Texas Government Websites Must Be WCAG Compliant by April 24 — Here's What to Do

The deadline is real. April 24, 2026 — seven weeks away — is when the DOJ's ADA Title II rule kicks in for government entities serving populations over 50,000. If your city, county, school district, or state agency hasn't started yet, the clock is running.

Texas has more than 5,868 government entities. A significant number of them need to comply. This post covers what the rule requires, who it applies to, what WCAG 2.1 AA actually means in practice, and how to check your website quickly.

What the Rule Requires

In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice finalized a rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requiring state and local governments to make their public-facing websites and mobile apps compliant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

WCAG — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — is the globally recognized technical standard for accessible web design. Level AA is the middle tier: not the bare minimum, but achievable with reasonable effort for most web teams.

The DOJ rule is not a suggestion. Non-compliance exposes agencies to federal complaints, civil rights investigations, and enforcement action. The DOJ has been actively investigating and settling cases with government entities for years. The April 24 deadline makes the legal exposure much more concrete.

Who It Applies To in Texas

The first compliance deadline — April 24, 2026 — applies to government entities serving populations of 50,000 or more. That covers a lot of Texas:

Cities: Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, El Paso, and dozens more — plus mid-sized cities like Lubbock, Garland, Irving, Frisco, McKinney, Killeen
Counties: Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, Travis, Collin, Hidalgo, El Paso — all well above the 50,000 threshold
School Districts: HISD, DISD, AISD, Fort Worth ISD, Northside ISD, and many others serve large student and family populations
State Agencies: TxDOT, HHSC, TEA, TWC, and all other Texas state agency websites

If you're not sure whether your entity meets the threshold — it almost certainly does if you're a county, major city, or large ISD in Texas. Smaller entities have a later deadline of April 26, 2027, but starting now puts you in a much better position.

What WCAG 2.1 AA Means Practically

WCAG 2.1 AA isn't just about screen readers. It covers a broad range of accessibility needs — visual, motor, cognitive, and auditory. Here's what it actually requires in plain terms:

Images need text alternatives. Every non-decorative image on your site needs an alt attribute that describes it. A photo of the city council with no alt text fails.

Color contrast must meet minimums. Text needs a 4.5:1 contrast ratio against its background (3:1 for large text). Light gray text on white is a common failure.

All functionality must work via keyboard. Users who can't use a mouse — people with motor impairments, power users — must be able to navigate menus, forms, and interactive elements with Tab and arrow keys alone.

Forms need proper labels. Every input field must have a visible, correctly associated label. Placeholder text alone doesn't count.

Videos need captions. Any prerecorded video on your site needs accurate closed captions. Auto-generated captions from YouTube often don't meet the standard.

Error messages must be clear. When a form fails validation, users need to know what went wrong and how to fix it — not just a red border.

Pages need proper structure. Heading hierarchy (h1, h2, h3), landmark regions, and logical reading order matter — especially for screen reader users navigating your site.

Most government sites have multiple failures across several of these areas. The good news: many of them are fixable by your existing web team once they know what to fix.

The April 24 Deadline: What Happens If You Miss It

The DOJ has been clear that April 24, 2026 is the compliance date — not a soft launch, not a review period. After that date, government entities subject to the rule are expected to be compliant.

What enforcement looks like in practice: the DOJ accepts complaints from individuals with disabilities who are denied equal access to government services online. Those complaints trigger investigations. Investigations can result in settlement agreements — which often include mandatory remediation timelines, third-party audits, and ongoing monitoring requirements.

Beyond federal enforcement, state and local advocacy organizations track government website accessibility. Disability rights attorneys also file direct lawsuits under Title II. Texas has active disability rights communities in every major metro.

Waiting until after April 24 to start is not a viable strategy. Starting now — even if you can't reach full compliance before the deadline — demonstrates good-faith effort, which matters in enforcement conversations.

How to Check Your Website Fast

The fastest way to understand your current compliance status is an automated scan. It won't catch everything — automated tools typically find 30–40% of WCAG issues — but they'll give you a clear picture of the most common, fixable problems quickly.

Run a free scan on AccessiGuard. Enter your website URL at accessiguard.app and get an instant report of WCAG 2.1 AA violations, organized by severity and page. No account required. It takes about 30 seconds.

The report will show you missing alt text, contrast failures, missing form labels, keyboard traps, and other common failures — exactly the kind of issues that show up in DOJ complaints.

For agencies that need documentation beyond the scan — a formal accessibility statement, a remediation roadmap, or materials to show stakeholders — the ADA Compliance Kit ($39) includes templates built specifically for government and institutional use.

Where to Start This Week

If you're a web administrator, IT director, or communications lead at a Texas government entity:

Run your site through AccessiGuard — it's free, takes 30 seconds, and gives you a baseline
Triage the results — focus on critical failures first (missing labels, keyboard traps, missing alt text)
Loop in your development team — most fixes are code-level changes that a developer can handle in a sprint
Document your progress — keep a record of what you've fixed and when. This matters if a complaint is ever filed.
Schedule a follow-up scan — accessibility is ongoing. A monthly scan catches regressions before they become complaints.

Seven weeks isn't a lot of time. But it's enough to make real progress — especially if you start now.

Run a free accessibility scan on your government website: accessiguard.app

Need documentation for your compliance effort? The ADA Compliance Kit ($39) has everything your team needs.