The short version
ADA Title II requires state and local governments to make their websites and mobile apps accessible. The standard the rule names is WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
Entities serving 50,000 or more people have until April 2027. Smaller entities have until April 2028.
Who it applies to
Public entities: school districts, cities, counties and special districts. If your agency serves residents, the rule is about your website.
Which date you get depends on the population your agency serves. Ask your counsel to confirm yours before you plan around it.
What WCAG 2.1 AA checks on a typical public website
Most failures on public sites are ordinary, and they are the same ones everywhere:
- Text that is too faint against its background.
- Headings that skip levels, so someone using a screen reader cannot move through the page.
- Images with no description.
- Forms and buttons with no label, or that cannot be used from a keyboard.
- PDFs that are scans of paper: unreadable to a screen reader and invisible to search.
Documents count. A scanned board packet posted to your site is content on your site, and the standard applies to it.
Why a site that passed on launch day fails later
A launch audit describes the site on the day it launched. After that, it is hundreds of small edits: a pasted paragraph, a skipped description, a new PDF.
Nobody breaks it on purpose, and nothing checks it. By the time a complaint arrives, nobody can say when it started failing.
What a defensible record looks like
If a complaint arrives, the question is not whether your site was perfect. It is what you did, and when.
A good record answers four things for every change: who made it, what changed, when it went live, and what the accessibility check said. Keep it where your staff can open it and your board can read it.
Questions to ask before your next board meeting
- How many pages and documents are on the site today, and how many have been checked?
- Who can publish, and what runs before a change goes live?
- Where is the record of what was published, and when?
- Has anyone who uses a screen reader every day tested the site?
- What happens to the old PDFs?
- Which date applies to us, and who confirmed it?
How Aegisaur fits
Aegisaur builds the site so every change is checked against WCAG 2.1 AA before it can go live, and every publish goes on a record nobody can edit. How it works follows one change from request to live. Pricing is one number, in writing.
This page is a plain reading of a public rule. It is not legal advice. Your counsel is your counsel.