Performance & Accessibility for Government and Public Sector

Performance & accessibility for government and public sector websites is a different job from the same work on a commercial site. A retailer can decide which customers it wants. A city, a county, a state agency or a federal program cannot: it has to serve the resident using a screen reader, the applicant on a five-year-old phone with a weak signal, the older adult who zooms the page to four times its size, and the caseworker who fills in the same form forty times a day. Our work for this sector covers accessibility audits and remediation across large sites, converting PDFs to accessible pages, faster service pages on older devices, and accessible online forms and payments.

The context shapes every decision. Public bodies buy through procurement processes, answer to auditors, elected officials and the public, and carry an obligation to serve everybody rather than a target market. What they need is accessible digital services, plain-language content, and documentation that survives an audit. That last part matters as much as the fixes themselves, because a remediation nobody can prove is a remediation that will be questioned.

This playbook walks through how an engagement runs, phase by phase, and what is specific to the public sector at each stage: the rules that set the target, the document backlog that usually dominates the effort, the approval chain, the cost drivers, how to brief a supplier and how to measure whether the work held. It is a practical note, not legal advice; your counsel and your accessibility coordinator should confirm how the rules apply to your organization.

The rules that set the target for public sector websites

Before any testing starts, the team has to agree on which standard the work is measured against. In the public sector that is not a matter of preference; it follows from who you are.

State and local government: the ADA Title II rule

State and local governments are covered by the rule the Department of Justice adopted in 2024 under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The rule names WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for state and local government web content and mobile apps, with limited exceptions, for example for archived material that meets the rule's conditions. Compliance deadlines depend on the size of the government entity, and state and local governments are working to those deadlines now. Because dates and details can be revised, check the current text and guidance on the Department of Justice ADA site rather than relying on a date quoted in a slide deck from last year.

Two points about the exceptions deserve care. First, they are narrow. Archived content generally has to be kept only for reference, research or recordkeeping, stored in a clearly marked archive area and left unchanged since it was archived. A benefits guide that residents still use to apply for help is not archived just because it is old. Second, documents that people use to apply for, gain access to or take part in a service tend to fall back inside the requirement even if they predate the compliance date. Treat any exception as something you document case by case, not as a bucket to throw inconvenient content into.

Federal agencies: Section 508

Federal agencies are assessed on Section 508 conformance. The Section 508 standards point at WCAG for web content and electronic documents, and the program publishes testing guidance, reporting expectations and procurement language on Section508.gov. Agencies report on their conformance, so the evidence trail from an audit is not optional; it becomes input to that reporting.

Which WCAG version to test against

WCAG 2.2 is the current version of the guidelines, published by the W3C and explained on the Web Accessibility Initiative site. The Title II rule names 2.1 AA. In practice we test against the version your governing rule names and report against it, and we flag the additional 2.2 criteria, such as minimum target size, focus not obscured, accessible authentication and redundant entry, as recommended improvements. Designing to 2.2 now costs little extra on new work and avoids a second round of changes if a future rule or procurement contract raises the bar.

Plain language and procurement documents

The Plain Writing Act requires federal agencies to write clearly, and the federal plain language guidelines are a useful benchmark for state and local teams even where the Act does not apply to them. Plain language is also an accessibility measure in its own right: it helps people with cognitive disabilities, people reading in a second language, and anyone in a hurry. Finally, an Accessibility Conformance Report is normally part of procurement rather than an afterthought. Vendors of software, platforms and templates are commonly asked for one, often built on the VPAT template, and your own team may be asked to produce one for a public-facing system.

How a public sector engagement runs, phase by phase

Most public sector accessibility and performance projects follow the same broad arc, but each phase has a twist that a commercial project does not. The schedule below is a typical shape rather than a promise; the length of each phase depends on the size of the estate, how many departments publish to it and how quickly approvals move. The durations shown are illustrative.

How long the audit portion takes depends mostly on the number of distinct templates and journeys, not the raw page count; our guide to how long an accessibility audit takes explains the variables. The sections that follow go through each phase in turn.

Phase one: inventory before you test anything

Public sector sites grow by accretion. A parks department launches a microsite for a summer program. A court publishes every docket notice as a PDF. A council posts every agenda and minutes packet going back fifteen years. Nobody decides to build a sprawling estate; it simply accumulates. The first phase exists to make that estate visible.

