ADA Title II
The Title II web rule, for city and county websites.
State and local government websites must meet WCAG 2.1 AA, by April 26, 2027 or April 26, 2028 depending on your size. Start with a free check of your homepage.
Sample results for a fictional domain.
Which date applies to you.
The rule counts your jurisdiction’s total population, not the number of people one department serves.
- Public entities with a total population of 50,000 or more.
- Smaller public entities and special district governments.
Dates from the Department of Justice’s interim final rule of April 20, 2026 (Federal Register 2026-07663).
A city, county or town of 50,000 people or more has April 26, 2027. A smaller one has April 26, 2028.
Every special district government has April 26, 2028, whatever its population.
Both dates use the same standard: WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The interim final rule of April 20, 2026 moved the dates later and left the standard unchanged.
“Beginning April 26, 2028, a public entity with a total population of less than 50,000 or any public entity that is a special district government shall ensure that the web content and mobile apps that the public entity provides or makes available, directly or through contractual, licensing, or other arrangements, comply with Level A and Level AA success criteria and conformance requirements specified in WCAG 2.1.”
28 CFR 35.200 on eCFR. Checked October 21, 2026: the Federal Register lists no later rule changing these dates.
Which population counts.
The Department of Justice’s fact sheet answers the common cases.
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Cities, counties and towns
Use your total population. For most governments, that is the 2020 Census figure.
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A department or library
A police department, library or other part of a larger government uses the population of that government.
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School districts
A school district is not a special district government. A city or county school district uses the city’s or county’s population.
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Special districts
Water, fire, transit and other special district governments have the later date, whatever their size.
What WCAG 2.1 AA means on a city or county site.
The rule covers your pages, the documents posted on them, and content vendors supply for you. In practice, these are the places most sites need work.
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Documents and PDFs
A PDF people use, such as a permit application or a budget, needs real text, tagged headings and a reading order a screen reader can follow. A scanned picture of a page does not qualify.
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Forms and payments
Every field has a label a screen reader announces. An error says in words what went wrong and how to fix it.
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Meeting agendas and minutes
Agendas and packets people use to take part in a meeting are documents like any other. An accessible page, with the original file beside it, also reads well on a phone.
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Video with captions
Recorded meetings and videos need accurate captions. Level AA adds captions for live video, such as a streamed council meeting.
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Keyboard use
Every menu, button and form works with the Tab and Enter keys, and a visible outline shows where you are on the page.
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Contrast and zoom
Body text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 with its background, and the page still works when someone zooms to 200%.
What an automated check can and cannot tell you.
An automated check, including LFW’s free audit, is a fast first look. It cannot show that a site meets WCAG 2.1 AA, and a score of 100 does not mean it does.
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What it finds
- Images with no text description
- Form fields with no label
- Text with too little contrast
- Links and buttons with no name
- A page with no language set
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What takes a person
- Whether a description says what the image shows
- Whether a person can finish a task with a keyboard or a screen reader
- Whether captions match what was said
- Whether a PDF reads in the right order
- Whether an error message makes sense
Conformance takes testing by hand: a keyboard, a screen reader and a person working through each task people come to your site to do.
Check your homepage now.
The free audit checks your homepage’s automated accessibility and speed, plus HTTPS and email settings, from public information only. It asks for no name or email address.
Check the domain instead?
The free audit checks a domain’s email settings and HTTPS, then its homepage. It does not check one page or a port.
Results
Your link: LFW.com/audit/
is a documentation domain, so the email and HTTPS results below are a fixed sample that shows each kind of result. The homepage measurements are real.
Email authentication
Read from your domain’s public DNS records.
HTTPS and the certificate
Read from a secure connection to your site, as a browser makes one.
Homepage
Keep this page open, or come back to your link later. The results appear there when they are ready.
Performance, SEO, and best practices are Lighthouse scores on a desktop profile. The accessibility score is LFW’s, from an axe-core check: 100, less a penalty for each rule the page fails.
What the homepage checks found
These results come from public information and automated checks. They do not show that a site is secure or that it meets WCAG.
What LFW does.
We do not promise compliance by a date. We plan the work around the date that applies to you, starting with the pages and tasks people use most.
- AssessYour key pages and tasks tested with automated tools, a keyboard and a screen reader. Each finding names the WCAG criterion, the fix and how to check it. Fixed price, quoted first.
- FixFixes made in the code, the content and the documents themselves. No overlay or widget on top. Fixes are quoted after you see the findings.
- RetestEvery fix retested, whether we made it or your team did, with a dated record of each step. Under a retainer, LFW Monitor checks your key pages every day.
Plan the work before your date.
Send your website address and the tasks residents use most. We reply within one business day with a fixed price for an assessment.