers private businesses and nonprofits.
• Equal opportunity is the standard: Equal opportunity means a person with a disability has the same chance to get a job, receive services from a state or local government, or access a business or nonprofit organization as someone without a disability. Therefore, measure your compliance against that benchmark, not simply whether disabled people can technically get inside your building.
• Reasonable modifications are mandatory: One of the central requirements of both Title II and Title III of the ADA is the obligation to make “reasonable modifications in policies, practices, and procedures” to avoid unnecessarily excluding individuals with disabilities. Start by auditing your existing policies for hidden barriers.
• Digital programs count too: The 2024 DOJ Final Rule requires state and local government entities to make their services, programs, and activities offered through websites and mobile applications accessible to people with disabilities. If your public-facing services live online, your website must be accessible.
• Litigation risk is real and growing: Seyfarth Shaw’s ADA litigation data found that more than 8,600 ADA lawsuits were filed in 2025, the majority targeting a lack of accessibility in public spaces and online environments. Therefore, proactive compliance is far cheaper than reactive legal defense.

Quick-Start Prioritization Framework

Before diving into each compliance area, use this table to identify where to start based on your organization type and current gap:

Start here if you are:

• A small business or nonprofit: Begin with a policy audit, review every written rule that governs how customers or members interact with your services, and identify any that could exclude people with disabilities.
• A state or local government entity: Designate an ADA Coordinator, conduct a self-evaluation, and inventory your digital services for WCAG 2.1 AA conformance.
• A healthcare, education, or recreation provider: Prioritize effective communication and reasonable modification planning, since these sectors face the highest volume of ADA complaints.

What the ADA Means by “Programs, Services, and Activities”

A Broader Definition Than You Might Expect

Many organizations assume the ADA only applies to physical buildings, ramps, accessible restrooms, and parking spaces. That assumption is dangerously incomplete. The term “program” under the ADA is much broader. Under U.S. federal law, specifically the ADA, program access extends to all experiences offered in park and recreation settings by state and local government units. That principle applies across virtually every sector.

Title II requires state and local governments to give people with disabilities an equal opportunity to benefit from all their programs, services, and activities, including public education, employment, transportation, recreation, health care, social services, courts, voting, and town meetings. If your agency touches any of those areas, program accessibility applies.

Title II vs. Title III: Who Covers What

The ADA’s two most relevant titles draw a clear line between the public and private sectors.

Title II protects qualified individuals with disabilities from discrimination based on disability in services, programs, and activities provided by state and local government entities. Title II extends the prohibition on discrimination established by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to all activities of state and local governments, regardless of whether these entities receive federal financial assistance.

Title III prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in the activities of places of public accommodation, businesses that are generally open to the public and that fall into one of 12 categories listed in the ADA, such as restaurants, movie theaters, schools, day care facilities, recreation facilities, and doctors’ offices.

In practice, three categories of organizations are exempt from Title III: religious entities (churches, mosques, synagogues, and the programs they operate), private membership clubs that are genuinely not open to the general public, and government-run entities, which are covered separately under Title II. Every other private business or nonprofit that serves the public should assume Title III applies.

Pro Tip: When in doubt about whether a specific program or service is covered, apply the "public benefit" test, ask whether a person without a disability can access or benefit from it. If the answer is yes, a person with a disability must have an equal chance to do the same.

Reasonable Modifications: The Practical Heart of Compliance

What a Reasonable Modification Looks Like

A reasonable modification is a change in a policy, practice, or procedure that is made to offer equal access and equal opportunity for a person with a disability. These changes are often low-cost or even free; the barrier is usually awareness, not budget.

The ADA National Network’s factsheet on reasonable modifications offers illustrative examples: a medical office may need to complete a medical form for a patient who cannot hold a pencil, and a restaurant kitchen may be asked to cut food into smaller pieces before serving. For government entities, examples of reasonable modifications include allowing service animals in public spaces, including on the decks around public pools.

Many routine policies, practices, and procedures are adopted by public entities without thinking about how they might affect people with disabilities. Sometimes a practice that seems neutral makes it difficult or impossible for a person with a disability to participate. A concrete illustration: a person who uses a walker has difficulty waiting in line to vote; election officials must permit the person to sit and note where he is in line, so he does not lose his place.

The Limits: Fundamental Alteration and Undue Burden

Reasonable modifications have limits. Title II public entities, such as a public library or county social service office, do not have to make a modification that would fundamentally alter a service, program, or activity that they must provide to the public. A fundamental alteration is a change so significant to a policy, practice, or procedure that it would change the nature of what is offered.

