Information that is out of date
It might be last spring's event still on the home page, office hours from before the move, or a staff page listing people who left two years ago. Visitors notice, and they start to wonder what else is wrong.
Give every page an owner and a review date, and show a "last updated" date on pages people rely on, like hours, fees and contacts. Take down what is finished. If you keep old material for the record, put it in a clearly marked archive section. Under the Department of Justice web rule for governments (more on that below), older archived content is exempt only if it is kept only for reference, stored in an archive area and left unchanged.
Important information locked in PDFs
Agendas, applications and annual reports often go up as PDF (Portable Document Format) files, and sometimes as scans. A scanned page is a picture of text. A screen reader, the software many blind people use to hear a page read aloud, has nothing to read, and on a phone the reader has to pinch and zoom through every line.
Put the information people need on a regular web page. When a PDF is the right format, make it from a source document with real text and headings, not a scan. The Department of Justice is clear that documents people currently use to apply for services count, even if they were posted years ago.
Images with no description
A screen reader cannot see a photo or a flyer. It needs a short text description, called alternative text or "alt text." The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the technical standard for accessible websites, ask for a text alternative for every image that carries meaning, and ask that purely decorative images be marked so screen readers skip them. A typical example is an event flyer posted as one image, so the date, time and place are readable only by sighted visitors.
Text that is hard to read
Light gray text on white, or words laid over a busy photo, can look tidy in a design file and be unreadable on a phone in the sun. The guidelines set a minimum contrast between text and background of 4.5 to 1 for normal text and 3 to 1 for large text. People also need to enlarge text to 200 percent without the page breaking or hiding content. Free contrast checkers will tell you in seconds whether your colors pass.
Forms people cannot finish
Donation forms, volunteer sign-ups, permit applications and records requests are where people actually try to do something, so small problems here cost the most. Watch for fields with no label, dropdowns a keyboard cannot reach, and errors shown only by turning a box red.
The guidelines require that everything on a page work from a keyboard alone, and that color not be the only way information is shown. A quick test: put the mouse away and try to complete your own donate or application form using only the Tab and Enter keys.
Links that say "click here"
Screen readers can list every link on a page, so a page with five links that each say "click here" or "read more" tells that visitor nothing. Write link text that says where it goes, like "Download the 2026 budget" or "Apply for a building permit."
Videos without captions
Recorded board meetings and explainer videos need accurate captions. The guidelines also ask for captions on live video at Level AA, the level the Department of Justice rule uses. If you rely on automatic captions, read them through and fix the errors before you publish.
Tools you did not build
Calendars, payment pages, maps and booking systems often come from outside companies. The Department of Justice says that when a government puts that kind of content on its site, it usually has to meet the same standard as the rest of the site. Ask vendors for their accessibility documentation before you sign, and test the tool yourself.
The dates for governments
The Department of Justice rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act sets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1, Level AA (the middle of three levels) as the standard for state and local government websites and mobile apps. In April 2026 the Department pushed the compliance dates back:
- Governments serving 50,000 people or more: April 26, 2027.
- Governments serving fewer than 50,000 people, and special district governments: April 26, 2028.
Nonprofits are part of this too. When a government contracts with a nonprofit to provide public services, the government has to make sure that nonprofit follows Title II. The World Wide Web Consortium, which publishes the guidelines, notes that content meeting the newer version 2.2 also meets 2.1, so building to 2.2 covers both.
A place to start
If you want a quick picture of your own site, the free Awesome Audit checks your home page and up to 25 more pages for accessibility problems. In about 10 minutes you get a letter grade and the biggest problems in plain language, with what to fix first. There is no account to create and no password to share.
Prepared by Awesome Cause with AI assistance. These guides provide planning advice; project scope and estimates are agreed individually.
