Why this exists
In 2024 the Department of Justice finalized the first-ever technical standard for state and local government websites: WCAG 2.1 Level AA, under ADA Title II (28 CFR Part 35). Every city, county, town, school district, and special district in the country is covered — roughly 90,000 public entities — with hard compliance deadlines in April 2027 and April 2028 depending on population.
Enterprise accessibility platforms answer this with five-figure contracts and dashboards built for dedicated web teams most local governments don't have. AccessHawk starts from the other end: a free, honest readiness scan anyone can run in a minute, a score a council can understand, plain-English fixes a vendor can execute, and monitoring priced for public budgets.
What we believe
Accessibility is a service obligation
Residents with disabilities pay the same taxes and need the same agendas, forms, and utility payments. This is about service delivery first, and lawsuits second.
No fear-mongering, no overlays
We won't sell you a magic widget that "makes your site compliant" — those don't work and have drawn lawsuits of their own. We tell you what automated tools can and can't do, in writing.
Plain English or it doesn't ship
Every finding in an AccessHawk report says what's wrong, who it locks out, and how to fix it — in words a non-developer can hand to a vendor.
Who's behind it
AccessHawk is a product of Nighthawk Marketing, a Minneapolis, Minnesota digital agency. Nighthawk builds and maintains web properties and marketing infrastructure for organizations across the Midwest, and is a registered technology reseller partner with Carahsoft, a leading government IT solutions provider — which means public entities can also procure through established government purchasing channels.
Questions, pilots, or partnership inquiries: [email protected].
For web vendors and agencies
If you build or maintain municipal sites, AccessHawk reports are designed to be handed straight to you — findings map to WCAG success criteria with samples. Agencies managing multiple municipal clients: ask about multi-site monitoring. We'd rather be your QA layer than your competitor.