Municipal and county website accessibility reports

Inventory services, not just the homepage

List the main government domain, department sites, subdomains, document repositories, and externally hosted services. A public crawl cannot establish accessibility of a payment flow behind login or a permit system on another domain. Record these boundaries before testing so a clean homepage does not become a claim about the entire government.

Group the inventory by resident task: paying a utility bill, finding a public meeting, submitting a permit, applying for benefits, reporting a problem, or requesting an accommodation. Consider urgency, frequency, and the impact of exclusion when choosing the first manual checks.

• Clerk and records staff: agendas, minutes, ordinances, and current notices.
• Department publishers: forms, maps, service instructions, and contact information.
• IT and website providers: templates, menus, integrations, and authentication boundaries.
• Purchasing and contract owners: accessibility responsibilities, evidence, and escalation paths.

Use the current Title II standard and dates

The DOJ web rule uses WCAG 2.1 Level AA for covered web content and mobile applications. Current DOJ guidance, checked September 26, 2026, incorporates the April 2026 deadline extension: April 26, 2027 for entities with populations of 50,000 or more and April 26, 2028 for smaller entities and special district governments.

An individual department generally uses its parent government’s population rather than its staff count or website audience. Special district treatment has a specific definition; do not classify every county department or independent school district that way. Confirm the correct category and applicable Census source before setting a compliance schedule.

The later technical deadline is not a waiver of existing accessibility obligations. Exceptions for archived material, certain preexisting documents, and some third-party content require factual analysis. Do not use a file date or vendor contract alone to decide that a public service can remain inaccessible.

What the report gives the government and its vendors

ADAReporting produces an executive summary and an evidence-based inventory of supported automated HTML findings, with recommendations separate from WCAG-mapped failures. Likely shared-template problems can be addressed centrally while individual occurrences remain available for verification. There is no numeric compliance score.

The document stage performs automated PDF/UA checks on discovered PDF candidates within stated resource limits. Specific failed rules, checks that could not complete, and manual-review needs are distinct. A missing document or rate-limited request is not classified as an accessibility failure.

Deliver the findings to the people who control the source. Ask the website vendor for shared component repairs, departments for content corrections, and transaction vendors for testable evidence of task completion. Keep original evidence and retest dates so an unresolved item cannot disappear from the project simply because a URL moved.

Prioritize essential services and recurring content

A missing accessible name on a navigation control can recur across many pages. A broken permit form may affect fewer pages but have a more immediate consequence. Prioritize both common components and critical resident tasks; do not sort the work solely by the number of automated findings.

For documents, first identify forms and materials needed for current services. Obtain editable source files and correct structure there. Review tables, links, reading order, scanned content, and alternatives in the resulting document. Repeatedly repairing a PDF after publication is less sustainable than fixing the publishing workflow.

Define acceptance criteria beyond an automated rescan

A repair is ready for acceptance when the affected content is retested and the relevant user task works with keyboard and assistive technology. Check form instructions, errors, success feedback, focus management, and access to essential information. Validate document structure and manually inspect meaningful reading order.

Keep a public route for reporting barriers and requesting assistance, with an accountable internal owner. An accessibility statement should describe actual scope, limitations, and contact options—not claim certification from an automated report.