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Is Your Municipal Website Accessible? What Local Governments Need to Know

Residents expect to pay bills, find public notices, access meeting agendas, and use online services. If your municipal website is not accessible, you may block some residents from using those services.

Think about older adults, mobile users, and residents dealing with temporary limitations such as an injury or a poor internet connection. Is your website able to accommodate those people easily?

For local governments, website accessibility is a core part of public service, public trust, and risk management—and not something you can put off.

What Is Web Accessibility?

Web accessibility means designing and maintaining your website so people with disabilities can use it effectively. That includes residents who rely on screen readers, keyboard navigation, captions, screen magnification, speech input, or other assistive technology.

An accessible municipal website helps ensure that everyone can:

Read announcements and alerts
Access agendas, minutes, and public documents
Complete forms and permit applications
Pay bills online
Watch or review public meeting content
Contact a specific department

In short, accessibility helps make digital government services available to as many people as possible.

What Web Accessibility Standards Are Most Important for Municipalities?

Two of the most important accessibility references for municipal websites are Section 508 and WCAG.

Section 508

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible. While municipalities are not all governed by Section 508 in the same way federal agencies are, it remains an important benchmark because it has shaped how accessibility is evaluated across the public sector.

WCAG

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the most widely recognized technical standards for website accessibility. These guidelines are published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international body for web standards.

Most organizations today use WCAG 2.1 AA as the practical baseline for compliance, and WCAG 2.2 AA is increasingly becoming the near-future standard for municipalities. WCAG focuses on whether your website is:

Perceivable: People can see or hear the content.
Operable: People can navigate and use it.
Understandable: Content and interactions make sense.
Robust: It works with assistive technologies and modern browsers.

Why Accessibility Matters for Municipal Websites

1. You improve online services for all residents.

Your website is one of your municipality’s most important service channels. It is where residents go to find answers, make payments, and submit information.

If a resident cannot navigate your menu with a keyboard, understand a low contrast page, use an online payment form, or access a PDF agenda with a screen reader, then they’re experiencing a service issue—not just a website issue.

An accessible website makes it easier for residents to:

Get information quickly
Complete tasks without calling town hall
Participate in civic processes
Access services independently

2. You reduce legal and reputational risk.

Municipalities continue to face scrutiny over inaccessible digital services. Website accessibility complaints and lawsuits continue to plague municipalities. In many cases, the cost of fixing problems proactively is far lower than the cost of responding to a legal complaint, dealing with negative public attention, and making rushed repairs later.

Inaccessible websites can also undermine public confidence. Residents expect equal access to government information and services—and you may hear about issues from residents on the phone or during a council meeting.

Common Accessibility Problems on Municipal Websites

Many municipal websites struggle with the same recurring accessibility issues. Some are technical, and others involve day-to-day content publishing tasks. A few of the most common problems include:

Poor color contrast that makes text hard to read
Menus or forms unusable with a keyboard
Missing or unclear alternative text on images
Improper heading structure that confuses screen readers
PDFs as scanned images instead of readable documents
Videos without captions or transcripts
Links that say “click here” instead of describing the destination
Images that contain important text not available elsewhere on the page
Form fields without clear labels or error instructions
Third party tools that are not fully accessible such as payment portals, calendars, or agenda modules

For municipalities, document accessibility is especially important. Agendas, minutes, bid documents, ordinances, applications, and public notices are often posted as PDFs. If those files are not accessible, an otherwise good website can still create major barriers.

Website Accessibility Is Not a One-Time Project

One of the biggest misconceptions about website accessibility is that you can fix it once and check it off your list. In reality, accessibility is ongoing.

Even if your website platform is built well, accessibility can break over time as your staff upload new documents, add images without alt text, embed videos without captions, or publish content with poor formatting.

Municipalities should think about accessibility in two parts:

1. Website platform and development

Build and maintain your website with accessibility in mind from the start. That includes:

Clean code and semantic HTML
Keyboard-friendly navigation
Accessible forms and search
Mobile responsiveness
Sufficient color contrast
Compatibility with screen readers and other assistive technologies

If your website is older, heavily customized, or has not been reviewed in several years, an accessibility audit is a smart next step.

2. Day-to-day content management

The members of your staff who update your website also play a major role in accessibility. They should understand basic publishing practices such as:

Using headings in the correct order
Writing meaningful link text
Adding alt text to informative images
Avoiding image-based flyers
Creating accessible PDFs (or, when possible, publishing important information as web pages instead)
Providing captions for videos and transcripts for audio content

What Municipalities Should Do Next

If you are not sure where your website stands, a practical path forward includes:

Starting with an accessibility audit: A proper audit can help identify barriers in your website templates, navigation, documents, forms, and core user journeys. It can also help you prioritize what to fix first.
Reviewing your highest impact content first: Focus on the pages and tools residents use most such as the homepage, emergency alerts, payment pages, permit and license forms, meeting agendas and minutes, public notices, contact pages, and job application pages.
Evaluating your documents and videos: For many municipalities, documents and multimedia are the biggest source of accessibility issues. Review PDFs, posted forms, meeting packets, video content, and anything tied to public participation or online services.
Make accessibility part of your publishing process: Accessibility improves when it becomes part of your everyday content updates, not a cleanup project once a year. A short internal checklist and basic staff training can make a big difference.

Also, make sure you ask your website provider the right questions such as:

Which WCAG standard are you designing to?
Do you test for WCAG 2.1 AA or 2.2 AA?
How do you handle accessible PDFs, forms, and video content?
How do you test keyboard navigation and screen reader usability?
Do you review third party integrations for accessibility?
Do you provide ongoing monitoring or periodic audits?

Helpful Tools for a Basic Accessibility Check

If you want a quick snapshot of your site’s accessibility, the following tools can help identify obvious issues. However, they do not replace a full audit by an experienced accessibility professional.

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An accessible municipal website is not just about ADA compliance. It’s about making sure every resident can get information, use online services, and participate in local government without unnecessary barriers. The best time to address accessibility is before a complaint or a rushed redesign.

Want Help Reviewing Your Municipal Website?

If you have questions about your website’s accessibility, we can help. We can review your current site, identify common barriers, and talk through practical next steps based on your goals, staff capacity, and existing platform.

Fill out the form below to schedule a conversation.

Apr 21, 2026