The ADA Title II Web Accessibility Rule: What Government Websites Must Do

For years, the legal position on government website accessibility was inferred rather than stated. Title II of the ADA required state and local governments not to discriminate, courts generally accepted that this covered websites, and everyone argued about which technical standard applied. In April 2024 the Department of Justice ended that ambiguity by publishing a final rule under Title II that names a specific standard and specific deadlines.

If you run a city, county, school district, special district, public library or any other state or local government entity, this is the rule your website is now measured against. This is a plain-language summary of what it requires — not legal advice, and you should confirm the details against ada.gov and your own counsel, because the specifics of how it applies to your entity matter.

What the rule requires

The rule adopts WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for web content and mobile apps provided by state and local government entities. That is a specific, testable standard rather than a general obligation not to discriminate — which is the substantive change.

Compliance dates are staged by entity size, and they have moved once already. The 2024 rule originally set April 24, 2026 for larger entities and April 26, 2027 for everyone else. On April 20, 2026 the Department of Justice published an interim final rule extending both by a year. The dates that now apply are:

• April 26, 2027 — state and local government entities with a total population of 50,000 or more.
• April 26, 2028 — public entities with a total population under 50,000, and special district governments of any size.

So if you are reading this in 2026, no deadline has passed yet. That is less reassuring than it sounds: a year of extension disappears quickly once you account for a procurement cycle, a build, and a remediation pass on the content you already have. The current dates are published on the ADA.gov fact sheet, which is the authority to check before you plan against them.

What "web content" covers

Broader than most people assume. It reaches your main website, but also mobile apps, and content you provide through third parties. That last point matters: an agenda management system, a payment portal, a job application platform or an embedded map that fails accessibility is still content your entity is providing to the public.

Documents are included. Agendas, minutes, budgets, forms, notices and reports published as PDFs are web content. A scanned PDF is an image of a document and is unreadable to a screen reader, which is why document remediation is frequently the largest single line in a compliance project — see our WCAG 2.2 AA checklist for what to test.

The exceptions, and why you should not lean on them

The rule includes limited exceptions — categories such as archived web content meeting specific criteria, certain pre-existing electronic documents, content posted by third parties who are not acting for the entity, individualised password-protected documents, and pre-existing social media posts.

Read those narrowly. "Archived" has a specific meaning in the rule and is not a synonym for "old." An exception that turns out not to apply is worse than no exception, because you will have built a compliance plan around it. If you intend to rely on one, get that reading confirmed rather than assumed.

What about Section 508, and what about WCAG 2.2?

Two standards get named in this space and they are not the same instrument. Section 508 applies to federal agencies and, through contracts and grant conditions, to those who supply or are funded by them; since the 2017 Refresh it incorporates WCAG 2.0 Level AA. The Title II rule applies to state and local government and names WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

WCAG 2.2 is the current version of the guidelines and is backwards compatible: a site that meets 2.2 Level AA also meets 2.1 Level AA. That is why we build to 2.2 AA by default — it satisfies both instruments and does not need redoing when a rule is next updated. The extra criteria 2.2 introduced, like focus not being obscured and minimum target sizes, are ones your users benefit from anyway.

Nonprofits are not covered by this rule — but are not exempt

The Title II rule is about state and local government. Most nonprofits are not state or local government entities, so it does not apply to them directly.

That is not the same as having no obligation. Nonprofits operating places of public accommodation can fall under Title III, which has generated substantial litigation over websites; federal funding frequently imports accessibility conditions through grant agreements; and organizations delivering services under contract to a public entity often inherit the entity's obligations. If you are a nonprofit, the practical answer is usually to build to the same standard, which is what our nonprofit website design work assumes.

What to do if you are behind

Do not start by buying anything. Start by finding out where you actually stand, because the scope of the problem determines the shape of the response.

Audit the current site. Automated testing across everything, plus manual keyboard and screen-reader passes on the journeys people use most. That produces a defensible list rather than a guess, and it is the evidence a council or board needs to fund the work. That is what an accessibility audit is for.

Triage by impact. Fix the things that block people from completing tasks first — unlabelled form fields, keyboard traps, missing focus indicators on service journeys. Cosmetic contrast issues on a rarely visited page can wait.

Deal with documents deliberately. For most entities, the honest answer is not remediating every historical PDF. It is publishing the content residents actually need as accessible web pages, and remediating the documents that remain genuinely necessary.

Fix the pipeline, not just the backlog. If your editors do not know the rules, a remediated site drifts back out of conformance within a year. Editor guidance belongs in your handover documentation.

Document what you are doing. A written, dated remediation plan with priorities and owners is worth having on file, both as project management and as evidence of a good-faith programme.

If a rebuild is the answer

Sometimes remediation costs more than replacement, particularly on an old CMS where the templates themselves are the problem. If you are heading toward procurement, name the standard in the solicitation and ask how conformance will be verified rather than whether it will be met — our government RFP checklist covers how to write that requirement so vendors price it honestly.

And be wary of any vendor answering an accessibility requirement with an overlay widget. Overlays cannot repair heading structure, unlabelled fields, focus traps or contrast in the underlying markup, and they have featured in accessibility litigation rather than preventing it.

We build to WCAG 2.2 AA as standard across government and municipal projects, and we audit existing sites independently of any build work. If a deadline is close and you need to know where you stand, that is the place to start.