For special districts

Special districts: April 26, 2028, whatever your size

Self-governing districts: April 26, 2028 · District run by a city or county: that government's date

Transit agencies, water and utility districts, park districts, library systems, housing authorities — the DOJ rule covers them all, and a district that governs itself gets the same date whatever the size of the area it serves.

DocoMatic clears the document backlog and keeps every board cycle compliant as you publish.

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19 months to April 26, 2028

Counted from the day this page was generated.

The rule and the date

One date for every special district government

The rule, its one exception, and where each is written down.

Not every old PDF has to be fixed

28 CFR 35.201(opens in new tab) excepts PDFs and other conventional electronic documents posted before your compliance date, unless they are currently used to apply for, gain access to, or participate in your services, programs or activities; archived content kept unchanged in a clearly identified archive (35.104(opens in new tab), four conditions); third-party content you did not arrange; and secured documents about one individual, such as a customer's own bill behind a login.

The DOJ's 2024 ADA Title II rule covers special district governments as public entities: transit, water, parks, libraries, housing authorities, fire and hospital districts alike. Web content — including posted documents — must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA; the requirement is at 28 CFR 35.200(opens in new tab).

Unlike cities and counties, special district governments are not split by population: the Census Bureau calculates no population for them, and the rule puts them all in the smaller-entity cohort, due April 26, 2028, whether the district serves four thousand people or four million. One thing to check first — if a city or county runs your district rather than the district governing itself, the rule treats it as part of that government and uses its population, which can mean April 26, 2027.

That single date is easy to misread as distant. Most districts publish board packets monthly, rate notices annually and schedules continuously — meaning the backlog keeps growing until remediation is running as part of publishing.

Which date is yours

ADA Title II compliance dates for special districts, by how the district is governed
Compliance date	Applies to	Why
April 26, 2028	Self-governing special districts — whatever the size of the area served	No Census population figure exists for a special district government, so the rule places them all in the later cohort.
April 26, 2027 or April 26, 2028	Districts run by a city or county	The rule treats the district as part of that government and uses its population: 50,000 or more means April 26, 2027.

Not sure which you are? The Census Bureau counts a body as its own government when it has substantial autonomy — typically its own elected board, levy or rates, and budget. A rule of thumb, not a determination: check your deadline, confirm it with counsel, and if a city or county runs you, plan to its date.

The Census Bureau counted 40,199 special district governments in 2025 and publishes a population for none (Governments Organization Summary Report(opens in new tab); definition at 28 CFR 35.104(opens in new tab)). Both dates: the interim final rule of April 20, 2026(opens in new tab), 91 FR 20902 (April 20, 2026), amending 28 CFR 35.200(b), which says the Department plans further rulemaking.

A city, or a county department? See cities and counties, or all solutions by organization type.

April 20, 2026The current dates are set91 FR 20902 (April 20, 2026), amending 28 CFR 35.200(b)
April 26, 2027ADA Title II, population 50,000 or moreCity- or county-run, population 50,000+
April 26, 2028ADA Title II, under 50,000, and every special districtSpecial district governments

Sources

Every regulatory claim on this page is cited to one of these primary sources.

What you publish

The documents special districts publish

District document loads are smaller than a city's but denser: more tables, more maps, more legally mandated notices.

Schedules and timetables — transit agencies, park districts, libraries

Transit timetables and facility schedules are dense tables, and a table without header associations is unusable with a screen reader: a rider hears a wall of times with nothing telling them which stop or which day each belongs to. Header tagging is what turns it back into a timetable.

How tables are tagged

Maps and service-area documents — water, transit and park districts

Route maps, boundary maps and system diagrams. A map is the hardest thing on this list, because the information is in the picture and alt text has to carry it in words: which neighbourhoods a route serves, where a boundary falls, what a diagram connects.

No machine can judge whether a map description is correct. These go to human review: a named reviewer checks the drafted description against the map, corrects it, and signs an attestation before delivery, for 10 credits a page.

When human review is worth it

Board packets, agendas and minutesEvery district
The monthly core of district publishing. Monitoring finds each new packet on your public site and queues it, so no cycle is missed.

Rate notices and public hearingsWater, utility and housing districts
Legally required notices every ratepayer must be able to read — tables, deadlines and all.
Budgets, audits and annual reportsEvery district
Financial documents with the table structures machine checks fail most often on sites like yours.

Who does the work

Who runs this when nobody runs anything

Four roles a district already has.