Determining when, where, and how to implement appropriate policy and practice modifications often requires engagement and interaction between individuals with disabilities and program and business operators. Operators can get ahead of the curve by reviewing their policies, practices, and procedures to ensure they remain meaningful and up to date.

Pro Tip: Train your frontline staff, not just managers, on how to respond to modification requests. Training employees so they know and understand policies, as well as how to respond to requests from individuals with disabilities (which in some cases may mean contacting a supervisor or manager), is also important. A well-trained employee at the front desk can resolve most requests before they become complaints.

Effective Communication: Making Information Accessible

The Core Obligation

Inaccessible communication is one of the most common ADA compliance failures, and one of the most fixable.

The ADA requires public and private entities to provide auxiliary aids and services to ensure individuals with speech, hearing, and vision disabilities can understand what is said or written and communicate effectively. The goal is to ensure that communication with people with disabilities is as effective as communication with people without disabilities.

Auxiliary aids and services include equipment or services a person needs to access and understand aural information and to engage in effective communication. For example, the rule includes qualified interpreters, computer-aided transcription services (also called CART), written materials, assistive listening devices, captioning, or other effective methods of making aural information and communication accessible.

Who Pays, and Who Chooses

A common misconception is that individuals with disabilities must arrange or pay for their own communication accommodations. A public entity or private business must pay for the auxiliary aid or service unless it can demonstrate that it would be an undue financial burden. In that case, the entity must provide a different auxiliary aid or service to provide effective communication.

Importantly, when an auxiliary aid or service is requested by someone with a disability, you must provide an opportunity for that person to request the auxiliary aids and services of their choice, and you must give primary consideration to the individual’s choice. Public entities and private businesses cannot require an individual with a disability to bring an interpreter.

Program Accessibility for Physical Spaces

The “Entirety” Standard

Program accessibility is a cornerstone concept within Title II. It means that public entities must operate their services, programs, and activities so that, when viewed in their entirety, they are accessible to and usable by people with disabilities. This does not necessarily mandate that every physical facility or part of a facility must be accessible. Instead, the entity needs to ensure that each service, program, or activity, when viewed in its entirety, is accessible.

This distinction matters enormously. A common misconception is that older buildings are “grandfathered” under the ADA, so if a building dates from before 1992, there is no requirement to provide access to activities that occur inside the building. This is completely false. Title II requires that when a public entity offers programs, services, or activities in a physically inaccessible location, it must still provide equal access to those activities.

Structural Solutions and Their Limits

The 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design set minimum scoping and technical requirements for newly designed, constructed, or altered state and local government facilities, public accommodations, and commercial facilities to be readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities.

Under Title III, public accommodations must remove barriers in existing buildings where it is easy to do so without much difficulty or expense. Under Title II, the standard shifts from “readily achievable” to the broader program access standard, meaning governments must find a way to make the program accessible even if the building itself cannot be immediately restructured.

Pro Tip: One survey found that 60.4% of respondents with mobility disabilities had experienced serious difficulty or been completely unable to enter a public building due to missing wheelchair ramps, automatic doors, or elevators. If your building has these gaps, identify which programs run there and determine immediately whether you can relocate them to an accessible venue or deliver them via an alternate accessible method.

Administrative Requirements and Digital Accessibility

Self-Evaluation, Transition Plans, and ADA Coordinators

The ADA requires a municipality, no matter the size, to review all aspects of its programs, services, and activities for compliance, often through a Self-Evaluation and Transition Plan.

Title II requires all public agencies, regardless of size, to ensure that their services, programs, and activities are accessible to persons with disabilities. Compliance includes conducting a self-evaluation of building facilities, rights-of-way facilities, and communications to identify any accessibility obstacles or issues that need to be addressed. In addition, public entities that employ 50 or more persons must designate an ADA Coordinator, establish a grievance procedure to promptly resolve accessibility concerns, and establish a transition plan to take the steps necessary to achieve compliance with the ADA.

Regularly updating self-evaluations and transition plans can help government entities monitor their compliance and stay on track with making changes to improve accessibility. If a state and local government entity has not yet conducted a self-evaluation, it should do so to identify barriers in its programs, activities, and services. A self-evaluation helps government entities identify areas of non-compliance and develop specific strategies to bring all policies and practices into compliance.

Tools like BlueDAG’s compliance management platform help government entities and other organizations organize, track, and document their self-evaluation and transition plan work systematically.

