Towns, counties and special districts
Your council agenda is a scanned PDF. A screen reader hears nothing.
Under the ADA Title II rule, that agenda has to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA by April 26, 2027 for larger towns and April 26, 2028 for everyone else. We rebuild town websites so agendas, minutes and forms are real web pages, and your clerk’s editor keeps them that way.
Town Council Regular Meeting
· Town Hall
- Call to order and Pledge of Allegiance
- Approval of October 6 minutes
- Public hearing: Ordinance 2026-14, sidewalk repair
- Public comment
- Adjournment
Need this in another format? The town clerk can provide it.
The rule
What Title II asks of your website
In 2024 the Department of Justice adopted WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for state and local government websites and mobile apps — including what’s posted on them: agendas, minutes, forms, notices and videos. On April 20, 2026 it pushed the compliance dates back a year. The standard did not change.
- Towns, cities and counties of 50,000 people or more
- April 26, 2027
- Under 50,000 people, and every special district
- April 26, 2028
We treat every Level A and AA success criterion as a requirement, not a target. This page describes how we build; it isn’t legal advice.
What we build to
Accessible in the code, not bolted on
Structure a screen reader can follow
- One h1 per page and headings in order — no skipped levels
- Header, navigation, main and footer landmarks on every page
- A skip-to-content link and a lang attribute
- Real buttons and links, never clickable divs
Usable without a mouse, at any size
- A visible focus outline on everything you can tab to
- Text contrast of 4.5:1, or 3:1 for large text and controls
- Works at 320 pixels wide and at 200% zoom with no sideways scrolling
- Every form field has a visible label, not just placeholder text
Nothing that moves on its own
- No carousels and no auto-playing video or audio
- Anything that does move gets a pause control
- Captions on every video
- Facebook and Instagram feeds replaced with plain links
Documents residents can open
- Meeting agendas and minutes published as web pages, not PDFs
- Old documents kept in a section labelled Archive — for reference only, never edited
- Current forms and applications rebuilt as web forms, or published as tagged, accessible PDFs
- Meaningful alt text on every image, and empty alt on decoration
No overlays
Why we won’t sell you an accessibility widget
An overlay puts a toolbar on top of a site that is still inaccessible underneath. It can’t add a missing heading, write alt text that means anything, or label a form field. Many blind users say overlays make sites harder to use, and sites running them still get sued. We fix the page itself.
An editor your clerk can’t accidentally break
Most public sites lose their accessibility one upload at a time. The editor we hand over won’t publish an image without alt text, and it offers heading levels instead of font sizes — so a big bold line is still a real heading to a screen reader.
Every site also gets an Accessibility page naming a real contact, so anyone who can’t use something on it can ask for an accessible version.
Before we call it done
Tested by tool, by keyboard and by ear
Zero axe-core violations
An automated scan of every page, not a sample. A page with a finding isn't finished.
A keyboard-only pass
Every menu, form and dialog worked through with Tab, Enter, Space and the arrow keys — no mouse.
A screen-reader pass
The site read aloud with NVDA or VoiceOver, page by page. It catches what automated scans can't: alt text that says nothing, an order that makes no sense out loud.
Failures listed by criterion
Anything that fails is written up with its WCAG success criterion number, so your staff can see what was checked and what was fixed.
Start a project
Ready for a site that wins the job?
Tell us what you're working with. You'll get a plain-language reply — and if we're not the right fit, we'll say so and point you somewhere good.
Don't like the first design? Take your money back. What it covers
Want the number first? Build an estimate — a minute, and no email needed.
Not ready? Check your Google listing — free, about ten seconds.
Prefer email? contact@theharbortree.com
Tell us what you need
A few lines. Takes about a minute.