Who does what with DocoMatic at a special district
Role	What they do here	When
District secretary or clerk	Approves the queue — which documents, at which level — and replaces the published files	On a weekly routine, or as you publish
General manager	Reads the monthly monitoring report	Monthly
IT — if you have one	Nothing, unless you want an S3, watch-folder or webhook connection	Once, optional
Board	Sees the verification evidence and approves the spend	Once

There is no accessibility specialist in this table, and no IT project. Extending the dates, the Department of Justice wrote that staff resources and availability continue to pose significant challenges (91 FR 20902, at 20907)(opens in new tab).

You do not need a connection to start

Monitoring reads your public site. Verify the domain and start a scan — that is the setup: no credentials, no connector, nothing installed, and nothing we run writes to your website.

How it works

Compliance without adding headcount

Four steps, in the order they run.

Step 1
Connect your domains
Scan your public site — free, no account — then monitoring builds the document inventory: often the first sight of the real backlog.
Step 2
Remediation runs at the level you chose
Backlog and new documents are remediated to WCAG 2.1 AA and PDF/UA with a verification score on every file; a document that fails is not charged.
Step 3
Flagged files get human eyes
Maps, complex tables and forms go to human review; your clerk or GM sees what changed without doing the work.
Step 4
You replace the originals with verified files
Verification reports and an audit trail — evidence your board can point to. Monitoring re-scans on your plan's schedule.

From the registry

See your district's backlog

Where we have crawled a district, its page shows what we found and how the rule sized it.

Two surveyed districts, one per path

No self-governing district in the launch states has a published survey yet.
We are surveying districts state by state. Scan your own site now — we do not need to have crawled you first.
No city-, county- or state-run district in the launch states has a published survey yet.
We are surveying districts state by state. Scan your own site now — we do not need to have crawled you first.

Look up a district

Search for your city, district or college

The lookup prints the date the registry assigns, which follows how the district is governed. Not listed? Use the deadline finder.

A civic building under a lantern beam beside a counted stack of documents and a calendar leaf with an orange ring

Per page, in credits

What this costs a district

District budgets are approved in the thousands, not the hundreds of thousands, so here is the shape rather than a range: one packet, one notice, one map, at published rates — 1 credit a page at Level 1, 4 at Level 2.

A worked example: one month's documents, credits by level, priced at $0.30 a credit
Document	Pages	Credits	At $0.30 a credit
Board packet — 150 pages at Level 1, 50 pages of tables at Level 2	200	350	$105.00
Rate notice — 6 pages of tables at Level 2	6	24	$7.20
Route map with human review — 2 pages at Level 2, plus 10 credits a page	2	28	$8.40
The month	208	402	$120.60

Illustrative mix: the analyzer recommends a level per document and you choose it before any work runs.

You are not charged for a document that fails verification. How the no-charge rule works.

Starter is $299.00 a month for 1,000 credits and 1 monitored domain — a month of this shape (402 credits) fits inside it.

For the archive, pay-as-you-go packs need no subscription: 1,000 credits for $450.00, with 12 months to use them. Run your own numbers with your document counts.

FAQ

Special district questions

Buying for a larger organization?

Book a 20-minute demo

When is the ADA Title II deadline for special districts?

April 26, 2028 for every special district government, whatever the population of the area it serves. A district a city or county runs is sized by that government instead, which can mean April 26, 2027.

We serve a few thousand people. Does the rule really apply to us?

Yes. Special district governments are public entities under ADA Title II regardless of size, and the rule gives them the April 26, 2028 date rather than an exemption. Small entities got more time, not a pass.

Our district is run by the city. Same deadline?

No. If the city runs your district rather than the district governing itself, the rule treats it as part of the city and uses the city's population — which can mean April 26, 2027. The cities and counties page covers that case.

How can a route map be made accessible?

By carrying the same information in text: a description a named reviewer checks against the map and signs off, plus stop lists and schedule tables a screen reader can navigate. The verification report lists what still needs a person's judgment.

We have no IT department. What does setup involve?

Point us at your public website — that is the setup. Crawling, inventory, remediation and verification run as a service, so there is nothing to install and no system for your clerk to administer.

Do you need access to our website?

No. Monitoring reads public pages, and you replace the published file yourself. We never write to your site.

We publish through a board-management system. Does that work?

If packets publish to a public URL, monitoring finds them. If they only live inside the system, upload them in the app or push them over webhook ingest; the integrations page lists what each path needs.

What does this cost for a small district?

Starter is $299.00 a month for 1,000 credits — about 1,000 Level 1 pages or 250 Level 2 pages — and pay-as-you-go packs need no subscription. You are not charged for a document that fails verification; run the calculator with your own counts.

Start with a count

April 26, 2028 — start ahead of it

Start with 100 free credits — about 100 simple pages or 25 complex ones, across up to 10 documents in 14 days. Or scan your site first and see your full document inventory before you commit to anything.