The Digital Frontier: Websites, Apps, and WCAG 2.1 AA

New regulations require all services, programs, and activities of state or local governments to be accessible to people with disabilities, including public sector websites, online systems, and digital resources. As part of the final rule, the DOJ adopted Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA and incorporated them by reference into Title II.

Compliance deadlines have been adjusted. For state and local government entities with a total population of 50,000 or more, the compliance deadline has been extended from April 24, 2026 to April 26, 2027. For public entities with a total population of less than 50,000 and any special district government, the compliance deadline is extended from April 26, 2027 to April 26, 2028.

Even private organizations should pay attention. In 2025, ADA Title III web accessibility lawsuits filed in federal court reached their highest volume in three years, according to Seyfarth Shaw. That trend is a direct signal: if your organization’s website gates access to programs, services, or activities, inaccessible digital content is now a primary litigation target.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Assuming Physical Access Equals Full Compliance

Organizations often invest in ramps and accessible parking, then assume they’re fully compliant. Physical access is necessary but not sufficient. Programs are required to address the highly individualized needs of people with disabilities. Since there is no single all-encompassing description of a person with a disability, programs must address access needs on an individual basis. Someone may have full physical access to your building but still be excluded from a program by an inaccessible application form, a lack of captioning, or a policy that was never reviewed for disability impact.

Treating Digital Services as Optional

Most Americans today rely on the web to manage their daily lives, including the more than 70 million U.S. adults with disabilities. Yet many websites and apps were not built with these users’ needs in mind. Web accessibility barriers can block users with disabilities from vital information, products, and services. Therefore, every program or service your organization delivers through a website or app must meet the same accessibility standard as its in-person equivalent.

Failing to Engage the Individual

The most common compliance misstep is not involving people with disabilities in program design or review. When an auxiliary aid or service is requested, the person with disabilities is best positioned to determine what type of aid or service will be effective. Build a feedback channel, even a simple one, so that participants can flag access barriers before they escalate into complaints or litigation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “programs, services, and activities” actually cover under the ADA?

The phrase covers virtually everything a covered entity does. Title II applies to all services, programs, and activities of state and local governments. State and local governments must provide people with disabilities an equal opportunity to benefit from all of their programs, services, and activities. For private businesses under Title III, the obligation extends to every service or activity that is open to the public, from purchasing goods to participating in events.

Does the ADA require every part of every building to be accessible?

The program access requirement makes sure that individuals with disabilities are not excluded from any program, service, or activity provided by the state or local government because existing buildings and facilities are inaccessible. State and local governments must review their programs, services, and activities as a whole to ensure they are accessible to individuals with disabilities. This means the program must be accessible, even if the specific building or room where it typically runs is not, for example, by relocating it or delivering it through an alternative accessible format.

Who is responsible for paying for accommodations and auxiliary aids?

A public entity or private business must pay for the auxiliary aid or service unless it can demonstrate that it would be an undue financial burden. In that case, the entity must provide a different auxiliary aid or service to provide effective communication. The individual with a disability cannot be charged for accommodations required by the ADA.

What is a “fundamental alteration” and when does it apply?

Reasonable modification is a key concept in Title II and Title III regulations, and often leads to confusion. The regulations state that public entities must modify policies, practices, and procedures when necessary to assure a person with a disability an equal opportunity, unless to do so would fundamentally alter the nature of the service, program, or activity. Determining when a modification is necessary and whether or not it results in a fundamental alteration is not always easy. When in doubt, document your reasoning carefully and consult qualified legal counsel.

Are websites and mobile apps considered “programs and services” under the ADA?

Yes. Title II applies to all services, programs, or activities of state and local governments, from adoption services to zoning regulation. This includes the services, programs, and activities that state and local governments offer online and through mobile apps. For private businesses, courts have consistently applied Title III to websites where online services are intertwined with physical locations or standalone public services.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for general informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a legal opinion. While reasonable efforts have been made to provide accurate and current information, laws, regulations, standards, guidance, and interpretations may change, and no representation or warranty is made regarding the accuracy, completeness, or applicability of the information provided. References to tools, resources, or compliance approaches are for informational purposes only and do not guarantee compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or any other applicable law or regulation. Readers should consult qualified legal counsel or other appropriate professionals regarding their specific circumstances. BlueDAG assumes no liability for any errors or omissions or for actions taken or not taken in reliance on the information contained in this article.

Sources

1. Introduction to the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA.gov. Overview of the ADA’s scope and general requirements. https://www.ada.gov/topics/intro-to-ada/
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3. ADA Title III Regulations, ADA.gov. Full regulatory text governing public accommodations. https://www.ada.gov/law-and-regs/regulations/title-iii-regulations/
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