On April 20, 2026 the Department of Justice published an Interim Final Rule that moves the ADA Title II web accessibility deadlines back by a year. State and local governments serving 50,000 people or more now have until April 26, 2027, instead of April 24, 2026. Smaller governments and special districts have until April 26, 2028, instead of April 26, 2027 (Federal Register, 91 FR 20902). The rule is effective immediately, and the DOJ took public comment through June 22, 2026.
That is the whole change: the dates. The standard did not move. Covered websites and mobile apps still have to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and the rule the DOJ adopted in 2024 is otherwise intact (ADA.gov). The extension also applies only to Title II, so if you are a private business, none of this touches you. Below is what the ADA rule now requires, why the DOJ moved the dates, and why "we have another year" is a weaker position than it sounds.
What exactly did the DOJ change?
One thing: the compliance dates. Here is the before and after, straight from the rule.
| Covered entity | Old deadline | New deadline |
|---|---|---|
| State/local government, population 50,000+ | April 24, 2026 | April 26, 2027 |
| State/local government under 50,000, or any special district | April 26, 2027 | April 26, 2028 |
Everything else in the 2024 rule stays as written (Federal Register, 91 FR 20902). The technical standard is still WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The scope is still broad: web pages, online forms, PDFs and other conventional electronic documents, video, and mobile apps (ADA.gov). The five exceptions from the original rule survive unchanged, including archived web content, pre-existing electronic documents, and content posted by third parties you do not control.
The DOJ published this as an Interim Final Rule, which means it took effect on the day of publication rather than after a comment period. The comment window ran alongside it and closed June 22, 2026, so the agency can still revise the rule, but the new dates are the operative ones now.
Who does the extension apply to?
Title II entities, and only Title II entities. That means state and local government: cities, counties, public universities and school districts, transit agencies, libraries, courts, and the special districts that run things like water and fire services.
If you run a private business, a nonprofit, or a commercial website, you are under Title III, and Title III has no dated web-accessibility deadline to extend. The DOJ has not issued a web rule for Title III, and that rulemaking is paused (Seyfarth ADA Title III). Businesses still face web-accessibility lawsuits under Title III's general prohibition on discrimination, and courts have found websites covered without a specific regulation. So this news changes the calendar for governments and changes nothing for the private sector.
Federal agencies and their contractors are a separate track again: they answer to Section 508, which points at its own standard and was not part of this rule.
Do the accessibility requirements themselves change?
No. The bar is the same height. WCAG 2.1 Level AA was the target on April 23, and it is the target now; the calendar moved and the criteria did not (Federal Register, 91 FR 20902).
WCAG 2.1 AA is a defined list of success criteria. Color contrast of at least 4.5:1 for normal text (1.4.3). A visible keyboard focus indicator (2.4.7). Every form field tied to a programmatic label (1.3.1, 4.1.2). Captions on pre-recorded video (1.2.2). It is the same standard the EU leans on through EN 301 549, which is one reason a team that has done the work for one market is most of the way to the other. If you want the criteria as a working list rather than a spec document, our WCAG checklist lays them out by level.
Why did the DOJ push the dates back?
The agency was blunt about the reason, and it is worth repeating because it cuts against how a lot of vendors sell. In the rule, the DOJ points to covered entities lacking the staff, the specialized expertise, and the budget to meet the original date, with public schools and universities named as the clearest case (Federal Register, 91 FR 20902).
The part I keep coming back to: the DOJ also acknowledged that automated tools cannot reliably remediate web content without human review. That is the regulator saying out loud what our whole product is built around. Automated scanning is fast and it catches a real share of problems, but it does not catch all of them, and it cannot fix the judgement-based ones on its own.
How large a share? Deque measured its automated engine against more than 2,000 audits covering roughly 300,000 issues and found it flagged about 57% of them by volume, while the older way of counting, by share of WCAG success criteria testable automatically, lands closer to 30% (Deque). Call it 30 to 57% depending on how you count. Either way, a scan is the start of the work, not the end of it. A missing form label a machine finds in a second; whether your error messages actually make sense to someone using a screen reader is something a person has to check.
