WCAG 2.1 AA for Massachusetts public entities
Your website is a public service. Make sure everyone can use it.
Under ADA Title II, Massachusetts counties, cities, towns, school districts, and special districts have to bring their websites, forms, PDFs, and portals to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. I run the technical assessment, hand your team a prioritized fix list, and verify the work once it ships.
Manual and automated testing · Prioritized remediation plan · Ongoing monitoring
April 26, 2027
Public entities with a total population of 50,000 or more. In Bristol County: the county government, New Bedford, Fall River, and Taunton.
April 26, 2028
Public entities under 50,000, plus every special district government — water, fire, housing, and regional planning authorities.
- WCAG 2.1 Level AA
- ADA Title II · 28 CFR Part 35
- Vendor and third-party content
- Manual and automated testing
What we review
Websites, forms, PDFs, and portals — the whole public surface.
The rule covers what you publish and what you provide through a vendor. A clean homepage does not help a resident who cannot file a permit or read a meeting packet.
Public websites
Every template a resident actually lands on, not just the homepage.
- Department and board pages
- Agendas, minutes, and calendars
- News, alerts, and emergency notices
Online forms
Where an accessibility failure stops a transaction cold.
- Permit and license applications
- Public records requests
- Program registration and sign-ups
PDF documents
Usually the single largest source of findings in a municipal audit.
- Meeting packets and warrants
- Budgets and annual reports
- Scanned notices with no text layer
Third-party portals
Vendor software is in scope when you provide it to the public.
- Tax and utility payments
- GIS and assessor lookups
- Permitting and e-filing systems
How we test
Automated scans catch about a third of it. People catch the rest.
Scanners are good at contrast ratios and missing attributes. They cannot tell you whether a keyboard user can escape a modal, or whether a screen reader announces your agenda table in an order anyone can follow. Both passes run on every assessment.
Automated sweep
axe-core and Lighthouse across every unique template plus a sample of content pages.
Keyboard-only navigation
Skip links, focus order, visible focus, and keyboard traps, tabbed end to end.
Screen reader testing
NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on macOS and iOS, run against the pages residents use most.
Contrast and visual checks
Text, icons, focus indicators, and state changes measured against the 4.5:1 and 3:1 thresholds.
Document review
Tagged structure, reading order, alt text, and headings in the PDFs you publish on a schedule.
Representative findings
The issues that turn up most often on Massachusetts municipal sites.
| Issue | WCAG | Severity | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Images and charts missing alt text | 1.1.1 | Critical | Meeting agendas and budget PDFs |
| Form inputs without programmatic labels | 3.3.2 | Critical | Permit and records request forms |
| Recorded video without captions | 1.2.2 | Critical | Public meeting archives |
| Text contrast below 4.5:1 | 1.4.3 | Serious | Board and committee landing pages |
| Focus indicator not visible | 2.4.7 | Serious | Online payment portal |
| Data tables without header associations | 1.3.1 | Moderate | Assessor and tax rate tables |
How the engagement runs
A prioritized fix list your web vendor can actually execute.
You do not get a 300-page scanner dump. You get findings ranked by resident impact and compliance priority, written so a developer can act on them without translation.
- 01
Assess
Full technical review of your site, forms, documents, and portals against WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
- 02
Prioritize
Findings ranked by severity, how many residents hit them, and how much effort the fix takes.
- 03
Remediate
Your team or your vendor makes the changes with exact guidance and code. I can also do the work.
- 04
Verify
Re-test every fixed item and the agreed scope against WCAG 2.1 AA, and update your published accessibility statement.
Sample report
See exactly what you'd receive.
A real deliverable, prepared for a sample municipality. Readable by a town administrator in five minutes, precise enough for a developer to work from.
- Executive summary a select board or council can act on
- Every finding mapped to its WCAG 2.1 success criterion and level
- Before and after screenshots with the exact code change
- Phased remediation roadmap with effort estimates and target dates
- Scope and methodology, so the record shows how conformance was measured
- A draft accessibility statement for administrative or legal review
Bristol County & the South Coast
Based in New Bedford. Working across Bristol County.
JusCoding is run out of New Bedford. When your IT director would rather walk through findings in a conference room than a Zoom window, that is a twenty-minute drive, not a travel line item.
Bristol is one of the six Massachusetts counties that still has a county government, so the county itself is a covered entity alongside its twenty cities and towns. Each one owns its own website, its own vendor contracts, and its own compliance date.
Regional school districts are their own case. The rule does not count them as special district governments, so a district's date follows the population it serves rather than defaulting to 2028 — which catches a lot of superintendents off guard.
That fragmentation is the hard part. A regional district and its member towns often run four platforms with four vendors, and residents cross between them without noticing the seam.
Compliance deadline: April 26, 2027
Public entities with a total population of 50,000 or more, measured by the 2020 decennial Census.
- Bristol County
- New Bedford
- Fall River
- Taunton
Compliance deadline: April 26, 2028
The other seventeen Bristol County municipalities, plus special district governments such as water, fire, housing, and regional planning authorities.
- Attleboro
- North Attleborough
- Dartmouth
- Easton
- Mansfield
- Somerset
- Swansea
- Norton
- Seekonk
- Westport
- Fairhaven
- Raynham
- Rehoboth
- Acushnet
- Freetown
- Dighton
- Berkley
After remediation
Conformance is a state you maintain, not a project you finish.
The obligation does not stop at the deadline. Every new agenda packet, every new form, and every vendor update is a chance to fall back out of conformance.
Quarterly re-scans
Scheduled automated sweeps plus a manual spot check, with a short written delta against the previous run.
Change alerts
New issues flagged when a template, plugin, or vendor portal update introduces a regression.
Accessibility statement upkeep
Your published statement, resident feedback channel, and remediation log kept current and accurate.
Twenty minutes. One page. Your accessibility risk in plain English.
Bring your URL. You'll leave with a preliminary read on where you stand against WCAG 2.1 AA and what the first fixes should be.
20 minutes
Focused and efficient
No pitch
Just clarity
One-page roadmap
Tailored to your goals