What is ADA compliance, and why does it matter?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed in 1990, prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, public services, and places of public accommodation. As more essential services moved online, courts and regulators extended that same principle to websites and mobile apps: if the public can't use your digital services because of a disability, that's a barrier the law treats seriously.

What does an "accessible" website actually mean?

In practice, ADA website compliance means building to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA — the technical standard regulators and courts point to. That covers things like:

• Images and icons have text alternatives for screen readers.
• Every form field has a clear, programmatically associated label.
• Pages can be fully operated by keyboard alone, not just a mouse.
• Text has enough color contrast to be read by people with low vision.
• Pages don't block pinch-to-zoom or trap focus.
• Video content includes captions; audio includes transcripts.

Who is it for?

Accessibility work benefits far more people than most organizations expect:

• Residents and customers with disabilities — vision, hearing, motor, and cognitive — who rely on assistive technology like screen readers, switch devices, or voice control.
• Older adults, whose vision and dexterity often change with age, even without a formal disability.
• Everyone else, situationally — a broken arm, a bright sunny sidewalk washing out a screen, a slow connection loading images last, a noisy room making captions essential.

Who has to comply?

Two parts of the ADA are most relevant to websites:

• Title II covers state and local government entities — cities, towns, counties, school districts, public utilities, and special districts. A 2024 Department of Justice rule sets a firm WCAG 2.1 AA compliance deadline for these entities. See our requirements & deadlines page for details.
• Title III covers "places of public accommodation," which courts have increasingly applied to private businesses' websites — retail, hospitality, healthcare, and more — even without a single bright-line technical rule yet on the books for the private sector.

Why it's worth doing regardless of the law

Accessible sites tend to be faster, more usable on mobile, easier for search engines to understand, and simpler to maintain. Treat compliance as a deadline that forces a genuinely better product — not just paperwork.