Document accessibility at state-agency scale, before April 26, 2027.
Every state entity: April 26, 2027
State agencies publish the public sector's largest document inventories: benefits forms, licensing applications, program guides, rulemaking notices.
DocoMatic inventories them across every program site, remediates them to WCAG 2.1 AA and PDF/UA, and gives your accessibility program verifiable per-file evidence.
Free scan, no account. The trial is 100 credits, 14 days, up to 10 documents, no card.
One date, for every state entity
| Compliance date | Applies to | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| April 26, 2027 | Applies to: State agencies, departments, boards, commissions and instrumentalities | Basis: The state's population — every state exceeds 50,000 |
Your own agency's size does not change this date.
Why every state agency is on the 2027 date
A city, county or school district? Same rule, different population basis: see cities and counties, school districts, or all solutions by organization type.
The 2024 ADA Title II rule requires state and local government web content, posted documents included, to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA (28 CFR 35.200(opens in new tab)); state agencies, departments and instrumentalities are covered.
A state agency is an instrumentality of its state, so for deadline purposes it takes the state's population — not its headcount, budget or service area. That is how 28 CFR 35.104(opens in new tab) defines total population for an instrumentality of a state, and how the 2024 rule's preamble reads it (89 FR 31320, at 31352(opens in new tab)). Every state exceeds 50,000 residents, so every state entity is in the large-entity cohort: compliance by April 26, 2027.
That covers every department, agency, board and commission, whatever its own size; public universities are instrumentalities on the same basis (see higher education). The date comes from 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 also announces further rulemaking.
Not every old PDF has to be fixed
28 CFR 35.201(opens in new tab) excepts conventional electronic documents — PDFs, Word, presentation and spreadsheet files — posted before your compliance date, unless they are currently used to apply for, gain access to, or participate in your services, programs or activities. A 2019 annual report is excepted; a 2019 licensing application still in use is not.
Also excepted: archived content kept only for reference, research or record-keeping, unchanged and clearly identified as archived (35.104(opens in new tab)); third-party content; and secured documents about one individual, such as a licensee's own record behind a login. The blank form on your public site is not.
Sources
Every regulatory claim on this page is cited to one of these primary sources.
- ADA Title II compliance-date extension, Federal Register, April 20, 2026 (91 FR 20902)
- ADA Title II final rule, Federal Register, April 24, 2024 (dates since extended)
- 28 CFR 35.200 — Web and mobile app accessibility requirements (eCFR)
- 28 CFR 35.104 — Definitions: total population, archived web content (eCFR)
- 28 CFR 35.201 — Exceptions (eCFR)
- 28 CFR 35.103 — Relationship to other laws (eCFR)
- Section508.gov — State-level accessibility law and policy (GSA)
- W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
Your state's own requirements sit on top
The federal rule is a floor. Many states had accessibility statutes, IT policies or procurement standards before the DOJ rule, and 28 CFR 35.103(b)(opens in new tab) says the rule does not limit state or local laws that give equal or greater protection.
- Some name a standard — often WCAG 2.0 or 2.1 AA, sometimes Section 508 by reference. Section 508 itself binds federal agencies, not states (how the two differ).
- Some impose reporting your accessibility program already files.
- Most set procurement requirements on what agencies may buy — so an agency's own standards often already require what this rule mandates.
Where the two differ, the one that asks more still applies. WCAG 2.1 AA and PDF/UA with per-file verification meet the federal requirement and, in most cases, a state standard written against WCAG 2.0 or 2.1 (2.1 conformance includes 2.0(opens in new tab)). Have counsel confirm your state's additions.
The documents agencies publish
Five categories, and the treatment each needs.
Benefits and licensing forms
High-volume fillable forms residents must complete — labeled fields, logical tab order, human review. Forms are Level 3.
Program guides and publications
Multilingual brochures and guides needing correct language tagging and reading order in every version you publish.
Rulemaking and public notices
Legally mandated publications on fixed schedules, remediated at publish time.
RFPs and procurement documents
Documents your own accessibility procurement standards likely already cover — now with per-file proof.
Annual and statistical reports
Data-heavy reports with the tables and charts machine checks fail most often on sites like yours.
Our OCR is English-only today
Born-digital documents in any language go through the full pipeline with per-document language tagging. A scanned non-English document cannot have its text layer rebuilt. If part of your multilingual archive is scans, tell us; it affects your estimate and how we sequence language support.
Many agencies, many domains
Most state accessibility program offices answer for documents they do not publish and cannot see, across dozens of sub-agency domains with their own publishing processes.
- Each domain is monitored and reported separately, so every agency head gets their own number, not a state-wide total nobody owns.
- Workspaces keep inventories and budgets apportioned by program or division.
- Access is granted at the account level today — we cannot yet restrict a user to a single division's workspace.
