Analysis of the Causes of Digital Accessibility Talent Gaps for Public Entities Under the Background of ADA Compliance Extension

Abstract

The extension of ADA Act compliance deadlines has not eliminated the legal obligations of public entities for digital accessibility; it has only postponed the compliance timeline. Policy perturbation has induced significant talent mismatch in the labor market. Based on the four‑dimensional analytical framework of Institution‑Organization‑Industry‑Education (Boudreau, M.‑C., & Barrett, M., 2023), this paper adopts a mixed‑method research approach integrating questionnaire surveys, semi‑structured interviews and fsQCA configurational analysis. The talent gap is decomposed into four categories: quantity gap, quality gap, structural gap and cognitive gap. Empirical measurement is conducted with 217 valid samples. The study finds that the talent gap is not driven by a single factor but arises from the concurrent coupling of multiple conditions. Compliance extension exerts dual mediating effects of buffering and paralysis, which significantly amplify talent‑supply contradictions under conditions of insufficient organizational cognition. Three groups of equivalent inducing configurations are identified: policy‑wait‑and‑see type, resource‑constrained type and supply‑capacity type. The research demonstrates that talent accumulation cannot be accomplished automatically merely by relying on the policy time window. Concerted advancement is required through institutional guidance, organizational allocation, industrial certification and disciplinary training. Meanwhile, the conclusions provide foreign references for the construction of China’s government‑affairs digital‑accessibility talent system.