2026-05-17 · 6 min read

Charleston County Government Website Accessibility: City of Charleston, North Charleston, Mount Pleasant, and CARTA Under the DOJ Title II Rule

Charleston County sits at the center of South Carolina's coastal economy. With approximately 430,000 residents and anchored by the state's largest city, it hosts Joint Base Charleston, one of the Southeast's busiest commercial ports, and one of the most actively photographed and visited historic downtowns in the country. That combination — federal installations, international shipping, and heavy tourism infrastructure — creates a government digital footprint that is both unusually large and unusually visible to users who rely on assistive technology.

The Department of Justice Title II Final Rule requires state and local government entities with populations of 50,000 or more to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA by April 26, 2027. For Charleston County and the City of Charleston, the deadline is 23 months away. Agencies that have not begun an accessibility audit are already behind a compliant remediation schedule.

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Who Is Covered

Charleston County government — population approximately 430,000. April 26, 2027 deadline.

City of Charleston — population approximately 150,000. South Carolina's largest city and one of the most visited cities in the United States. April 26, 2027 deadline.

City of North Charleston — population approximately 115,000. Home to Joint Base Charleston; major logistics and port employment hub. April 26, 2027 deadline.

Town of Mount Pleasant — population approximately 90,000. One of the fastest-growing municipalities in the United States. April 26, 2027 deadline.

CARTA (Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority) — covered independently based on its service footprint, not its host county's population. April 26, 2027 deadline.

Smaller incorporated municipalities within Charleston County — such as Folly Beach, Isle of Palms, Sullivan's Island, and Goose Creek — fall under the 50,000 threshold and have until April 26, 2028. However, the DOJ rule applies to them regardless; only the deadline differs.

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What Is Covered

Every government entity must make the following accessible at WCAG 2.1 Level AA:

• All publicly facing web pages and subdomains
• Web applications, including permit portals, payment systems, and licensing platforms
• PDFs and downloadable documents (agendas, minutes, ordinances, applications, budget documents)
• Mobile applications
• Third-party portals — if your agency links residents to a vendor platform for payments or permitting, that content is covered. Vendor contracts do not eliminate the obligation.
• Social media video content posted by the agency (captions required); images (alt text required)

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Where Charleston-Area Government Sites Most Commonly Fail

Historic image-heavy tourism and government content. The City of Charleston maintains a volume of government-adjacent web content that is unusually image-dense: historic district photographs, event galleries, parks and recreation visuals, and downtown tourism information. Image galleries are among the highest-density locations for missing alt text on government sites. A gallery with 40 images and no alt text represents 40 WCAG 1.1.1 failures in a single page load.

CARTA and DASH transit digital tools. CARTA operates fixed-route bus service across the Charleston metro, and the DASH trolley serves the historic downtown peninsula. Transit is among the highest-impact accessibility categories because the population most dependent on public transportation has above-average rates of assistive technology use. CARTA's web and mobile tools — trip planners, route maps, real-time arrival information, and service alerts — require both web and mobile accessibility conformance. Real-time data rendered in map components is a known challenge for screen readers.

Scanned PDF council and commission documents. Across Charleston County, the City of Charleston, North Charleston, and Mount Pleasant, meeting agendas, minutes, and supporting documents are frequently posted as scanned image files rather than structured, tagged PDFs. A scanned image of a document returns no content to a screen reader. This failure category is among the most pervasive in South Carolina government and is not limited to smaller agencies. Charleston County Council records, City of Charleston City Council packets, and Planning Commission archives are all at risk.

Permit and development portals in a high-velocity real estate market. Charleston is one of the most active residential and commercial real estate markets in the Southeast. Permitting volume — construction permits, demolition permits, zoning applications, certificate of appropriateness applications for historic structures — is high. Legacy permitting systems commonly fail on form field labeling, missing error identification, session timeout warnings, and keyboard navigation. In a market with this permit volume, inaccessible permitting portals generate disproportionate harm.

North Charleston government content near Joint Base Charleston. North Charleston's proximity to Joint Base Charleston means the city government's digital properties are routinely accessed by active-duty service members, veterans, and their families — populations with higher-than-average rates of acquired disabilities and assistive technology use. Municipal services, employment listings, public notices, and utility portals in North Charleston carry above-average obligation to be accessible.

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The SC Enforcement Picture

The DOJ enforces Title II through the complaint process. Any individual who experiences a barrier on a covered government website can file with the DOJ Civil Rights Division. The DOJ investigates, negotiates corrective agreements, and can pursue litigation.

South Carolina Disability Rights (formerly Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities) is the federally funded P&A organization for the state. It monitors disability rights compliance and provides legal representation to individuals with disabilities. Government entities that are non-compliant at the deadline face both federal complaint exposure and attention from the state P&A organization.

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Compliance Timeline

Working backward from April 26, 2027:

| Date | Milestone | |---|---| | Now (May 2026) | Baseline accessibility audit; inventory all web properties, apps, PDFs, and third-party portals | | July 2026 | Complete audit findings; prioritize by impact on service access | | September 2026 | Begin remediation of critical and serious failures; initiate PDF remediation workflow | | November 2026 | Vendor contract review; confirm third-party portals meet or commit to WCAG 2.1 AA | | January 2027 | Mid-point verification; confirm remediation is holding | | March 2027 | Final conformance testing | | April 1, 2027 | Publish DOJ-compliant accessibility statement | | April 26, 2027 | Deadline |

Agencies beginning after January 2027 are unlikely to achieve full conformance before the deadline.

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Additional SC Guidance

For context on the statewide compliance picture and deadlines across all South Carolina counties and cities, see the South Carolina government website accessibility guide.

Detailed compliance guidance is also available for:

• Greenville County government website accessibility — SC's most populous county (530K), Greenlink transit
• Richland County government website accessibility — Columbia (state capital), The COMET transit, Fort Jackson

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The Parallax WCAG Audit

Morton Technology Consulting offers the Parallax WCAG audit at a fixed fee of $9,500.

The audit covers 200 representative pages across the agency's digital footprint. Testing combines automated scanning with axe-core against the full WCAG 2.1 Level AA ruleset and manual testing with NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on macOS. Keyboard-only navigation testing is conducted separately to surface failures that automation cannot detect.

Deliverables include a full findings report with severity ratings (critical, serious, moderate, minor), a remediation roadmap prioritized by impact on service access, and a DOJ-compliant accessibility statement draft ready for legal review.

At $9,500, the Parallax audit fits within most South Carolina government agency written-quote thresholds without a full competitive bid process.

Sample audit report: morton-digital.com/parallax-sample-audit. Full service details: morton-digital.com/products/parallax.

To discuss your agency's timeline: [email protected]

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*Morton Technology Consulting LLC, Tallahassee, FL. Southeast government website WCAG 2.1 compliance audits for the April 2027 deadline. [email protected]*

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