ADA Title II Digital Accessibility Audit for a Large Municipality

Accessibility Innovations audited the entire public-facing digital ecosystem of a large North American municipality: the main municipal website, a sports and recreation portal, 14 third-party vendor applications, and all 10 social media channels.

The timing is significant. In April 2024, the Department of Justice issued its final rule under ADA Title II, establishing explicit WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirements for state and local government digital content, with compliance deadlines beginning in 2026 for larger jurisdictions. Municipalities that have not yet conducted a comprehensive digital accessibility assessment are operating with an incomplete conformance picture, often without realising how far their vendor-managed applications and social media channels fall outside required standards.

Modern municipal digital infrastructure is not a single website. Residents pay parking fines through one vendor platform, book recreation programs through another, register pets through a third. Social media is frequently the first place residents look for emergency notifications, service updates, and public meeting information. The municipality is responsible for the accessibility of all of it, but conformance data existed for almost none of it.

The municipality needed a comprehensive picture across every public-facing digital surface before it could build a credible ADA Title II compliance program.

We audited each component separately using the appropriate methodology for each platform type. City-owned properties received deep manual and automated testing. For the 14 third-party applications, we produced individual conformance scores structured for use in vendor management conversations, giving procurement and legal teams the data needed to hold vendors accountable under contract. For social media, we evaluated 200 posts across all 10 channels, assessing alt text, captions, colour contrast, and video captioning practices.