Morton Digital

2026-05-17 · 8 min read

Florida Government Website Accessibility: What the DOJ Title II Rule Means for Your Agency

Abstract dark editorial illustration: a Florida state outline rendered in fine copper line work on dark slate, with geometric compliance checkpoint nodes suggesting a structured government assessment. No text.

# Florida Government Website Accessibility: What the DOJ Title II Rule Means for Your Agency

Florida has 67 counties, 411 incorporated municipalities, 67 school districts, dozens of water management districts, transit authorities, port authorities, housing authorities, and community redevelopment agencies. Each one that meets the population threshold is subject to the DOJ Title II Final Rule. Each one has until April 26, 2027 to comply.

If you are a Florida government IT director and you have not started your WCAG 2.1 accessibility program, this post gives you the specific requirements, the population threshold, what is covered, and what is not.

Who Is Covered

The rule applies to state and local government entities with a total population of 50,000 or more. In Florida, that covers the state government itself and every county, municipality, school district, or special district that serves a jurisdiction above the 50,000 threshold.

Florida's most populous counties — Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Orange, Pinellas, Duval — are clearly covered. So are dozens of mid-sized counties and many municipalities.

If your jurisdiction falls under 50,000, the extended deadline is April 26, 2028. But the rule still applies; the compliance date is different, not the standard.

The calculation uses the entity's total population — the people in your jurisdiction — not the number of users of your website or the number of employees in your IT department.

What Is Covered

The rule covers web content and mobile apps that a public entity makes available to the public or uses to offer services, programs, or activities. In concrete terms for a Florida government agency, that includes:

Third-party content hosted on your domain or accessible through your site is covered if you procured or control it. If you contracted a vendor to build your permit portal, that portal must meet WCAG 2.1 AA — the responsibility falls on you, not only the vendor.

Embedded third-party content that you did not procure and cannot control — such as a social media feed widget from a platform you have no contract with — is not your compliance obligation. But if you chose to embed it and have a vendor relationship, it is.

What Has Limited Exceptions

The rule provides specific exceptions. Knowing them protects you from over-scoping your remediation effort.

Archived web content. Content that has been removed from the active website, is no longer maintained or updated, is stored for reference only, and is clearly labeled as archived is excluded. Meeting minutes from 2014 that are never accessed, never updated, and properly labeled as historical archives can be excluded. Content that is still presented as useful or current is not archived in the rule's meaning — even if it is old.

Preexisting conventional electronic documents. Word documents, PDFs, and spreadsheets that were created before your compliance date and are no longer actively used are excluded. "Actively used" means they are linked to from active pages, provided to residents in response to requests, or regularly referenced. A 2019 budget PDF that is no longer linked anywhere and exists only in an obscure archive directory is probably excluded. The current year's budget is not.

Content posted by third parties not under contract. If a member of the public posts a comment, uploads a document, or otherwise contributes content you cannot control, that content is not your responsibility. Public meeting comment portals that allow document uploads, for example, may have a carve-out for the uploaded content itself, though the portal mechanism must be accessible.

What WCAG 2.1 Level AA Requires

WCAG 2.1 Level AA has 50 success criteria organized under four principles:

Perceivable — content must be presentable in ways users can perceive. This includes alt text for images, captions for video, sufficient color contrast, and content that can be presented in different ways without losing information.

Operable — all functionality must be operable through a keyboard, without time limits that trap users, with enough time to read content, without content that flashes in ways that can cause seizures, and with navigational aids (skip links, page titles, focus management).

Understandable — content must be readable and predictable. Language must be identified, unusual words explained, abbreviations defined. Forms must include clear labels, error identification, and error suggestions.

Robust — content must be compatible with current and future assistive technology. This primarily means valid, well-structured HTML and proper ARIA implementation.

The 43% of WCAG failures that automated scanners cannot detect fall almost entirely in the Operable, Understandable, and Robust categories — which is why manual testing with actual assistive technology is a compliance requirement, not an optional extra.

The Florida-Specific Risk Picture

Florida's ADA enforcement environment is active. The state has a high volume of ADA website lawsuits relative to population — Florida consistently ranks in the top three states for ADA Title III litigation (against private businesses), and the pattern extends to public entity complaints.

Several Florida cities and counties have already received DOJ inquiries or complaints related to website accessibility. The enforcement pattern is complaints-first: a resident with a disability files a complaint, DOJ investigates, and agencies that cannot demonstrate a proactive compliance program face corrective action negotiations with binding timelines.

An agency that commissioned an audit, produced a remediation plan, and made documented progress is in a substantially different negotiating position than one that received no complaint and did nothing until served with an inquiry.

Guidance for Florida's Major Government Entities

The rule applies uniformly across all covered jurisdictions, but compliance complexity varies significantly by the size and scope of a government's digital footprint. Detailed compliance guidance is available for Florida's major metro areas:

Special audience guides:

Each post covers what is covered for that specific jurisdiction, the highest-risk WCAG failure categories, and a realistic compliance timeline.

Starting Your Compliance Program

A defensible Florida government accessibility compliance program has four components:

1. A baseline audit. A WCAG 2.1 Level AA assessment that covers a representative sample of your site — service pages, forms, navigation, documents — using both automated tools and manual testing with NVDA and VoiceOver. The audit produces a findings report, severity-rated and organized by success criterion.

2. A remediation plan. A documented timeline with responsible parties and target completion dates for each finding, prioritized by severity. Critical Level A failures fixed within 60-90 days; Level AA failures addressed within 6 months.

3. An accessibility statement. Published on your website, naming the auditor, the standard, the known limitations, and the contact mechanism for residents who encounter barriers. Required under the rule.

4. A sustainable production workflow. New content, new forms, new documents must meet the standard going forward. An accessibility fix that is immediately overridden by the next content upload is not a compliance program.

The Parallax WCAG audit from Morton Technology Consulting is designed specifically for Florida government agencies facing the April 2027 deadline. The $9,500 audit covers 200 representative pages, uses NVDA and VoiceOver in manual testing, and delivers a full findings report, prioritized remediation roadmap, and a completed accessibility statement. A sample report for a fictional Florida city government is available at morton-digital.com/parallax-sample-audit.

For agencies building internal capacity first, the WCAG Pre-Audit Readiness Kit ($149) includes a Florida-specific compliance timeline, a procurement guide for writing your RFP for a WCAG auditor, and a 49-criterion interactive testing checklist.

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*Morton Technology Consulting LLC, Tallahassee, FL. Florida government WCAG 2.1 compliance — audit, remediation planning, and accessibility statement. [email protected]*

Sources

  1. [1] Federal Register — Interim Final Rule extending Title II compliance dates (April 20, 2026) — "The compliance date for State and local government entities with a total population of 50,000 or more is extended from April 24, 2026, to April 26, 2027"
  2. [2] Florida Department of State — Florida Facts and Statistics — "Florida has 67 counties and 411 incorporated municipalities"
  3. [3] 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"
  4. [4] ADA.gov — DOJ Fact Sheet: New Rule on Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps — "The rule has exceptions for archived web content, certain preexisting conventional electronic documents, and content posted by third parties"
  5. [5] Deque University — Automated vs. Manual WCAG Testing — "automated testing tools can only detect 57% of accessibility issues"

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