2026-05-17 · 6 min read

Horry County Government Website Accessibility: Myrtle Beach, WAVE Transit, and the Grand Strand Under the DOJ Title II Rule

Horry County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States. Its population has grown from roughly 270,000 in 2010 to approximately 380,000 today, driven almost entirely by the Grand Strand's retirement and tourism economy. Myrtle Beach alone draws more than 14 million visitors annually. That scale of visitor traffic, combined with a permanent resident base that skews older than almost any comparably sized county in the country, creates an unusually high baseline demand for accessible government digital services.

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. Horry County government itself is well above the threshold. Several of the county's municipalities fall below it, but the obligation still applies — only the deadline shifts.

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Who Is Covered

Horry County government — population approximately 380,000. April 26, 2027 deadline.

WAVE Transit (Waccamaw Regional Transportation Authority) — covered independently as a transit authority based on its service footprint. April 26, 2027 deadline.

City of Myrtle Beach — population approximately 34,000 (permanent residents; seasonal population much larger). Below the 50,000 threshold. April 26, 2028 deadline.

City of Conway — county seat, population approximately 25,000. Below the threshold. April 26, 2028 deadline.

Other incorporated municipalities in Horry County (North Myrtle Beach, Surfside Beach, Garden City Beach, Loris, Aynor) are all below 50,000 and have until April 26, 2028. The rule applies to all of them; the threshold determines only the compliance date.

Important note on Myrtle Beach: Although the City of Myrtle Beach falls below the 50,000 permanent resident threshold, it is among the highest-traffic government website destinations in South Carolina due to visitor volume. An argument can be made that the functional population served by its digital properties far exceeds 50,000 on a seasonal basis. The city should plan for compliance regardless of which deadline applies.

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What Is Covered

All covered entities must make the following accessible at WCAG 2.1 Level AA:

• All publicly facing web pages and subdomains
• Web applications (permit portals, short-term rental registration systems, payment platforms)
• PDFs and downloadable documents (meeting agendas, minutes, beach access rules, public notices)
• Mobile applications
• Third-party portals — vendor contracts do not eliminate the obligation
• Transit apps and real-time information tools (directly applicable to WAVE Transit)
• Social media video content (captions required)

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Where Horry County Government Sites Most Commonly Fail

Beach access and tourism-adjacent government content. Horry County and the City of Myrtle Beach maintain an unusually high volume of government web content tied to beach access: parking regulations, beach rules, lifeguard schedules, public access maps, and seasonal safety notices. This content is often built rapidly for seasonal publishing cycles and reviewed for visual appeal rather than accessibility. Image-based maps without text alternatives, event graphics without alt text, and PDFs containing visual-only information are common findings.

WAVE Transit digital tools. WAVE Transit operates fixed-route bus service across the Grand Strand. Transit accessibility is high-impact because the populations most dependent on public transit — older adults, people with disabilities, lower-income residents — are also the populations with the highest rates of assistive technology use. WAVE's web and mobile tools, including schedule PDFs, route maps, and trip planning resources, require WCAG 2.1 AA conformance. Scanned PDF schedules are a near-universal finding on transit sites in this size range.

Short-term rental permit portals. Horry County has one of the largest concentrations of short-term vacation rental properties in the United States. The county and City of Myrtle Beach operate STR registration and permitting systems that handle significant transaction volume. These portals are frequently built on third-party platforms that were not designed to WCAG standards. Form labeling failures, inaccessible error messages, and session management issues are the most common findings.

County council and planning commission scanned agendas. Horry County's rapid growth has generated heavy planning commission and county council workloads. Meeting packets and agendas are frequently posted as scanned images rather than structured, tagged PDFs. A scanned document returns nothing to a screen reader. This failure is pervasive across South Carolina government and applies equally to Horry County.

GIS and mapping tools. Horry County maintains several publicly accessible GIS mapping applications for flood zones, zoning, property records, and beach access. Interactive map applications present persistent accessibility challenges. Information conveyed only through color, non-keyboard-accessible controls, and missing alternative text descriptions are consistent findings in government GIS tools.

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The SC Enforcement Picture

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

South Carolina Disability Rights is the federally funded P&A organization for the state and monitors disability rights compliance across South Carolina. Horry County's large retiree population includes a high proportion of users who rely on screen magnification and screen readers. The gap between that population's needs and the actual state of Grand Strand government digital content is a documented concern within the disability advocacy community.

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Compliance Timeline

Working backward from the April 26, 2027 deadline for Horry County government and WAVE Transit:

| Date | Milestone | |---|---| | Now (May 2026) | Baseline accessibility audit; inventory all web properties, apps, document repositories | | July 2026 | Complete audit; prioritize remediation by impact on service access | | September 2026 | Begin remediation of critical and serious failures; begin PDF remediation workflow | | November 2026 | Vendor portal review; confirm STR and payment platforms meet or commit to WCAG 2.1 AA | | January 2027 | Mid-point verification testing | | March 2027 | Final conformance testing | | April 1, 2027 | Publish accessibility statement | | April 26, 2027 | Deadline for Horry County and WAVE Transit | | April 26, 2028 | Deadline for City of Myrtle Beach, Conway, and smaller municipalities |

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Additional SC Guidance

For the statewide compliance picture 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
• Charleston County government website accessibility — Charleston County (430K), City of Charleston, North Charleston, CARTA

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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.

Deliverables include a full findings report with severity ratings, a remediation roadmap prioritized by impact on service access, and a DOJ-compliant accessibility statement draft.

At $9,500, the Parallax audit fits within most South Carolina government written-quote thresholds without a full RFP 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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