Our agendas and minutes must meet a new federal accessibility rule

What the rule requires

In 2024 the U.S. Department of Justice adopted a rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Everything a state or local government posts online, including PDFs, must meet the WCAG 2.1 Level AA technical standard so residents who are blind or have low vision can use it. Documents archived before the deadline are exempt. New agendas, minutes and packets are not. DOJ’s own fact sheet uses city council minutes as its example.

When

• April 26, 2027: counties, cities and towns of 50,000 people or more
• April 26, 2028: towns and villages under 50,000, and every special district

These dates were pushed back a year in April 2026. A pending lawsuit (NFB v. DOJ) asks the court to undo that extension, which would move every date up by a year.

Why it matters

Any resident can file a complaint with the Justice Department or sue in federal court, and courts can order fixes and attorneys’ fees. In a 2026 study of 941 county PDFs, 58% had no accessibility tags at all and a third were scanned images a screen reader cannot read.

How AccessibleAgenda handles it

• Staff email the PDF they already make to a private address. No software or training.
• Usually within minutes, and always within one business day, they get back an accessible web page, a tagged PDF that passes automated PDF/UA checks, and a dated report of what was checked and fixed.
• Wording is never changed. Anything uncertain, like a signature, gets a person’s review.

Cost and commitment

• $99 a month or $990 a year, unlimited documents, no page limits or overage fees.
• First 3 documents free with no card, so we can judge the results on our own files.
• No contract or setup fee. Card, purchase order or net-30 invoice. W-9 on request.

For comparison, per-page remediation services typically charge $4 to $18 a page, so a single 25-page packet can cost $100 to $450, more than a month of unlimited service.