The ADA and your website.
The Americans with Disabilities Act predates the web, which is why US obligations have been settled largely through rulemaking and litigation rather than a single clear statute.
Title II: state and local government
In 2024 the Department of Justice adopted WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for web content and mobile apps provided by state and local government entities.
In April 2026 the DOJ extended both compliance dates by one year:
- Entities serving a population of 50,000 or more: 26 April 2027
- Smaller entities and special district governments: 26 April 2028
The extension moved the dates. It did not change the standard.
Title III: businesses open to the public
There is no equivalent regulation setting a technical standard for private businesses. In practice, courts and settlements have consistently landed on WCAG AA as the benchmark, which is why almost everyone targets it.
The practical exposure is litigation rather than regulatory enforcement. Over 3,100 federal web accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2025, up roughly 27% year on year, and around 1,000 more in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
Two figures worth knowing: about a quarter of those suits targeted sites that already had an accessibility overlay installed, and a large share were filed against organisations that had been sued before.
What actually helps
No vendor can make you immune, and any that says otherwise is describing something the FTC has already penalised. What demonstrably helps is a dated, continuous record of real remediation: what was found, when, what was done about it, and what confirmed the fix.
That is the artifact our program is built to produce.
This page explains our understanding of the landscape as of August 2026. It is general information about the standards we test against — it is not legal advice, and we are not lawyers. For your own obligations, talk to one.
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