Your Municipality's Payment Portal Is Probably the Least Accessible Part of Your Website — And the Hardest to Fix
Your municipal payment portal is probably the most-used feature on your entire website — and it's almost certainly the least accessible. Dynamic URLs that automated scanners can't follow, iframes that separate the payment experience from the rest of your site, and third-party vendors who may not prioritize accessibility create a compliance blind spot that most municipalities don't even know they have. Here's how the problem works, why it's your responsibility even though it's someone else's platform, and what to do about it.
What a WCAG 2.1 AA Audit Actually Looks Like for a Small New Jersey Municipality
The April 2027 deadline for WCAG 2.1 AA compliance is fourteen months away, and most small New Jersey municipalities still don't know where their websites stand. The biggest reason? Nobody's explained what an accessibility audit actually involves. Here's a complete walkthrough — what it tests, how long it takes, what it costs, and what you're supposed to do with the results — written for the municipal administrators and elected officials who need to make this decision.
Your Outdated Municipal Website Is Sending a Message — And It's Not a Good One
Every day, residents visit your municipal website expecting to find answers — and too many of them land on a site that looks like it was built during the last administration. An outdated website doesn't just make it hard to find information. It sends a message about how your municipality operates, how much it values residents' time, and how seriously it takes transparency. Here's what that message really sounds like and why the cost of waiting keeps getting higher.