Morton Digital

2026-05-17 · 6 min read

Cobb County Government Website Accessibility: What the DOJ Title II Rule Requires

Abstract dark editorial illustration: a Northwest Atlanta suburban county government compliance framework rendered in fine copper line work on dark slate. No text.

# Cobb County Government Website Accessibility: What the DOJ Title II Rule Requires

Cobb County is Georgia's third-largest county, home to roughly 780,000 residents, and its government operates one of the most heavily used county websites in the state. Under the Department of Justice's updated Title II ADA rule, Cobb County Government must bring its public-facing websites and mobile applications into conformance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA by April 26, 2027. With that deadline now roughly a year away, agencies that have not yet conducted an audit are already behind the realistic remediation timeline.

The stakes here are not abstract. Cobb County's digital infrastructure touches everything from tax records and court services to transit scheduling and development permits. Residents with disabilities — and the disability community accounts for roughly one in five Americans — rely on these systems to access programs and services with the same independence as everyone else. The Title II rule exists to enforce that right.

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Who Must Comply by April 2027

The April 26, 2027 deadline applies to public entities serving populations above 50,000. In Cobb County, that covers several distinct covered entities.

Cobb County Government (~780,000 residents) — operates cobbcounty.org, which serves as the primary access point for property tax records, court case lookups, development permit applications, public safety information, parks and recreation registration, and county commission materials.

City of Marietta (~60,000 residents) — the county seat. Marietta operates its own municipal website covering city services, utilities, planning and zoning, and public safety. As a covered entity above the 50,000-resident threshold, Marietta faces the same April 2027 deadline independently of the county.

City of Smyrna (~60,000 residents) — Smyrna crosses the 50,000-resident threshold and carries the April 2027 deadline for its city website and any public-facing digital services.

CobbLinc — Cobb County's public transit service is operated directly by Cobb County rather than as an independent authority, which means CobbLinc's web properties, route information tools, trip planners, and any rider-facing mobile apps fall under the Cobb County Government compliance umbrella on the April 2027 timeline.

Cobb County School District — the school district is a large, independent Title II entity with its own board and operational structure. It is separately covered under the rule and must meet the April 2027 deadline for all public-facing digital properties, including the district's main website, school-level sites, parent portals, and any apps offered to the public.

Kennesaw (~35,000) and Acworth (~25,000) fall below the 50,000-resident threshold and face the later April 26, 2028 deadline. That later date does not exempt them — it gives smaller agencies more time to budget and plan while the compliance obligation itself is unchanged.

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What Must Be Accessible

The rule covers all web content and mobile applications that a public entity makes available to the public or uses to offer programs, services, or activities. For Cobb County, that means:

Content published before June 24, 2024 qualifies for a narrow archived-content exception, but any document that remains actively linked from current pages — regardless of its original creation date — is in scope for remediation.

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Where Cobb County Government Sites Most Commonly Fail

Based on failure patterns that consistently appear across comparable suburban county governments, Cobb County's web properties are likely to face issues in the following areas.

Development and permitting portals. Cobb County's development services system handles permit applications, inspection scheduling, and plan review status — high-volume, transactional workflows. These portals frequently rely on form fields without proper programmatic labels, file upload interfaces that assistive technology cannot navigate, and status notification systems that do not announce updates to screen readers.

CobbLinc transit information. Transit websites are among the most consequential digital properties for riders with visual impairments or motor disabilities. Dynamic route displays, real-time arrival widgets, interactive route maps, and trip planning tools often fail keyboard navigation requirements and are not compatible with screen readers. CobbLinc's paratransit scheduling interface, if web-based, carries additional obligations.

County commission and school board PDFs. Meeting agendas, minutes, resolutions, budget documents, and policy records are routinely distributed as PDFs — and routinely untagged. An untagged PDF is completely inaccessible to screen readers. Cobb County and the school district together likely have thousands of PDFs linked from active pages, representing a substantial remediation backlog that takes time to work through.

Parks and recreation registration. Online registration systems for parks programs, sports leagues, and facilities often use third-party platforms or custom-built portals with poor accessibility implementations. Form field labeling, date picker accessibility, and confirmation message handling are common failure categories.

County maps and GIS tools. Cobb County's GIS-based property search and parcel viewer tools are widely used by residents and contractors. Interactive map interfaces built without ARIA roles, keyboard accessibility, or non-visual alternatives are a near-universal failure in county government.

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Compliance Timeline: Working Backward from April 2027

With the April 26, 2027 deadline roughly eleven months away from mid-2026, the realistic remediation timeline is already compressed.

Agencies that begin this process in late 2026 will not have enough time to complete remediation before the deadline. The audit must come first — you cannot prioritize or budget for fixes you have not yet measured.

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The Parallax WCAG Audit

Morton Technology Consulting's Parallax audit is a fixed-fee WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance audit designed for government agencies at exactly this stage of preparation.

What is included:

Fixed fee: $9,500. This price point fits within the written-quote threshold that most Georgia local government procurement offices apply to professional services contracts, which means agencies can move without a full RFP process.

A sample audit report is available at https://morton-digital.com/parallax-sample-audit. Full service details are at https://morton-digital.com/products/parallax.

To request a quote or ask questions, contact [email protected].

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

Sources

  1. [1] ADA.gov — DOJ Fact Sheet: New Rule on Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps — "State and local governments must make sure that their web content and mobile apps meet WCAG 2.1, Level AA"
  2. [2] U.S. Census Bureau — QuickFacts: Cobb County, Georgia — "Cobb County, Georgia population estimate"
  3. [3] ADA.gov — DOJ Title II Web Accessibility Final Rule Overview — "A public entity that uses a third party's web content or mobile app to offer services to the public must ensure that such content or app is accessible"
  4. [4] Deque Systems — Automated Testing Study Identifies 57% of Digital Accessibility Issues — "automated testing can identify approximately 57% of accessibility issues"

Morton Technology Consulting LLC — WCAG 2.1 AA audits for Florida government agencies. Parallax audit → · WCAG Readiness Kit → · All posts →