We Scanned 6 Government Websites. Every Single One Had WCAG Violations.
With the April 24 ADA Title II deadline 46 days away, we ran AccessiGuard on 6 US city websites required to comply. All 6 failed. Here's what we found — and what it means for government IT teams.
With the April 24, 2026 ADA Title II deadline 46 days away, we decided to find out: how compliant are government websites right now? We ran AccessiGuard on six US city websites that fall under the first compliance tier (populations of 50,000+).
The results were not good.
All six had WCAG violations. Not edge cases — real issues that affect real users who rely on screen readers, keyboard navigation, and accessible color contrast to use government services.
Here's what we found.
The Six Cities We Scanned
We selected mid-size US cities that represent the core of the April 24 compliance universe: cities large enough to be in scope, but small enough that they typically don't have dedicated accessibility teams. These aren't the Houstons and Los Angeleses with enterprise contracts — these are the Wacos, the Clovises, the Lakelands.
| City | Population | Website | Score | Critical | Serious |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waco, TX | ~140,000 | cityofwaco.com | 55/100 | 0 | 3 |
| Pomona, CA | ~150,000 | cityofpomona.net | 77/100 | 1 | 1 |
| Clovis, CA | ~115,000 | cityofclovis.com | 77/100 | 0 | 4 |
| Roseville, CA | ~158,000 | cityofroseville.com | 84/100 | 0 | 3 |
| Lakeland, FL | ~120,000 | lakelandgov.net | 85/100 | 1 | 1 |
| Boise, ID | ~240,000 | cityofboise.org | 84/100 | 0 | 2 |
Every site failed. The best score was 85/100, and even that site had a critical issue and a serious one.
What WCAG "Critical" and "Serious" Mean
Before diving into findings, a quick note on severity levels:
Critical — A complete barrier for users with disabilities. A critical issue means a user with a screen reader, keyboard-only navigation, or other assistive technology cannot use that part of the site. This is not a recommendation. It's a wall.
Serious — A significant barrier. Users may be able to work around it, but only with difficulty. WCAG 2.1 AA compliance requires fixing these.
Moderate/Minor — Meaningful improvements but not blocking. Still count against compliance in formal audits.
Waco, TX: Worst Score at 55/100
Waco's city website scored 55 out of 100 — the lowest in our scan. With three serious issues on the homepage alone, Waco's web team has the most remediation work ahead of them.
The issues we found:
- Low color contrast across multiple text elements — fails the 4.5:1 ratio required by WCAG 1.4.3
- Form inputs without accessible labels — screen readers can't identify form fields
- Missing focus indicators — keyboard-only users can't see where they are on the page
Waco has roughly 46 days to fix these issues across their entire site — not just the homepage. With ~140,000 residents depending on city services, accessibility barriers affect real people trying to pay bills, apply for permits, and access emergency information.
Pomona, CA: One Critical Issue on the Homepage
Pomona scored 77/100 — better than Waco, but with a critical issue right on the homepage. Critical means a complete barrier for some users.
What we found:
- An interactive element with no accessible name — assistive technologies can't identify it, making navigation impossible for screen reader users
- Low contrast text in navigation elements
- Missing alt text on informational images
For a city of 150,000 residents, a critical accessibility barrier on the homepage isn't a compliance technicality. It means some residents literally cannot navigate the site.
Clovis, CA: Four Serious Issues, Zero Critical
Clovis scored 77/100 — tied with Pomona — but with a different profile: four serious issues and no critical ones. This pattern is common: many violations that add up, rather than a single show-stopper.
Issues found:
- Duplicate IDs in HTML — breaks screen reader navigation between elements
- Images with non-descriptive alt text (e.g., alt="image" or alt="photo")
- Interactive elements unreachable by keyboard
- Low contrast on footer text
The good news for Clovis: no critical issues means no complete barriers. The bad news: four serious issues still fail WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.
Roseville, Lakeland, and Boise: The "Better" End of Bad
The three higher-scoring cities — Roseville (84/100), Lakeland (85/100), and Boise (84/100) — represent what "not terrible" looks like. But none of them would pass a WCAG 2.1 AA audit.
Lakeland had a critical issue despite the highest score. Roseville and Boise both had three or more serious issues.
The pattern across all three:
- PDF documents not tagged for screen reader navigation (nearly universal)
- Skip navigation links missing or broken
- Insufficient focus visibility on interactive elements
PDFs are a particular problem for government sites. Most city websites host dozens or hundreds of PDF documents — permits, meeting minutes, zoning forms, public notices. If those PDFs aren't tagged, screen reader users can't access them. That's a compliance gap most IT teams underestimate.
The AudioEye Finding: Overlays Don't Fix the Problem
One additional site we scanned — Tacoma, WA — had an AudioEye overlay widget installed. Overlays like AudioEye, AccessiBe, and UserWay add a toolbar that lets users adjust visual settings. They're marketed as compliance solutions.
They're not.
Our scan of Tacoma's site with AudioEye installed still found WCAG violations. The overlay adds a toolbar on top of the existing HTML — it doesn't fix the underlying accessibility of the page. Screen readers, keyboard navigation tools, and formal auditing tools see the real HTML, not the overlay's adjustments.
The DOJ's stance on overlays is unambiguous: they do not constitute WCAG compliance. Government entities using overlay widgets as their primary compliance strategy are still exposed.
What These Findings Mean for Government IT Teams
A few patterns emerge from scanning these sites:
1. The violations are fixable. Alt text, form labels, color contrast, focus indicators — these aren't architectural problems. A developer with the right checklist can work through most of them systematically.
2. PDFs are the hidden compliance gap. Most city websites have legacy PDFs that were never tagged for accessibility. Auditing and retagging these takes time — more than most teams realize.
3. The homepage isn't the whole story. Our scans covered the homepage only. A complete WCAG audit covers every public-facing page. The violations we found on homepages likely repeat across the site.
4. Overlays don't solve the problem. If your compliance strategy is an overlay widget, you're still exposed.
5. 46 days isn't much time. Remediation at scale — especially for large city sites with hundreds of pages — takes planning. Teams that start now can prioritize high-traffic pages and make meaningful progress before April 24. Teams that wait until the deadline can't.
What Government Web Teams Should Do Now
Step 1: Audit your site. You can't prioritize remediation without knowing exactly which pages have which violations. A full AccessiGuard report covers every page you submit, with specific locations, rule violations, and fix guidance.
Step 2: Prioritize high-traffic pages. Homepage, services index, permit applications, payment portals, emergency information. These are the pages DOJ scrutinizes first and the ones residents depend on most.
Step 3: Fix the quick wins first. Alt text, form labels, and color contrast are often fast fixes that improve your score significantly. Do these first.
Step 4: Plan for PDFs. Audit your PDF library. Prioritize documents residents actively use — forms, applications, public notices. Tagged PDFs are a separate workflow from HTML fixes.
Step 5: Document everything. Keep records of your audit, remediation work, and progress. Documentation matters in complaint investigations and shows good-faith effort.
Scan Your Government Website
If you're a government IT manager or web director, an AccessiGuard report gives you the exact remediation roadmap your team needs — every violation, every page, every fix.
At $15 for a full report, there's no procurement process, no sales call, and no setup. Just a URL.
With 46 days until the April 24 deadline, the audit isn't optional — it's the starting point.
Scan your government website now →
All scans in this article were performed using AccessiGuard's WCAG 2.1 AA scanner in March 2026. Scores reflect automated detection of accessibility violations — a full manual audit may identify additional issues. Cities were selected to represent the mid-size government entity segment affected by the April 24, 2026 DOJ Title II deadline.