What the inventory captures

• Domains and subdomains. Many agencies discover third-party-hosted portals, legacy subdomains and vendor-run payment pages during this step. Content provided by a contractor on your behalf is generally still your responsibility.
• Templates. Group pages by the template that renders them. Fixing one template can fix thousands of pages at once, which is why this grouping drives the budget.
• Documents. Count PDFs, Word files, spreadsheets and slide decks, with their age, owning department, traffic and whether they are used to apply for or access a service.
• Forms and transactions. Permit applications, license renewals, utility payments, records requests, complaint forms and appointment booking.
• Media. Recorded public meetings, livestreams, explainer videos and audio. Each needs captions, and many need transcripts.
• Third-party embeds. Maps, calendars, chat widgets, survey tools and social feeds, each of which may have its own accessibility problems.

Why the inventory changes the budget conversation

Without an inventory, every estimate is a guess, and guesses in public procurement tend to become change orders. With one, the conversation becomes concrete: this many templates, this many forms, this many documents in active use, this many that can be retired, archived properly or replaced with an HTML page. The inventory also gives the accessibility coordinator something they rarely have: a map that shows each department its own share of the problem.

Phase two: auditing a large, multi-department site

A full manual audit of every page of a government site is neither affordable nor necessary. The standard approach is a structured sample, chosen so that each template, each critical journey and each type of content is tested at least once, and chosen with the coordinator so the sample reflects what residents actually use.

Building a sample that stands up to scrutiny

We build the sample from four sources: every distinct template; the top service journeys by traffic and by importance (paying a bill, applying for a permit, finding an emergency notice); a spread of documents by department and age; and any page that has been the subject of a complaint. Documenting why each page was chosen is part of the evidence, because an auditor or a complainant may ask how the sample was drawn.

What testing covers

• Automated scanning across the whole crawl, to find patterns such as missing form labels, empty links and color contrast failures at scale. Automated tools catch only a portion of WCAG issues, so they are a starting point.
• Manual keyboard testing of every sampled journey, checking focus order, visible focus, skip links and traps.
• Screen reader testing with at least one desktop and one mobile screen reader, checking headings, landmarks, form errors and dynamic updates.
• Zoom and reflow at high magnification and narrow widths, which is where data tables and fixed-width layouts tend to break.
• Content checks for reading level, link text and page titles. Unique, descriptive titles matter more than most teams expect on a site with hundreds of similar service pages; each page should say which service and which step it covers.
• Performance measurement on older, low-cost devices and throttled connections, covered in its own phase below.

Testing with the people the site serves

Expert testing finds conformance issues. It does not always find the moments where a real resident gives up. Where budget allows, add sessions with disabled users recruited for the purpose, particularly for the highest-stakes journeys such as benefits applications or emergency information. Pay participants, and treat what they report as findings in their own right, even when a criterion is technically met.

Phase three: prioritizing findings so the plan survives an audit

An audit of a large public site can easily produce hundreds of findings. The report has to turn that list into a plan the accessibility coordinator can take to a department head, a procurement officer or an oversight body. We rank findings on three factors: how severely the issue blocks a task, how many people and pages it affects, and how important the service is. A missing label on the only field in a utility payment form outranks a decorative image with redundant alt text on a news page, even though both are failures.

Each finding in the log carries the WCAG success criterion, the location, a description a developer can act on, the owner, a severity, and a status. That structure is what makes the log usable as evidence later. Our article on accessibility remediation planning, done properly goes further into sequencing.

Phase four: remediation, where the document backlog dominates

Remediation runs in waves. The order matters because it determines how quickly residents feel the difference and how quickly the coordinator can show progress.

Templates and shared components first

Headers, footers, navigation, search, alerts, accordions, tabs and the design system components that every department uses are fixed first. If the site runs on a content management system with a shared theme, one well-tested change can resolve a finding on every page. This is also the moment to build accessibility into the component library so that future pages inherit it. When remediation turns into a rebuild, it becomes a design and development project; our web design and development work for government and public sector covers that path.

Forms and payments second

Accessible online forms and payments are where public services succeed or fail. Common fixes include programmatic labels, grouped radio buttons with a legend, error messages that are announced and linked to the field, time limits that can be extended, and no reliance on a CAPTCHA that a screen reader user cannot solve. Where the payment step belongs to a processor, remediation becomes a procurement task: ask for the vendor's Accessibility Conformance Report, test it yourself, and write fixes into the contract.

