Morton Digital

2026-05-17 · 5 min read

Miami-Dade Government Website Accessibility: DOJ Title II Compliance for Florida's Largest County

Abstract dark editorial illustration: a large county government portal grid rendered in fine copper line work on dark slate, with accessibility criteria overlaid. No text.

# Miami-Dade Government Website Accessibility: DOJ Title II Compliance for Florida's Largest County

Miami-Dade County is Florida's most populous county — roughly 2.7 million residents — and operates one of the most digitally active county governments in the Southeast. That scale, combined with a multilingual resident base and a wide array of online government services, makes WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance both more important and more technically demanding than it is for smaller jurisdictions.

Under the DOJ's Title II Final Rule published in March 2024, Miami-Dade County must bring all public-facing web content and mobile apps into conformance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA by April 26, 2027.

Why the April 2027 Deadline Applies

The Final Rule created two compliance tiers based on jurisdiction population:

Miami-Dade's 2.7 million residents place it firmly in the first tier, alongside every major Florida city and county government. There is no further extension of the 2027 deadline as of May 2026 — the DOJ's Interim Final Rule in April 2026 extended the 2026 deadline to 2027, but did not move the 2027 date.

The Complexity of Miami-Dade's Digital Footprint

What makes Miami-Dade's compliance challenge distinctive is the sheer number of public-facing digital touchpoints:

miamidade.gov and associated subdomains — Miami-Dade's primary portal has hundreds of department pages, service portals, and document repositories. Many were built under different administrations with different technology stacks.

Citizen-facing applications — The county operates online applications for property tax payments, building permit applications, animal services, court records, voter registration, and dozens of other functions. Each is a separate compliance scope.

Transit and transportation — Miami-Dade Transit's trip planner, route information, and rider alerts are public government services covered by the rule.

Judiciary and courts — Public-facing court information systems, juror reporting portals, and online fine payment systems.

Multilingual content — Miami-Dade publishes significant content in Spanish and Haitian Creole. Each language version of a page must independently meet WCAG 2.1 AA — a multilingual accessibility assessment is not a single-language test repeated.

Document libraries — Decades of meeting agendas, resolutions, budget documents, and zoning records are published as PDFs. Many older PDFs are scanned images that screen readers cannot read at all.

What WCAG 2.1 Level AA Requires

The 50 WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria apply to all covered content. For Miami-Dade's specific environment, the highest-risk failure categories:

PDF accessibility — Scanned PDFs published as images are completely inaccessible to screen reader users. The rule requires PDFs to be tagged and readable by assistive technology. Miami-Dade's document library volume makes this the largest remediation category for most county-level governments.

Keyboard navigation in web applications — Complex forms for permit applications, tax payments, and court filings must be fully operable via keyboard. Applications built on older frameworks often have keyboard traps — user enters a date field and cannot exit without a mouse.

Color contrast — Text elements on pages that use county brand colors often fail the 4.5:1 contrast ratio required by WCAG 1.4.3. This is common on pages with styled headers, navigation elements, and button labels.

Video captions — Public meeting recordings, emergency broadcasts, and service tutorial videos published on county channels require synchronized captions. Auto-generated captions from video platforms do not meet the standard when they contain significant errors.

ARIA and dynamic content — County web applications that update content dynamically (search results, permit status, tax information) must communicate those updates to screen readers using appropriate ARIA live regions.

Enforcement: What Triggers a DOJ Investigation

DOJ enforcement is complaint-driven. Any Miami-Dade resident with a disability who encounters an inaccessible county service can file a complaint — directly with DOJ's Disability Rights Section, through a private attorney, or through advocacy organizations.

Given Miami-Dade's resident population and the size of its disability community, the probability of a complaint is meaningfully higher than for a smaller county. The DOJ does not prioritize complaints by county size, but larger governments with more digital touchpoints present more failure surfaces.

A documented compliance program — professional audit, remediation plan, accessibility statement, progress tracking — is the primary defense in a DOJ investigation. A county that receives a complaint and can demonstrate active, documented progress toward compliance is treated differently from a county that responds with a promise to review its website.

Realistic Timeline for Miami-Dade-Scale Compliance

A county of Miami-Dade's digital scope typically requires phased compliance:

Phase 1: Main portal and high-traffic services (complete by April 2027)

Phase 2: Department subdomains and secondary applications

Phase 3: Comprehensive document library

For Phase 1 compliance by April 2027, procurement must begin no later than June 2026. An audit of 200 representative pages takes 4–6 weeks with manual NVDA and VoiceOver testing. Remediation of critical findings takes 90 days minimum. A re-audit and accessibility statement add 6–8 more weeks.

Starting Point: Self-Assessment Before the Audit

Before engaging an auditor, Miami-Dade IT and accessibility staff can establish a self-assessment baseline:

This preparation allows a more efficient audit scope — auditors spend time on findings that require manual testing rather than re-documenting failures staff already identified.

The Parallax WCAG Audit

The Parallax WCAG audit from Morton Technology Consulting provides the professional documentation that makes a compliance program defensible: 200 representative pages, NVDA and VoiceOver manual testing, axe-core automated scan, full findings report with severity ratings, remediation roadmap, and a DOJ-compliant accessibility statement.

Fixed fee: $9,500. For a government the size of Miami-Dade, the initial engagement typically focuses on the main portal and highest-risk applications as Phase 1 scope. A scoping call can define that precisely.

See the sample audit report — completed for a Florida government site — to understand the exact deliverable format.

Contact: [email protected]

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*Morton Technology Consulting LLC, Tallahassee, FL. 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] ADA.gov — DOJ Title II Web Accessibility Final Rule Compliance Dates — "Governments serving 50,000 or more people: April 26, 2027"
  3. [3] U.S. Census Bureau — QuickFacts: Miami-Dade County, Florida — "Miami-Dade County, Florida population estimate"

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