Which Accessibility Laws Actually Apply to My Website?

Most organizations discover they're covered by an accessibility requirement at an inconvenient moment — in a procurement questionnaire, in a customer complaint, or even worse, from a lawyer. 

What can you do to proactively deal with that?  Here's a plain-language map of the main frameworks and who they reach.

As a note: We're accessibility practitioners and experts on making digital content, like websites, accessible! What we are not: Lawyers! Whether a particular law applies to you is a legal question, but you will find general guidance here about laws that DO apply to your situation! We can also help you help meet the technical standard - so don't hesitate to reach out to us! And in a good faith effort and a public service, we are sharing lots of freely available information here to not only help you keep your website on the legal side of the ADA, but also to increase your outreach, by reducing barriers to your content and your website. What's good for people, is also good for search engines! So, let's dive in! 
 
The good news first!
Nearly every framework below points at the same technical target: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Level AA — currently version 2.1 or 2.2 depending on the rule.

So while the legal question of which law reaches you can be genuinely complicated, the practical question of what to build mostly isn't. Meet WCAG 2.1 AA and you've addressed the substance of most of these at once. Short answer: aim for WCAG 2.1 AA compliance (we've addressed that in detail in other posts) and you should be good, regardless of who your clients and customers end up being! 

That's the single most useful thing to know -- but what does any of that mean and who does it actually apply to? Let's dig into that! 

 ADA Title II — state and local government
Reaches: state and local government entities. That's broader than people assume: city and county governments, public school districts, public colleges and universities, public libraries, transit authorities, courts, police and fire departments, public hospitals, and special district governments.

Standard: WCAG 2.1 Level AA, named explicitly in a Department of Justice rule finalized in 2024.

Dates: compliance deadlines were extended by one year in April 2026. Entities serving populations of 50,000 or more now have until April 26, 2027; smaller entities and special district governments until April 26, 2028.

Also worth knowing: if you're a vendor to a public entity, this reaches you indirectly and hard. Public entities are responsible for the accessibility of services they deliver through third parties, which means accessibility requirements are landing in government contracts and RFPs.

ADA Title III — private businesses open to the public
Reaches: "places of public accommodation" — a category that in practice covers most consumer-facing private businesses. Retail, restaurants, hotels, banks, healthcare practices, gyms, theaters, private schools, and professional services.

Standard: here's the wrinkle. There is no finalized federal regulation specifying a technical standard for Title III websites. Rulemaking has been proposed and paused repeatedly since 2010.

Does that mean if I'm a private business I don't need to worry about this? You certainly do need to worry about accessibility! 

Regardless of the ups and downs of the views of accessible content and accessibility in general for private businesses, enforcement is still happening! Courts and settlements overwhelmingly reference WCAG, typically 2.0 or 2.1 Level AA, and the vast majority of web accessibility litigation in the United States is brought under Title III. Federal filings ran above 3,000 in 2025.

So the practical standard is WCAG AA, arrived at through case law and settlement agreements rather than regulation.

•  Section 508 — federal agencies and their suppliers: Reaches: federal agencies, and by extension anyone selling technology, software, or digital content to them. Standard: the Revised 508 Standards incorporate WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Why it matters to private businesses: This is the origin of the VPAT. If you sell to the federal government, expect to document your product's accessibility as a condition of the sale. We can help! We provide VPAT services!
• Section 504 — recipients of federal funding: Reaches: organizations receiving federal financial assistance — which is a wide net including many hospitals and health systems, universities, school districts,  nonprofits, and anyone who gets federal financial assistance such as grants. Recent development: the Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule adopting WCAG 2.1 Level AA for federally funded healthcare providers. Those deadlines were also extended in 2026, to May 11, 2027 for providers with 15 or more employees and May 10, 2028 for smaller ones. If your organization takes federal money in any form, this is worth asking your counsel about specifically.
• State laws:  A growing number of states have their own requirements, most commonly for state agencies, public institutions, and their contractors — and some reaching further. The details vary enough that generalizing is unhelpful. If you operate in multiple states, or in California specifically, this is a question for counsel.
•  European Accessibility Act: Reaches: businesses placing certain products and services on the EU market — including e-commerce, banking, e-books, transport, and telecoms — regardless of where the business is based. If you sell to consumers in the EU, it can reach you from the United States.  Standard: EN 301 549, which incorporates WCAG. Date: requirements applied from 28 June 2025. Microenterprises providing services have some exemptions.
• Other jurisdictions:  Ontario's AODA, Canada's Accessible Canada Act, the UK's Equality Act, and Australia's Disability Discrimination Act all impose digital accessibility obligations. Again: all point back to WCAG.
• Contracts — the one nobody plans for:  This one isn't legislation, and it may be the requirement you meet first.  Universities, health systems, government agencies, school districts, and large enterprises are increasingly writing accessibility requirements into their purchasing. They're covered by the rules above, and they can't meet their obligations while buying inaccessible tools — so the requirement flows downhill to their vendors. In practice this arrives as a line item in an RFP, a clause in a master services agreement, or an email asking for your VPAT. It has no deadline and no grace period. It's simply a condition of the sale, and if you can't satisfy it, the deal stalls. For a lot of businesses, this is the real driver — not enforcement, but procurement.

 So which applies to you?
Rough orientation, not a determination:

• Are you a government entity, public school, or public university? Title II, with a firm deadline.
• Do you take federal funding? Section 504, and possibly the HHS rule.
  Do you sell to federal agencies? Section 508 and a VPAT.
• Are you a private business serving the public? Title III, and state law depending on where you operate. 
• Do you sell to EU consumers? European Accessibility Act.
• Do you sell to universities, hospitals, agencies, or big enterprises? Contractual requirements, probably sooner than any of the above.
• None of the above? You still have customers who can't use your site — which was the point before any of this was written down.
   
  What to do with this
  Notice that every path lands in the same place. Whichever framework reaches you, the work is: get an accurate picture of where your site stands, fix what's broken in priority order, document it, and build accessible practices into how you publish so it stays fixed.

You don't need to resolve the legal question before starting the technical one. And the technical one is where we can help! Drop us a line and we'll help you understand where your site stands against WCAG 2.1 AA !

 
Deadlines and requirements change. This post reflects our understanding as of publication; verify current dates before relying on them. Not legal advice.