Documents third: convert, remediate, archive or retire

Converting PDFs to accessible pages is often the single best move. An HTML page is easier to make accessible, easier to keep accessible, faster on a phone, searchable, and easier to update than a tagged PDF. For each document in active use, the decision is one of four:

1. Convert to HTML when the content is something residents read or act on: guidance, eligibility rules, fee schedules, how-to instructions.
2. Remediate the PDF when the document must stay in that format, such as a fillable form required by statute or a formally adopted plan, adding tags, reading order, alt text, table headers and a document title and language.
3. Move to a proper archive when it meets the rule's archive conditions, and provide an accessible version on request.
4. Retire it when it is out of date, duplicated or never viewed. Records retention obligations still apply, so coordinate with your records officer.

Media

Recorded public meetings, training videos and podcasts need accurate captions, and many benefit from transcripts that residents can search. Live meetings streamed to the public need live captions. If meetings are a large part of your estate, caption new recordings as a standing rule and backfill older ones in order of demand.

Worked example: a county site with a document backlog

The following is an illustrative example, not a client story; the numbers are invented to show the arithmetic of planning, and the effort units are placeholders you would replace with your own supplier's quote.

A county runs one main site on a shared content management system with 12 templates, 30 online forms (including 4 payment flows run by a processor), and 6,000 PDFs spread across 18 departments. The inventory shows that 1,500 of those PDFs received at least one visit in the past year, and that 400 of those 1,500 are used to apply for or access a service.

• Templates: 12 templates, fixed once each, resolve the header, navigation and footer issues on every page of the site.
• Forms: 26 county-owned forms go into the first remediation wave; the 4 processor-run payment flows go to procurement with a request for the vendor's conformance report.
• Active service documents: the 400 service documents are split. Say 250 are guidance that can become HTML pages and 150 must stay as PDFs. That gives 250 conversions and 150 PDF remediations, which add back to 400.
• Other visited documents: 1,500 minus 400 leaves 1,100 documents that are visited but not used to access a service. They are queued by traffic for a later wave, with an on-request accessible version offered in the meantime.
• Unvisited documents: 6,000 minus 1,500 leaves 4,500 documents with no visits in a year. These go to the records officer to decide which can be retired and which belong in a properly marked archive.

The effect of the inventory is plain in the numbers: instead of a program to fix 6,000 documents, the county has a first wave of 12 templates, 26 forms and 400 service documents, with the remainder triaged. The coordinator can show every department its share and defend the order. The prices that apply to each piece of work come from a quote rather than from this example.

Phase five: performance for residents on older devices and slow connections

Accessibility and performance belong together in the public sector because the people who most need a public service are often the ones with the oldest phones, prepaid data plans and patchy coverage. A service page that loads quickly on a new laptop on office fiber can be unusable on an entry-level Android phone on a rural connection. Faster service pages on older devices is part of what we deliver, and it is measured on the devices residents use rather than on the team's own.

What we measure

Google's Core Web Vitals are a sensible common language: Largest Contentful Paint for loading, Cumulative Layout Shift for visual stability, and Interaction to Next Paint, which replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in March 2024, for responsiveness. We look at field data where the site has enough traffic to produce it and at lab tests on throttled, low-cost device profiles for the key service journeys.

Where public sector sites lose time

• Heavy shared themes that load every script for every department on every page.
• Third-party embeds such as maps, social feeds, translation widgets and chat tools, which often cost more than the page itself.
• Unoptimized images uploaded straight from a camera by content editors.
• PDFs as the only format, forcing a multi-megabyte download to read a one-paragraph answer.
• Emergency banners and alerts injected late in the page load, which shift the layout and push content away from the reader.

The fixes are standard performance techniques, such as loading scripts only where they are used, deferring embeds until someone asks for them and serving right-sized images; the public sector twist is simply that the target device should be the cheapest phone your residents are likely to own, and that emergency and service pages get tested first.

Phase six: sign-off, evidence and the Accessibility Conformance Report

Who signs off is usually an accessibility coordinator, often working with a web team spread across many departments. That coordinator rarely has direct authority over every department's content, so the evidence has to persuade as well as record.

What documentation survives an audit

• The inventory and the reasoning behind the test sample.
• The issue log with success criterion, location, severity, owner and status for each finding.
• Retest results with dates, showing which findings were closed and how.
• A record of exceptions claimed, with the reason for each.
• An accessibility statement on the site with a working route for people to report problems and request accessible formats.
• Where a system is procured or supplied, an Accessibility Conformance Report describing its conformance criterion by criterion.

