Government Accessibility Checker

Accessibility Requirements for Government

Unlike most industries, government web accessibility is not a matter of legal risk assessment: it is a rule with a fixed, published technical standard (WCAG 2.1 AA) and specific compliance deadlines, and federal contractors and agencies separately face Section 508.

The rule covers far more than a homepage. Permit and license applications, tax payment portals, public meeting agendas and minutes, court and records search tools, and any mobile app your entity publishes are all in scope.

The DOJ’s Title II rule requires state and local government websites and mobile apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. After an April 2026 interim final rule extended the original timeline by a year, entities serving a population of 50,000 or more must comply by April 26, 2027, and smaller entities and special districts by April 26, 2028. The underlying obligation is already in force. (opens in a new tab, source: DOJ Title II web accessibility rule)

Common Issues on Government Sites

• PDF forms, agendas and minutes

  Permit applications, meeting agendas and public notices published as scanned or poorly tagged PDFs are one of the most common failures on government sites, and often the most legally visible.

• Payment and permitting portals

  Third-party systems for paying taxes, utility bills or applying for permits frequently have unlabeled fields and error messages that are not announced to screen readers.

• Public records and court search tools

  Search interfaces for court records, property records or public documents often fail basic keyboard operability.

• Embedded meeting video

  Livestreamed or archived public meetings are frequently published without captions, which is both an accessibility failure and, for some content, a separate legal issue.

• Department and agency subsites

  Individual department or agency pages, often built or maintained outside central IT, are a common source of missing alt text and poor heading structure.

How to Fix What the Scan Finds

1. Prioritize anything a resident needs to complete a required civic task: paying a bill, applying for a permit, or accessing a public meeting record.
2. Treat this as a compliance deadline, not a general goal. Document your scan history and fix timeline against the April 2027 or 2028 deadline that applies to your entity.
3. Run a free scan above on your homepage and a few key pages, fix issues starting with critical and serious, then rescan to confirm.
4. For ongoing protection, AccessBell Pro monitors up to 500 URLs per domain every day and alerts you when something regresses.

Related Guides

• ADA Website Compliance: What Businesses Need to KnowHow the ADA applies to websites, which WCAG level courts and regulators reference, the Title II rule for public entities, and practical steps to reduce risk.
• WCAG 2.2 Checklist: What Changed and How to Test Each CriterionA practical WCAG 2.2 AA checklist: the nine new success criteria, the one that was removed, and how to test your website against each requirement.
• WCAG Success Criteria LibraryLook up any success criterion the scan flags, in plain language.
• Free Accessibility Statement GeneratorPublish a statement once your known issues are fixed.

Government Accessibility Questions