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How detailed does Title II get for the public site?

Title II The ADA rule that city and township public websites must work for people with disabilities. What Title II is
points at WCAG 2.1 Level AA for covered public web content — dozens of success criteria, not a single color check. Automated tools see only part of that list. A city still needs a dated look at the real pages and PDFs, and tickets someone can fix without a legal stamp.

Who this is for

Website vendors, CivicPlus partners, freelancers, and city IT/comms staff who ask: how deep does this go? Clerks who heard “Double-A” once and need English, not a consultant deck.

The yardstick in one sentence

Title II is the legal duty. WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the technical standard the 2024 rule wrote into 28 CFR 35.200.

Version (2.1) and level (AA) are not the same thing as ADA Title II. Founder briefing lives in the company vocabulary doc; clerk pages stay short.

What “detailed” means in practice

  1. Pages residents use — home, payments, licenses, agendas, department forms — not every forgotten archive URL on day one.
  2. Public PDFs in scope — inventory under 28 CFR 35.201; ticket/OCR what is currently used. See PDFs.
  3. Automated findings are a slice — Method page: how much is automated, and why we still do not stamp conformance (Method).
  4. Tickets the vendor can run — CMS-shaped when we know the system; generic otherwise (How it works).

What we refuse to say

  • “You will be compliant after this crawl.”
  • “The overlay fixed Title II.”
  • “Here is our WCAG certificate.” (we do not stamp conformance)

The product is a dated monthly file plus tickets. $8,400/year. Independent of the website vendor grading their own homework.

For the clerk reading over your shoulder

You do not need to memorize success-criterion IDs. You need a file you can attach and a list you can forward. That is the pack.

For implementers

Deque’s public research is often cited as about 16 of 50 WCAG 2.1 AA criteria automated (~57% of issue instances in their studies). Treat automation as a slice, not a pass. Inventory PDFs under 35.201 — do not OCR the graveyard by default. Ship CMS-native tickets when you can.

This month

Work the ticket list from the latest dated file. Prefer source fixes over overlays. We do not certify that the site meets WCAG.

Questions people ask

Do we need every page perfect before the start date?
The duty is to meet the standard for covered content. Prioritize what residents use. Keep a dated monthly record and a working ticket list. ActaPack does not certify “perfect.”
Is an accessibility overlay enough detail?
No. An overlay is not the WCAG method for the underlying content under Title II. See the Overlay page.