Be careful with language. We do not describe any site as "ADA compliant" or promise that it is protected from complaints or lawsuits, and no overlay widget on its own makes a site conformant. What we can say is precisely which criteria were tested, on which pages, with which result, and what remains open. That precision is what an auditor or a reviewing attorney will want.

Timing, budget cycles and approvals in government

Government work is seasonal in ways that have nothing to do with consumer demand. The drivers are budget cycles, procurement rules and regulatory deadlines.

• Regulatory deadlines. State and local governments are working to deadlines set by the 2024 ADA Title II rule, and federal agencies are assessed on Section 508 conformance on their own reporting cycle. Work backward from the date that applies to you and leave room for retesting.
• Fiscal year timing. Many governments run fiscal years that do not match the calendar year. Unspent funds near year end can create short windows for audits, while a new fiscal year may be when remediation gets funded.
• Procurement lead time. Formal solicitations, cooperative contracts and small-purchase thresholds each carry different timelines. An audit priced under a small-purchase threshold can sometimes start quickly; a multi-year remediation program usually cannot.
• Service peaks. Tax deadlines, benefits enrollment periods, school registration, election seasons and severe-weather seasons all bring traffic surges. Avoid deploying major template changes during a peak, and test emergency pages before the season they serve.
• Council and board schedules. Policy changes, such as a rule that new PDFs must pass a check before upload, may need formal adoption.

What drives cost for public sector performance and accessibility work

Performance & accessibility work starts at $1,200.00 per audit with us. That is a starting price, not a ceiling. The pricing page puts every rate next to what the US market typically charges, and a quote turns the range into one number for your volume. The factors that move a public sector project above the starting point are predictable:

• Number of distinct templates and journeys. This matters more than raw page count, because each one must be tested manually.
• Document volume in active use. The inventory decides this. Converting a long, table-heavy report costs more than a two-page notice.
• Forms and transactions. Multi-step applications with conditional logic, file uploads and payments take longer to test and fix.
• Third-party systems. Vendor-run portals add coordination and contract work.
• Evidence requirements. A formal Accessibility Conformance Report, detailed retest records and department-level reporting add effort beyond a standard report.
• Number of departments. More publishers means more training, more briefings and more governance.

For a deeper look at the numbers, read how much an accessibility audit costs and how much accessibility remediation costs. Keeping the audit and the remediation as separately priced pieces also helps with procurement, since a fixed-scope audit is easier to buy quickly and its results then define the remediation scope precisely.

Briefing a supplier for government accessibility work

A good brief shortens procurement, sharpens quotes and makes proposals comparable. Whether you are issuing a formal solicitation or a simple request for quotes, cover the points below. If you are still choosing between suppliers, our guide on how to choose a web accessibility agency lists the questions to ask about method, testers and evidence.

If you want to see how our work reads before committing, you can send a couple of your own files, such as one service PDF and one form page, and judge the output directly.

Measuring results after launch and keeping the site from drifting

A public site is never finished. New documents arrive daily, departments reorganize, vendors update their widgets. Measurement has to cover both conformance and outcomes.

Conformance measures

• Open findings by severity, tracked over time, with the date each was closed.
• Template coverage: how many templates have been retested and passed.
• Document intake: of new documents published each month, how many passed an accessibility check before upload.
• Backlog burn-down: active service documents converted or remediated against the plan.

Outcome measures

• Task completion on key forms: started versus submitted, and where people drop out.
• Accessibility feedback and requests: how many requests for accessible formats or reports of barriers arrive, and how quickly they are resolved.
• Core Web Vitals on service pages, especially Interaction to Next Paint on forms.
• Call and counter volume for services that moved online, where the service department tracks it.

Governance that keeps the gains

Train content editors in each department on headings, link text, alt text, tables and plain language, and give them a short checklist inside the publishing workflow. Make accessible HTML the default and PDFs the exception. Run spot audits on a set schedule, and re-audit a sample after any template change or new vendor integration. Where editors need help writing clearly, a content program helps; see our content strategy for government and public sector.

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Trying us out

The quickest way to find out if we are any good for you is to send a couple of your own files and look at what comes back. It is free and there is no card involved. If the scope is already clear, ask for a fixed price instead.