The Most Overlooked Accessibility Failure on Municipal Websites Isn't the Website — It's the PDFs
The biggest accessibility failure on most municipal websites isn't the website — it's the PDFs. Meeting minutes uploaded as scanned images. Permit applications without labeled form fields. Budgets with untagged tables. These documents are what residents actually need, and for many residents with disabilities, they're completely unusable. Here's what makes a PDF accessible, why overlays can't fix it, and how municipalities can start making progress today.
That Accessibility Widget on Your Municipal Website Isn't Protecting You — It's a Liability
If your municipal website has an accessibility overlay — one of those toolbar widgets that promises ADA compliance for a few hundred dollars a year — you need to know the truth: it's not making your site accessible, it's not going to protect you from a lawsuit, and the disability community actively opposes these products. Here's a thorough breakdown of why overlays fail, what the DOJ has said about them, and what your municipality should do instead before the April 2027 deadline arrives.
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.