Accessible government website design in Florida, built to WCAG 2.1 AA

In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice published a final rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act that adopts WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for the web content and mobile apps of state and local governments. As published, the rule set compliance dates by population: April 2026 for entities with 50,000 or more people, and April 2027 for smaller entities and special district governments.

Rules and enforcement timelines can change, so confirm your current deadlines with counsel. The work itself doesn't change: every page, form, and document a resident relies on has to be usable with a keyboard, a screen reader, magnification, and captions. For most government sites that's a substantial project, and a large share of it often lives in documents rather than web pages.

Accessibility also overlaps with plain language. Residents come to a government site to do something specific, often under some stress: pay a bill, report a problem, find a meeting, apply for a permit. Pages written in short, clear sentences under descriptive headings serve people using assistive technology and everyone else.

Government websites accumulate years of PDFs: agendas, minutes, budgets, permit applications, ordinances. Many were scanned or exported without tags, which leaves them unreadable to screen readers. The rule has limited exceptions for some archived and older documents, and your counsel should help decide what qualifies. Anything residents use to do business with you today, like a current permit form or this year's meeting agendas, needs to be accessible.

We start with an inventory: what content exists, what's still used, what can be archived, and what has to be rebuilt. Frequently used forms become accessible web forms. Recurring documents get accessible templates so new ones start out right. Staff get training and a short checklist, because accessibility slips the first time someone uploads an untagged PDF.

Florida's broad public records law affects the site too. Contact forms and published email addresses typically carry a notice that messages may become public records, and we design forms with that in mind.

Public procurement has its own rhythm. Some projects go out as formal RFPs with defined scopes and evaluation criteria; others may be eligible for cooperative or piggyback purchasing under an existing contract, depending on your rules and thresholds. We can respond to a solicitation or work within whatever process your procurement office uses, including documentation of accessibility testing.

The build follows our standard approach with a public-sector emphasis: a content management system clerks and department staff can use without breaking accessibility, navigation organized around what residents come to do, and fast pages for people on older phones and slow connections. Residents search for services by name, like a permit, a trash pickup schedule, or a utility payment, and should land on the right page. Our web design and development page covers the process, and our app development work applies the same standard to mobile apps. Contact us about a project or an upcoming solicitation.