DOJ Extends ADA Title II Web and Mobile App Accessibility Deadlines to 2027 and 2028

On April 20, 2026, the US Department of Justice published an interim final rule in the Federal Register that pushes back the compliance dates of its 2024 web and mobile app accessibility rule for state and local governments. The first deadline had been only days away. It is now a year later.

If you sell software to US public bodies, or you build portals, payment pages or apps that a city, county, school district or public university puts in front of residents, this changes your calendar but not your specification. Teams that handle UI and UX design for public sector products still have to hit the same technical standard, just with more time to do it properly.

This article explains what the Department changed, what it left alone, and how a vendor or product owner should use the extra time. It is a high-level summary and not legal advice.

What the Department of Justice changed on April 20, 2026

The Federal Register notice describes the action as an interim final rule with a request for comments. According to its summary, the Department is revising the regulations that implement title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act to extend the compliance dates for the web content and mobile application accessibility requirements adopted on April 24, 2024. The Federal Register entry lists the rule as effective on April 20, 2026, the day it was published, and shows a comment period that closed on June 22, 2026.

An interim final rule takes effect first and collects comments afterwards. That means the new dates are the dates in force today. It also means the Department has received public comments on the extension, and this article does not predict what, if anything, it will do with them.

The new compliance dates

The Department's fact sheet on ada.gov now shows the following dates, and notes that the April 20, 2026 interim final rule extended them:

• State and local governments serving 50,000 or more people: April 26, 2027.
• State and local governments serving 0 to 49,999 people: April 26, 2028.
• Special district governments: April 26, 2028.

For the larger group, the Federal Register entry gives the previous date as April 24, 2026. In practice, a state agency or large city that was days from its deadline in April 2026 now has until April 26, 2027.

What did not change

The notice is titled and summarized as an extension of compliance dates. The technical standard described on ada.gov is unchanged: the fact sheet states that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1, Level AA) is the technical standard for state and local governments' web content and mobile apps.

The Department's first steps guidance for state and local governments also still says that a public entity needs to make sure content or mobile apps that a vendor or contractor provides or posts on its behalf comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AA. It gives the example of a township choosing a third-party mobile app, and says the township generally must choose one that meets the standard even though it did not design or build the app.

The same guidance lists a small number of exceptions, such as archived web content and certain preexisting documents, and reminds public entities that they still have to meet their other existing obligations under the ADA even where an exception applies. A later deadline for the technical standard is not a statement that accessibility can be ignored until then.

Who this affects, and who it does not

This rule is about title II of the ADA, which covers state and local government entities. The obligation sits with the public entity. It reaches private companies indirectly, through the vendor and contractor language quoted above and through the procurement terms public bodies write to protect themselves.

Vendors and agencies supplying public bodies

If your product is used by a US public entity to deliver a service to the public, expect accessibility to stay in requests for proposals, security and compliance questionnaires, and contract renewals. A customer whose own deadline moved by a year has not lost the need to ask you for evidence.

Private businesses and UK companies

The interim final rule does not set a technical standard for private business websites; it concerns the title II regulation for government entities. That is a description of this rule's scope, not a conclusion about what other laws require of a private company. UK companies are in the same position as any other supplier: the rule matters to you if a US state or local government is your customer, and your UK obligations are a separate question that this US rule does not answer.

What it means for your business

The practical effect is more time against a fixed target. In our view that is better news for teams with an honest remediation plan than for teams hoping the requirement would disappear. The standard on ada.gov is the same one it was before April 20, 2026.

The extra year is most useful for work that cannot be rushed. Retrofitting accessibility onto a finished interface usually costs more effort than designing for it, because problems such as keyboard traps, missing form labels, poor color contrast and inaccessible custom components tend to be built into shared templates and component libraries. Fixing the component once fixes every screen that uses it, but only if there is time to regression test the result. Mobile apps add a second code base and a second set of assistive technologies to test against.

There is also a commercial angle. A supplier that can show a current conformance report and a dated remediation plan is easier for a public buyer to approve than one that only promises to be ready by the deadline. Public buyers tend to start procurement well ahead of a compliance date, so the working deadline for a vendor is usually earlier than the one in the rule.

What to do next

The steps below are general guidance for product owners and vendors, not a compliance checklist.

• Confirm which of your customers are US state or local government entities, and which date applies to each based on the population they serve or their status as a special district.
• Audit your web and mobile products against WCAG 2.1 Level AA using both automated tools and manual testing with a keyboard and a screen reader, since automated scans catch only part of the problem.
• Prioritize the flows residents actually depend on, such as sign-in, forms, payments and document downloads, and fix shared components before individual pages.
• Write down what you tested, what failed and when it will be fixed, so you can answer customer questionnaires with evidence.
• Add accessibility checks to your design review and release process so that new features do not reintroduce old defects.

If you rely on an outside development team, put the standard and the testing method into the statement of work. Our guide on how to outsource software development from the US or UK covers how to write requirements like these into a contract.

Conclusion

The Department of Justice's interim final rule of April 20, 2026 moved the ADA title II web and mobile app accessibility deadlines to April 26, 2027 for governments serving 50,000 or more people and to April 26, 2028 for smaller governments and special districts. The technical standard published on ada.gov remains WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and public entities remain responsible for what their vendors supply. Read the official pages linked above, and take advice from a qualified attorney on how the rule applies to your situation.

Entrant Technologies builds websites, web applications and mobile apps. If you want an accessibility review folded into a redesign or a new build, you can contact us to talk through the scope.