WCAG & ADA Compliance for Websites: Practical Tips

Digital accessibility moved from best practice to legal requirement for many organizations. The U.S. Department of Justice’s ADA Title II rule requires state and local government web content and mobile apps to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The compliance dates, as extended by the DOJ’s 2026 interim final rule, are firm: April 26, 2027 for entities serving 50,000 or more people, and April 26, 2028 for entities under 50,000 and special district governments. Here’s a practical orientation.

What WCAG 2.1 AA actually asks for

WCAG is organized around four principles — content must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR). At Level AA, the criteria most organizations need to focus on include:

• Text alternatives for images and non-text content.
• Keyboard operability — everything usable without a mouse.
• Sufficient color contrast (generally 4.5:1 for normal text).
• Captions for video and transcripts for audio.
• Clear structure — proper headings, labels, and reading order.
• Visible focus and predictable navigation.

Where organizations most often fall short

• PDFs and documents. Websites get attention, but the thousands of PDFs an agency has published are frequently inaccessible — untagged, no reading order, no alt text. These are in scope too. See PDF & document accessibility.
• Video without captions. Auto-captions are rarely accurate enough; human-quality captions are the standard.
• Color-only meaning — using color alone to convey status or required fields.
• Forms — unlabeled fields that screen readers can’t announce.

A sensible sequence

1. Audit your site and high-traffic documents against WCAG 2.1 AA.
2. Remediate the highest-impact, highest-traffic content first.
3. Caption your video library.
4. Bake accessibility into new content so you’re not remediating forever.
5. Document conformance (a VPAT) for procurement and compliance files.

Getting help

Taika provides Section 508 remediation, PDF & document accessibility, accessible video, and captioning & subtitling. To assess where you stand, request an assessment. Related: a guide to PDF remediation.