Pull up the application form a candidate actually fills out and scroll to the disability self-identification form. There’s a good chance it still reads something like this:
Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability. Form CC-305. OMB Control Number 1250-0005. Expires 04/30/2026.
If it does, your form is citing a retired federal form under an expired control number.
That’s a statement about the law you’re making to every candidate, and it’s no longer true.
What changed
On August 21, 2026 the Department of Labor published three final rules covering federal contractor obligations. The Section 503 rule eliminated the requirement to invite applicants and employees to self-identify as individuals with disabilities, retired Form CC-305, and removed the 7 percent disability utilization goal along with its associated data collection and analysis. Those changes took effect on September 21, 2026.
The reasoning is what caught my attention. OFCCP concluded that employer-initiated disability inquiries, even framed as voluntary invitations, conflict with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which generally prohibits pre-offer disability-related inquiries of applicants.
Read OFCCP’s rationale and a harder question comes up: was asking pre-offer ever on solid ground? I’m not answering that one, and neither should your ATS vendor. That’s for your employment counsel.
Three rules, three dates
Most coverage collapsed this into one September deadline. There are actually three:
| Rule | Effective | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Section 503 (disability) |
Sep 21, 2026 | Ends the self-ID invitation requirement, retires Form CC-305, removes the 7% utilization goal and the related analytics. Raises basic coverage threshold from $15,000 to $20,000. |
| VEVRAA (veterans) |
Sep 21, 2026 | Largely technical. Removes cross-references to EO 11246 and raises the coverage threshold from $150,000 to $200,000. The substantive obligations are unchanged. |
| EO 11246 implementing regs |
Oct 26, 2026 | Formally rescinds the regulations that implemented EO 11246, following the Executive Order’s revocation in January 2025. Ends the race- and sex-based AAP framework. |
| Section 503 procedural |
Dec 21, 2026 | Moves the former shared administrative enforcement procedures at 41 CFR Part 60-30 into the Section 503 regulations. No substantive change to enforcement. |
Two of those are still ahead of you as I write this.
The trap: turning off “EEO” can turn off veteran self-ID
Here’s where I expect people to get hurt, and it’s on the veteran side.
For years the self-identification questions have been treated as one block, because that’s how the software is built. Go read the help documentation for the major applicant tracking systems. One of the largest puts a checkbox on the job post labeled “Include EEOC Questions”, and what that checkbox controls is race, gender, veteran status and disability status. Another has a single toggle under a settings menu named EEO Compliance. A third separates its EEOC survey from the OFCCP questions, then welds veteran and disability together so they switch as a pair.
Now look at the label on that switch. It names the EEOC. The EEOC is the one authority in this entire story that didn’t change anything.
On at least two of those platforms the question text isn’t editable by the customer. So an admin who opens their own application form, sees the retired form number sitting there, and wants to fix it, can’t. They can turn the whole block off or wait for their vendor.
My prediction, and I’m labeling it as one because I haven’t seen it happen yet: somebody reads a headline about the OFCCP rescission, finds that switch, and turns it off.
VEVRAA wasn’t touched. Veteran self-ID obligations and the mandatory job listing requirement with the state employment delivery system are exactly where they were. A contractor who switches off “EEO” and stops collecting veteran self-ID has created a gap that will show up in an audit.
Duane Morris put the same point the other way around in its client alert: contractors should meet their continuing obligations while not continuing previously required practices that could now create exposure. You have to stop some practices and keep others, and that starts as a configuration problem.
Four questions, four authorities
The single-toggle model fails because these questions answer to four different authorities:
| The question on your form | Who requires it | Status as of Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Disability self-identification | Was Section 503 / OFCCP, via Form CC-305 | Requirement rescinded. Form retired Sep 21, 2026. OFCCP’s rationale is an ADA conflict with pre-offer inquiries. |
| Protected veteran self-identification | VEVRAA / OFCCP | Unchanged. Still required for covered contractors. Threshold now $200,000. |
| Race, ethnicity and sex | Title VII and EEO-1 reporting, via the EEOC | Unaffected by any of this. Different statute, different agency. The EO 11246 rescission does not remove Title VII or EEO-1 obligations where they apply. |
| Reasonable accommodation notice | ADA, and Section 503 for covered contractors | Still belongs there. Retiring the self-ID form did not retire the duty to provide accommodation, and employees can still disclose voluntarily when they request one. |
Section 503 itself wasn’t repealed. Nondiscrimination, accommodation, written affirmative action plans, outreach and recordkeeping all survive.
Your form’s wording is a legal statement
Reciting a retired OMB control number tells a candidate there’s a federal records burden behind the question, and there isn’t one anymore. Describing the question as something you’re collecting on the government’s behalf claims a legal basis you no longer have. They’re misstatements to the person filling out the form, sitting in the one document where you’re asking them to be candid about a disability.
Applicants notice, and so will anyone reviewing the form later.
The opposite failure is deleting the whole disability block. That takes the reasonable accommodation notice out with it, and that notice still belongs on the form.
If your portal shows these questions outside the US, that’s a different problem
These are US surveys answering to US authorities. A portal that renders them for an applicant in Berlin or Toronto is collecting data about disability, veteran status and ethnicity from someone whose jurisdiction treats those as sensitive categories requiring a lawful basis you almost certainly haven’t established.
This is worth checking now, because most portals decide whether to show the surveys by matching text on the job record. A job posted with the country written as “USA” instead of “United States” can behave differently from the one next to it. I’ll come back to candidate privacy in post three.
What to check on your own form this week
- Search your application form and your onboarding surveys for the string “CC-305” and for “1250-0005”. Anything that matches is stale text.
- Confirm the reasonable accommodation notice is still present after any change your vendor made in September.
- Separately confirm that veteran self-identification is still being collected. Don’t infer this from the disability setting.
- Check who can turn these on and off, and whether turning one off turns others off with it.
- Check what a candidate outside the US sees.
- Confirm your historical disability data is still retained, still confidential, and still segregated from general personnel files.
- Send the list to your employment counsel before changing anything.
What we changed in Crelate
We didn’t wait for the deadline. As soon as the final rules were published on August 21, we started rewriting the disability question’s wording across the public job portal, our Indeed apply integration and the Employee Portal onboarding survey, in English, Spanish and French. References to the retired form and its Paperwork Reduction Act notice are gone. The reasonable accommodation notice and the Section 503 citation stayed, deliberately, because those weren’t rescinded. Clients didn’t have to change a setting.
We also reviewed the full pre- and post-hire application process and split the surveys so clients can turn each one on or off separately. Whether the surveys appear is now computed from the job’s country record instead of the literal text “United States”, so a job posted as “USA” works and a job in Berlin doesn’t show them.
Where this goes
My second prediction: within a year the single “EEO block” toggle disappears from every serious ATS, because the four questions have now visibly come apart and no vendor wants to be the one whose customer turned off veteran self-ID by accident.
For a decade, hiring compliance meant filling out a form the government designed. That’s ending in pieces, and what replaces it is judgment each employer has to make and defend on its own. Fewer prescribed forms means more work for every employer.
Note: We are a software company, not a law firm. This post describes a regulatory change and what it meant for our product. It is not legal advice, and it is not a reading of what your organization must do. Federal contractor obligations vary by contract value, headcount and the work you perform. Talk to your employment counsel before changing anything on your application form.