Does the extension lower your legal risk right now?
Less than the headline suggests. The extension moves the date by which you must meet WCAG 2.1 AA. It does not suspend the ADA's existing obligations, and it does not make inaccessible content safe in the meantime (Seyfarth ADA Title III).
Title II's effective-communication requirement predates this rule and still applies. If a resident cannot pay a utility bill, register for a class, or read a public notice on your site because it is inaccessible, that is a live problem today, deadline or no deadline. Enforcement and private complaints have happened without a specific web regulation on the books, and they still can. The DOJ has also said it fully intends to enforce the rule at the new dates, so the extension is a schedule change, not a reprieve.
What should you do with the extra time?
Treat the year as runway, not a snooze button. Remediation on a large government site is slow because the hard issues are the ones no tool fixes for you, and because content keeps being published while you work. Here is a sane order of operations.
- Scan to get the map. Run every template and key page against WCAG 2.1 AA so you know the size and shape of the problem. This is where automation earns its keep: it will surface the missing alt text, the low-contrast text, and the unlabeled fields fast. You can start with a free accessibility scan.
- Triage by user impact, not by issue count. A broken checkout or a form nobody can submit outranks a hundred decorative-image warnings. Fix the paths people actually use first.
- Book the human review. Budget for a screen-reader pass on your core journeys. That is the 43 to 70% a scanner will not hand you, and it is exactly the part the DOJ flagged.
- Keep new content clean. Put a WCAG check in the workflow that publishes pages, so you are not re-remediating the same site next year.
- Write the accessibility statement honestly. Document what you have done and what is still in progress. A statement records effort; it is not a claim of perfection.
Governments that started under the old date should not stop. If you are close, the extension is breathing room to get the last mile right. If you had not started, this is the reminder that a year goes quickly on a site with thousands of pages.
FAQ
What are the new ADA Title II web accessibility deadlines?
April 26, 2027 for state and local governments with a population of 50,000 or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller governments and special districts. The DOJ set these in an Interim Final Rule published April 20, 2026 (Federal Register, 91 FR 20902).
Did the accessibility standard change too?
No. The standard is still WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The DOJ moved only the compliance dates; the technical requirements from the 2024 rule are unchanged (ADA.gov).
Does the extension apply to private businesses?
No. It applies only to Title II, which covers state and local government. Private businesses fall under Title III, which has no dated web rule to extend, and they can still face web-accessibility lawsuits.
Are we safe from complaints until 2027?
No. The ADA's effective-communication duty applies now, independent of the rule's deadline. Inaccessible content can still draw complaints and enforcement during the extension period (Seyfarth ADA Title III).
Can an automated tool make our site compliant?
No tool alone can. Automated testing catches roughly 30 to 57% of issues depending on how you count, and the DOJ itself noted that automated tools cannot reliably remediate content without human review (Deque). Full conformance needs a person to check the rest.
See where your site stands
The deadline moved; the work did not. A scan will show you which WCAG 2.1 AA issues are on your pages today, ranked so you can start with the ones that block real users. Run a free accessibility scan and you get the violation list with the exact selector for each finding, which is the first thing your team needs to plan the year.
Written by Pavel Charkasau, founder of wcagc.com. I read the Interim Final Rule so you can plan around the new dates instead of the news headlines about them.
Last updated: July 15, 2026
Sources
- U.S. Department of Justice, Extension of Compliance Dates for Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities, Interim Final Rule, 91 FR 20902, published April 20, 2026 (accessed July 15, 2026).
- ADA.gov, State and Local Governments: First Steps Toward Complying with the ADA Title II Web and Mobile Application Accessibility Rule (accessed July 15, 2026).
- Seyfarth Shaw, DOJ Extends ADA Title II Website Accessibility Deadlines for Governmental Entities—But Litigation and Compliance Risks Remain (accessed July 15, 2026).
- Deque Systems, Automated Testing Study Identifies 57 Percent of Digital Accessibility Issues (accessed July 15, 2026).