AccessHawkby Nighthawk
ADA Title II · WCAG 2.1 AA · Federal Rule 28 CFR Part 35

Is your government website ready for the federal accessibility deadline?

The Department of Justice requires every state and local government website — cities, counties, school districts, special districts — to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Scan up to 30 pages plus your PDFs, free, in about a minute.

until April 26, 2027 deadline · population 50,000+
until April 26, 2028 deadline · under 50,000 & special districts
Which deadline applies to you?

Deep scan: up to 30 public pages + up to 10 PDFs, checked against WCAG 2.1 AA. No signup required to see your score. How scoring works · Privacy

How it works

Built for city administrators, clerks, and communications directors — not just web developers.

We scan the pages residents use

Your homepage, your sitemap, and the high-traffic pages — agendas, services, forms, payments — up to 30 pages checked live against the WCAG 2.1 AA standard named in the DOJ rule, plus a sample of your PDFs.

You get a graded readiness score

One number your council or board can understand, with every issue explained in plain English: what it is, who it locks out, and exactly how to fix it. The scoring formula is public.

You know where you stand

Print it, share the link with your web vendor, or bring in AccessHawk Monitoring to track progress every week until your deadline — and after.

What the free scan checks

More than 25 automated checks mapped to WCAG 2.1 Level AA — the exact standard 28 CFR Part 35 requires — including the two things most free tools skip: color contrast and PDF documents.

An honest note: no automated tool can certify compliance — anyone who says otherwise is selling you a lawsuit. Automated checks reliably find about a third of WCAG issues. Keyboard traps, caption accuracy, and cognitive-load problems need human review. That's exactly what the full AccessHawk platform and our remediation team are for. Read our full methodology.