WCAG warnings and lawsuit spike

State and local governments face a federal accessibility deadline on April 24, 2026, and their software vendors are getting pulled into the same compliance push. (federalregister.gov) (venable.com) The rule comes from the United States Department of Justice’s April 24, 2024 final update to Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It requires state and local government web content and mobile apps to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, 2.1 Level AA. (federalregister.gov) (ada.gov) Large public entities, defined in the rule as those serving populations of 50,000 or more, must comply by April 24, 2026. Smaller jurisdictions and special district governments get until April 26, 2027. (federalregister.gov) WCAG is the technical checklist many courts and regulators already use to judge whether a site works for people with disabilities. Venable LLP said on April 7 that public entities will likely require vendors to certify accessibility and accept contract terms covering compliance, reporting, accommodations, and indemnity. (venable.com) That reaches beyond city hall websites. The Justice Department rule says Title II obligations cover web content and apps a public entity makes available through “contractual, licensing, or other arrangements” with private companies. (federalregister.gov) (venable.com) The compliance gap is still wide. WebAIM’s February 2025 scan of 1 million home pages found detectable WCAG failures on 94.8 percent of them, with 50,960,288 distinct errors and an average of 51 errors per page. (webaim.org) WebAIM also said its automated testing catches only part of the problem, so a clean scan does not mean a site is accessible. The most common barriers it measured included low-contrast text, missing alternative text on images, and unlabeled form inputs. (webaim.org) Litigation is also rising, though the public numbers are lower than the 102 percent claim circulating in social posts. UsableNet counted 2,019 digital accessibility lawsuits in the first half of 2025 and projected a nearly 20 percent increase over 2024, while EcomBack later counted 3,948 lawsuits for full-year 2025, up 23.84 percent from 3,188 in 2024. (usablenet.com) (ecomback.com) Those filings were concentrated in a few states. EcomBack said New York, Florida, California, and Illinois accounted for 86.65 percent of 2025 cases, and 251 plaintiffs filed the 3,948 lawsuits it tracked. (ecomback.com) Businesses and public agencies have both pushed for clearer rules for years, arguing that the old case-by-case system left them guessing. The Justice Department’s 2024 rule answered that by naming one standard and putting dates on it. (ada.gov) (federalregister.gov) Now the question is less what standard applies than who has to prove they meet it. For public entities and the companies that power their sites and apps, that deadline starts arriving on April 24, 2026. (federalregister.gov) (venable.com)