The ADA Title II web accessibility deadline, and which one applies to you.

Which deadline applies to you

Population is the total population of the entity, not the number of people who use the website. A county of 60,000 that runs a small site is still on the 2027 date.

Special district governments sit on the later date whatever their size. That covers transit authorities, housing authorities, water and sewer districts, regional councils of governments, and similar single-purpose bodies. School districts are treated as their own category of local government, so a district serving 50,000 or more people is on the 2027 date.

The dates moved once already

The original rule, published April 2024, set April 24, 2026 for larger entities and April 26, 2027 for everyone else. On April 20, 2026 an interim final rule took effect and pushed both back by roughly a year, to the dates in the table above. The Department's stated reason was that it had overestimated how quickly the tools and staffing to do this work would become available.

That history matters for two reasons. Council minutes, vendor proposals, and a great deal of published guidance still recite the old 2026 date, so a document quoting it is not necessarily current. And a deadline that has moved once can move again, which is the argument for scoping the work on its own merits rather than on the calendar alone.

What the rule actually requires

Web content and mobile applications that a public entity provides or makes available must conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. A few points that decide most of the scope:

• Documents are web content. PDFs of agendas, minutes, budgets, permits, and council packets are in scope, and on most government sites they are the largest share of the problem.
• Vendor-built content still counts. The obligation belongs to the public entity even when a platform vendor or agency produced the page. Accessibility language in the contract, and a current conformance report from the vendor, are part of the work.
• Mobile apps are named explicitly. If the entity offers an app, it is covered on the same date as the website.
• The rule contains limited exceptions. Certain archived content, pre-existing electronic documents, third-party content not posted on the entity's behalf, and some individualized password-protected documents are treated differently. Read the exceptions carefully before assuming something is out of scope, because most of them are narrower than they first sound.

What to do with the time that is left

For an entity on the 2027 date, the useful sequence is an inventory, then a real audit, then remediation, then a policy that keeps new content from undoing the work. Automated scanning alone will not get you there. Scanners reliably catch a minority of WCAG failures, and the ones they miss, keyboard traps, focus order, meaningful alternative text, form labeling, and video captioning, are the ones that actually stop a person from using the site.

Budget timing tends to be the real constraint rather than the engineering. Entities on the 2027 date are buying now. Entities on the 2028 date generally have one more budget cycle, which is worth using rather than spending.

Questions buyers ask

Sources

These are the primary documents. Where this page and a source disagree, the source is right, and we would like to know so we can correct it.

• ADA.gov: First Steps Toward Complying with the ADA Title II Web and Mobile Application Accessibility Rule
• ADA.gov: Fact Sheet on the web and mobile app accessibility rule
• Federal Register: Extension of Compliance Dates (interim final rule, effective April 20, 2026)
• ADA.gov: Small Entity Compliance Guide

This page is not legal advice. It is a plain reading of a published federal rule by the firm that does the testing. For a determination about your entity, talk to your attorney.