In 2024 the Department of Justice finalized a rule under ADA Title II that ends a long-running ambiguity: state and local government websites and apps must conform to WCAG 2.1 AA, with compliance deadlines in 2026 and 2027 depending on population size. For public entities, accessibility is no longer a best practice. It is a regulation with a date.
Private businesses are not named in this rule, but they should not read that as a pass. ADA lawsuits over inaccessible websites have targeted private companies for years, and courts increasingly treat WCAG conformance as the measuring stick. The public sector rule hardens that standard for everyone.
The good news is that most accessibility failures are mundane and fixable: images without text alternatives, forms without labels, color contrast that fails in ordinary sunlight, interfaces that trap keyboard users. An audit against WCAG 2.1 AA turns a vague legal worry into a finite work list, and remediation done alongside normal development costs a fraction of an emergency rebuild under a demand letter.
Start with the automated scan, but do not stop there: automated tools catch perhaps a third of real issues. Manual testing with a keyboard and a screen reader covers the rest. If your site serves the public, and especially if a public entity funds it, the time to schedule that audit is before the deadline does it for you.