- Plans cap monitored domains: 1 on Starter, 3 on Growth, 10 on Scale, unlimited on Enterprise. A state-wide program is an Enterprise shape.
| Plan | Monitored domains | Workspaces | Team members |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Growth | 3 | 5 | 15 |
| Scale | 10 | 20 | 50 |
| Enterprise | Unlimited | Set in contract | Set in contract |
Built for accessibility program offices
Four steps; nothing we run writes to your site.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1Connect domains, programs and pipelines | Crawl every program site, or connect your content: an S3 bucket, a watch folder on your network, or a signed webhook from your publishing pipeline. |
| 2Remediation at inventory scale | Backlog and daily publishing remediated to WCAG 2.1 AA and PDF/UA with per-file verification scores, at the level you chose for each document. |
| 3Program-level organisation | Documents are organised into a workspace per program or division, so each area's backlog is counted separately and the accessibility program office still sees the whole picture. Access is granted at the account level today — we cannot yet restrict a user to a single division's workspace. |
| 4Evidence, continuously | Verification reports and audit trails per document — the compliance evidence an accessibility program manager reports upward. |
Start with one program, not the state
Nobody remediates a state-wide inventory as a first purchase, and you do not need a state-wide procurement to begin.
Pick one program domain
— one with forms residents must complete and a program manager who already cares.Scan it
— free, no account, minutes. A real number for one program.Clear its highest-risk documents
— forms first, then anything linked from a main navigation page.Take the evidence to your program office
— the verification reports and the before-and-after count — the case for the state-wide budget line, built from evidence rather than an estimate.
The pilot is the procurement argument. An agency showing one program's failing share coming down, with per-file evidence, is asking for a different conversation than one presenting a vendor quote.
Why there is no state-agency lookup here
Our deadline network tracks local entities — cities, counties, school districts, colleges and special districts — not yet state agencies. Scan your own program domain instead: a free scan gives you the count and the failing share in minutes.
Pricing at agency scale
Large agencies can hold very large document archives. Enterprise agreements start from annual commitments with contracted per-credit rates, team size agreed in your contract, and procurement support: purchase orders with net-30 to net-60 invoicing, paid by ACH. Documents that fail our verification threshold are not charged.
| Level | Pages | Credits per page | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 — text and headings | 320,000 | 1 | 320,000 |
| Level 2 — tables, columns, images | 70,000 | 4 | 280,000 |
| Level 3 — fillable forms | 10,000 | 30 | 300,000 |
| Total | 400,000 | 900,000 |
This shape is an Enterprise agreement: an annual commitment from $30,000.00 a year, with domain count and team size set in the contract. At the published range of $0.12–$0.18 a credit, the initial clear-down is $108,000.00–$162,000.00; ongoing publishing bills against the same commitment.
Illustrative mix: the analyzer recommends a level per document and you choose before work runs. OCR adds 2 credits a page; human review adds 10.
You are not charged for a document that fails verification. How the no-charge rule works.
No throughput figure is published. Pace is governed by how the inventory reaches us: the crawler stops at 20,000 documents per domain, so inventories at this scale arrive in bulk by S3, watch folder or webhook.
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Purchase orders and invoicing for larger orders | Supported today |
| Invoices on net-30 to net-60 terms | Supported today |
| Invoices paid by ACH | Supported today |
| Tax-exempt certificates | Supported today |
| W-9, on request | Supported today |
| A cooperative purchasing contract | Not yet available |
| Card payment (opens with our billing launch) | Not yet available |
Card payment opens with our billing launch. If your procurement office requires a cooperative contract, tell us.
State agency questions
When must state agencies comply with ADA Title II?
By April 26, 2027. A state agency takes the state's population, and every state exceeds 50,000, so there is no small-agency date.
Do state accessibility laws add requirements beyond the federal rule?
Often, yes: many states have their own statutes, policies or procurement standards, and the federal rule does not limit state laws that give equal or greater protection. We remediate to WCAG 2.1 AA and PDF/UA, which most state standards reference; your counsel confirms the additions.
Can you actually handle a 500,000-document inventory?
Not as one crawl you point at a domain and walk away from: the site crawler stops at 20,000 documents per domain. Inventories at this scale arrive by S3, watch folder or webhook across many program domains — tell us your true volume and we will tell you honestly what we can commit to.
How do you handle state procurement?
Purchase orders with net-30 to net-60 invoicing, paid by ACH; tax-exempt certificates accepted, and a W-9 on request. We do not hold a cooperative purchasing contract yet, and card payment opens with our billing launch.
How do we budget a backlog this large?
Backlog packs price one-time volumes at $0.12–$0.18 a credit, and Enterprise rates are contracted within the published range of $0.12–$0.18. Run the cost calculator with your own counts, and take one program's evidence to the budget conversation first.
How many domains can we monitor?
1 on Starter, 3 on Growth, 10 on Scale, unlimited on Enterprise. A state-wide program is an Enterprise shape.
Can we restrict a division to its own workspace?
Not yet. Access is granted at the account level today: workspaces separate inventories and budgets, they do not yet restrict access.
Do you handle documents in languages other than English?
Born-digital documents in any language, yes, with per-document language tagging. OCR is English-only today, so a scanned non-English document cannot have its text layer rebuilt.
Can one program start without a state-wide contract?
Yes. Scan and remediate one program domain first; the trial and the monthly plans need no contract, and that program's evidence becomes the state-wide case.
Bring the inventory under control before April 26, 2027
Start with a pilot program's documents, or scan one program domain to size its backlog.