Disabled People Still Face Barriers to Online Voter Registration in Most States

Part of the Series

Voting Wrongs

Less than a third of 43 online voter registration forms for 42 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., could likely be navigated and completed independently by disabled users, according to research published earlier this month.

In the new comprehensive evaluation from QAwerk, titled “The State of Web Accessibility for U.S. Voters with Disabilities,” only North Carolina’s voter registration website received a “very high” accessibility score; the other 41 states and Washington, D.C., fell short. Online voter registration is unavailable or unnecessary in the remaining eight states.

“Most of the examined websites exhibit accessibility issues that hinder the ability of users with visual, motor, or cognitive [disabilities] to effectively navigate and utilize these essential services,” the report stated.

To evaluate online voter registration forms for the new report, software test engineers at QAwerk used 15 testing criteria based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium. These criteria include offering zoomable content, high-contrast text, keyboard navigation, autocomplete options and compatibility with screen readers (an assistive technology that renders text and image content as speech or braille output). When sites do not meet these standards, it could prevent those who cannot grasp a mouse, some with cognitive or intellectual disabilities, and blind or low-vision people from using them. QAwerk scored states by assigning a point for each criterion a state met, making 15 a perfect score.

Unfortunately, many voter registration websites nationwide fall short of these standards. None achieved a perfect score, with only North Carolina coming close at 14/15. QAwerk found that more than half of current voter registration sites have insufficient contrast, making them difficult for many low-vision people to navigate. More than half also lack link labels, meaning a link’s destination or action cannot be communicated with a screen reader. Meanwhile, over three-quarters of the states that offer online voter registration forms have not labeled the input fields on those forms, meaning a screen reader could not provide the information needed to fill the form. Altogether, evaluators at QAwerk found that all but one voter registration site nationwide had issues that could interfere with the proper functioning of assistive technologies.

When the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published the first comprehensive evaluation of barriers to online voter registration for disabled Americans in 2015, it similarly found that only one of the 20 states that offered online voter registration at the time had an accessible online registration form. While the number of states offering online voter registration has more than doubled since, many of the same access barriers remain.

“Web access is overlooked, so I think about: How many people are we leaving behind because there are so many access barriers?” said Kenia Flores, a voting access and election protection fellow at Detroit Disability Power, a disability-led nonprofit focused on building political power in the disability community. The answer to that question is that shortcomings in web accessibility, alongside other common obstacles to accessing the polls, threaten to disenfranchise 40.2 million eligible disabled voters nationwide.

Flores is familiar with many of these issues as one of the estimated 7.6 million Americans nationwide with a visual disability. Specifically, Flores is blind and uses a screen reader to access online information. She told Truthout that when she last moved and wanted to update her voter registration online, the form was inaccessible. Rather than an editable web form, Flores’s state offered a .pdf whose input fields were not screen readable. “Theoretically, online forms make things easier, but if the .pdf isn’t tagged correctly and there are not editable fields that a screen reader recognizes, it’s essentially not usable.”

Rather than complete her voter registration privately and independently online, Flores had to go to the local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office and seek assistance. The employee who helped her misspelled her name on her voter registration form, creating additional work to correct the error. “If I were able to do this completely on my own, that wouldn’t have been a barrier,” Flores told Truthout.

Shortcomings in web accessibility affect more than just the ability to register to vote. “People go to websites to find out when to vote, where to vote and how to vote, and that information can be really hard to find,” said Alexia Kemerling, REV UP Coalitions coordinator at the American Association of People with Disabilities. “When you do not have access to accurate information, or that information is hard to get, it can keep people from voting or dissuade them from wanting to vote.”

“People forget that one in four Americans are disabled. We’re a big part of the voting bloc, and you’re excluding all of us when you fail to make your information accessible.”

Flores told Truthout that finding information about candidates and their platforms and engaging with voter education and Get Out the Vote groups can also be challenging. “I cannot tell you how many posts I come across that are just untagged images without any alt-text,” said Flores, referring to text used to describe images, charts, or other graphic elements to make those elements accessible. “How are we supposed to know a candidate’s issues and who we want to represent us when we can’t even access their social media posts?”

While the online experiences of disabled voters and the results of QAwerk’s recent evaluation paint a grim picture, new guidelines from the Department of Justice (DOJ) could result in vast improvements before the next election. Published in April 2024 as an update to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, the new guidelines make clear that all aspects of the voting process must be accessible to disabled people, including the web content and digital apps of election authorities and opportunities to register to vote online.

The new rule follows years of disability-led advocacy, including hardball tactics from organizations such as the ACLU, which sued the New York State Board of Elections and DMV in 2016 over inaccessible online voter registration. That suit was filed on behalf of the National Federation of the Blind, the Center for the Independence of the Disabled, and individual blind voters who could not independently register online in New York because the state’s website only offered a downloadable .pdf, which was not navigable with a screen reader. The parties in that case settled in February 2019, and the defendants agreed to ensure fully accessible online voter registration by the end of that year.

Still, years later, New York’s online voter registration form could be further improved. It earned only 11 out of the possible 15 points in QAwerk’s recent assessment. The new DOJ rule should help close the remaining gap, as it requires all government entities, and the organizations they contract with, to make their web content and apps accessible by April 2027.

Kemerling told Truthout the relatively quick timeline for implementation is “a recognition of the dire need for this guidance, and also just how important it is because the internet is key to how so many people get their information for voting, and you are really disenfranchising a full population of people when you do not make that information accessible to them.”

To achieve the needed improvements before the deadline, Kemerling told Truthout she hopes governments will engage with the disability community because “the best experts in this field are the people who use this technology themselves.”

QAwerk also recommends that election offices collaborate with disabled people to improve their websites in the conclusion of its report. It also suggests implementing regular accessibility testing, offering staff training on web accessibility issues and rethinking web accessibility as a core component of web development rather than an afterthought. “By embedding accessibility within the software or product development from the outset, organizations can establish an effective and sustainable accessibility program,” QAwerk founder Konstantin Klyagin concluded in that report.

Iryna Tkachenko, a quality assurance engineer at QAwerk who spoke to Truthout, said many needed changes are simple for the average developer, and some are achievable even without specialized knowledge. “These are easy to fix; they just need attention,” she said.

For disabled voters, advocates and experts like Flores, the changes cannot come soon enough. “People forget that one in four Americans are disabled,” she told Truthout. “We’re a big part of the voting bloc, and you’re excluding all of us when you fail to make your information accessible.”