Which ADA Title II date applies to your city, county or district?
Updated 2026-10-12 · by Hieu Tran, written with AI agents and checked against the sources below
The DOJ's interim final rule of 20 April 2026 moved both web accessibility dates back a year. Many town websites, vendor pages and checklists still show the old dates (24 April 2026 and 26 April 2027), so it's worth checking which one is yours. The standard didn't change: WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and it covers the PDFs you post as well as web pages.
Enter your website: we list the PDFs it links to and run the first machine checks on up to 20 of them in your browser. No email needed.
The dates (as amended 20 April 2026)
26 April 2027: state and local governments with a total population of 50,000 or more.
26 April 2028: those with a total population under 50,000, and every special district government regardless of size.
The DOJ said it intends to review the rule further, so watch for changes, but plan on these dates.
How your population is counted
Most governments: the 2020 Census figure for your jurisdiction.
A department or agency that is part of a larger government (a police department, a library) uses the larger government's population.
City school districts use the city's population and county school districts the county's; an independent school district uses its estimate in the most recent Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE).
Special district governments (water, fire, transit, parks…) have 26 April 2028 whatever their size.
Which PDFs are covered
Documents you post after your date must conform. Documents already online before it are excepted only if nobody needs them now to apply for, use or take part in a service: a current permit form or fee schedule isn't excepted, an old annual report may be. Archived content is excepted only if it was created before the date, is kept for reference only, sits in a clearly marked archive area and hasn't changed since. Agenda packets for upcoming meetings are always live content.
Where to start
List the PDFs your site links to, by section (agendas, minutes, forms, budgets).
Fix the weekly flow first: the next agenda packet, and every form people use to apply for something.
Move old documents you only keep for the record into a labelled archive section, unchanged.
Ask your website vendor what's included: some (e.g. CivicPlus, Streamline) sell PDF conversion as an add-on.
For the rest, compare automated tagging ($0.30–3.50 a page) with human remediation (typically $5–8 a page); scanned documents need OCR first.