The district website is now a compliance deadline.
What changed
In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice finalized a rule under ADA Title II: every public school district's websites, mobile apps and digital documents must meet the WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standard. These are compliance deadlines, not target dates. After ours passes, a non-conforming website is a federal civil rights violation.
What it covers
Our public website, and more: documents families use (enrollment, meal applications, board packets), video (captions), our learning platforms and the content teachers post to them, and our mobile apps. Hiring a website vendor does not transfer the obligation; verifying vendor accessibility claims is explicitly the district's job.
Why this is not theoretical
- From 2016 to 2018, roughly 2,400 federal OCR complaints targeted K-12 websites; more than 1,000 districts signed resolution agreements. Complaints are free to file, from anywhere.
- Districts that sign agree to a federally monitored program: expert audit, an 18-month corrective action plan, annual documented staff training, and progress reports to OCR every six months.
- Families can also sue directly in federal court, whether or not OCR acts. Web accessibility suits rise every year.
The good news
The barriers regulators cite are consistent and fixable: missing image descriptions, uncaptioned video, untagged PDFs, low contrast, mouse-only navigation. Districts that start early fix them in prioritized sprints across normal budget cycles, and documented steady progress is itself protective.
Recommended action (three lines for the budget)
- This month: baseline scan of our public site. (Free; establishes where we stand.)
- This term: a Title II readiness review - inventory of sites, documents, platforms and vendors, with a prioritized plan and budget range sized to our deadline.
- This budget cycle and next: fund remediation sprints, staff publishing training, and ongoing monitoring, spread across fiscal years instead of compressed against the deadline.
Verify independently: the rule in plain language at TitleII.org · DOJ guidance at ADA.gov · example resolution agreements at ax4e.com/k12 (federal documents linked).