Web accessibility for public entities
Your deadline is April 2027.
The Department of Justice's ADA Title II rule requires state and local government websites and mobile apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. It is a fixed date, a named standard, and there is no opt-out. Most of the small cities, counties and school districts we talk to have not assigned it to anyone yet.
The dates
Public entities serving 50,000 or more people
Already passed.
April 2026
Public entities serving fewer than 50,000 people
Most Georgia cities and counties are here.
April 2027
Special district governments
Includes many school districts, libraries and transit authorities.
April 2027
If you are unsure which row you are in, it is set by the population your entity serves, not by the size of your staff or your budget.
What you get
A manual audit, not a scan
Every template tested by hand and with a screen reader. Automated tools find roughly a third of WCAG failures — the ones that block people live in PDFs, contrast, keyboard order and forms, and a scanner cannot see them.
Findings mapped to the criterion
Each issue is written against its numbered WCAG 2.1 success criterion and its level, with the page it appears on and what it does to someone using a screen reader or a keyboard.
Code-level remediation
We fix it in your templates — labels, landmarks, focus order, alt text, contrast, heading structure. Not a widget layered over the top.
A dated conformance report
A written record of what was tested, what was found, what was fixed, and what remains open as of a specific date. Something you can hand to a board, a grant officer, or counsel.
Price
$750 – $2,500
Flat fee, set at the scope call and fixed before work starts. Two weeks for a typical site. No hourly billing, no change orders.
Selling software into government? ACR/VPAT preparation against WCAG 2.1 AA is quoted separately, based on a real test of your product.
How it runs
Scope call
Fifteen minutes. How many templates, how many posted documents, who owns the CMS.
Audit
Manual pass across your templates and key flows, keyboard and screen reader included.
Remediation
We fix what we found, in your code, and re-test each item.
Report
The dated conformance report, plus a short list of anything we could not reach and why.
What we do not claim
You will be pitched certainty by somebody. Here is the honest boundary of what this work does.
We do not make you compliant
Nobody can. There is no ADA certification body, no seal that ends the obligation, and no vendor who can promise you will not be sued. What we deliver is tested work and a dated record of it. What you owe your regulator stays yours.
An audit is a point in time
A site changes. New pages, new PDFs, and a new CMS release can all reintroduce failures. The report says what was true on the day it was written, and that is exactly why it carries a date.
We do not advise on your insurance or your litigation
That is your broker and your attorney. If you have received a demand letter, talk to counsel before you talk to us.
Overlay widgets are not a fix
The accessibility overlays sold as one-line compliance have not stopped suits, and plaintiff firms actively identify the sites running them. The FTC fined one overlay vendor $1,000,000 for claiming its product made customer sites compliant. We do not install them and we do not recommend them.
Questions
Which standard, exactly?
WCAG 2.1 Level AA — the standard named in the Department of Justice's ADA Title II web rule for state and local government. Not a house standard, not a vendor's checklist.
Does this apply to our PDFs?
Yes, and it is usually where the real problem is. Agendas, minutes, budgets and board packets are often scans, which means a screen reader reads nothing at all. Document remediation is scoped separately because volume varies enormously.
We already ran a free scanner and it came back clean.
Automated tools catch roughly a third of WCAG failures and almost none of the ones that actually stop somebody. A clean scan is a good sign about your markup and says nothing about whether your site can be operated with a keyboard or read aloud.
How long does it take?
About two weeks for a typical municipal or district site, from scope call to report. Larger sites and heavy document backlogs take longer, and we say so before you commit.
What does it cost?
A flat fee between $750 and $2,500, set at the scope call and fixed before work starts. It depends on template count and how many posted documents are in scope. No hourly billing and no change orders.
We sell software to government. Can you help us?
Yes. Agencies increasingly ask vendors for an Accessibility Conformance Report. We prepare ACR/VPAT documentation against WCAG 2.1 AA based on an actual test of your product, not a questionnaire.
Find out what is actually in scope.
Fifteen minutes, no charge. Tell us your entity and your site and we will tell you what a manual WCAG 2.1 AA pass would cover and what it would cost.
This page describes a service. It is not legal advice, and it does not assess your entity's obligations under the ADA or any state law. For that, ask your attorney.