ADA website compliance: what the law asks for

This is a plain-language summary of the Justice Department’s published guidance, not legal advice. For a question about your own site or a demand letter, talk to a lawyer.

The short answer

• Businesses open to the public fall under Title III of the ADA. The Justice Department says the ADA applies to what they offer on the web, too. It has no regulation with detailed technical standards for business websites, so businesses have flexibility in how they make their sites accessible, but they still have to comply.
• State and local governments fall under Title II. A rule published April 24, 2024 requires their websites and mobile apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. After an interim final rule on April 20, 2026, the dates are April 26, 2027 for governments serving 50,000 or more people, and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones and special districts.

What the ADA means for a business website

The Department’s web guidance for businesses, dated March 18, 2022, says people with disabilities must get full and equal enjoyment of a business’s goods and services, including the ones offered online (ADA.gov web guidance). It doesn’t set a required standard. Instead, it points to two existing ones as helpful guidance: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the federal government’s Section 508 Standards.

The guidance itself says it has no legally binding effect on its own. It explains how the Department reads the law; it doesn’t add new duties.

The barriers the Justice Department names

The guidance lists six common problems that keep people with disabilities from using a website. Each one has a simple check:

Headings matter too: screen reader users jump between them to find their way around a page. The heading structure checker shows whether a page’s headings are in order.

The rule for state and local governments

Title II covers state and local governments, like cities, counties, public schools and transit agencies. Their rule is stricter than the business guidance because it names a standard: web content and mobile apps must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA (ADA.gov fact sheet).

The rule has five exceptions:

• Archived web content kept only for reference, research or records, and not changed
• Documents like PDFs, Word files and spreadsheets posted before the compliance date, unless they’re still used to apply for or use a service
• Content posted by members of the public, not by the government or its vendors
• Password-protected documents about one person, property or account
• Social media posts made before the compliance date

Do automated checkers and overlays make a site compliant?

Not on their own. The Department says automated checkers and overlays can be helpful tools but need to be used carefully, much like a spelling checker: a clean report doesn’t mean everything is accessible, and a report with a few errors doesn’t always mean there’s a barrier. Its advice is to pair automated checks with a check by hand. For browser tools that help with the manual part, see Chrome extensions for accessibility testing.

A practical checklist for your site

1. Run every page template through a contrast checker and fix text that fails.
2. Give every meaningful image alt text, and leave decorative ones empty.
3. Caption your videos.
4. Label every form field and make error messages say what to fix.
5. Use the whole site with only a keyboard, including menus and pop-ups.
6. Keep headings in order, one main heading per page.
7. Add an accessibility page with a way to report a problem, and answer what comes in. Here’s what visitors go through when they report accessibility barriers.

How I handle it on the sites I build

On the sites I design and build, contrast, alt text, form labels, headings and keyboard use are checked before launch, against WCAG 2.1 AA as the guide. If you have an older site with these problems, it can be fixed in place or rebuilt; see website redesign services, or keep it updated month to month with website maintenance.