Who Can Answer for Your Website's Accessibility?

A complaint about a website rarely starts with code. It starts with a person who could not read a page, or could not tell what a button would do, and then a letter asking the organization what that page was like, and when. The people who answer the letter are seldom the people who built the site. What they need is two plain answers, and a date to go with each.

Two barriers most government websites carry

Esther found two barriers on 91% of the government websites it assessed over the past six months (May 16 to November 11, 2026).

• Text too faint to read comfortably. Light gray words on white, or white words on a pale button, slow down anyone with low vision, and anyone squinting at a phone in the sun.
• Buttons, menus, and pop-up windows that say nothing useful when read aloud. Many people who are blind listen to websites through a screen reader, which speaks the page aloud. Where a control was built without a name, the person listening hears the word "button" and nothing about what it does.

Both barriers can be described by someone who has never written a line of code. That makes them a fair first question for anyone who answers for a site, whatever their role.

Three kinds of answer

When the question goes to the people who run a site, the answers tend to fall into three kinds.

• "Yes, and here is where." The barrier is known, its pages are listed, and someone owns the work.
• "No, and here is what shows it." Someone looked, on a date, and can show what was found.
• "We think so," or "we would have to check." Nobody can say.

The third answer is the one worth listening for. It says less about the website than about the organization. On these figures, more than nine in ten government sites carry at least one of the two barriers, so having them is ordinary. Being unable to say whether they are there, or since when, is the gap.

Why the answer needs a date

A demand letter or a complaint names a page as it was at a past moment, often weeks or months before anyone inside the organization reads it. Whether the barrier was there that day, whether anyone knew, and what has happened since are questions only a dated record answers. A record can't be created backwards.

An automated check run the week a letter arrives shows the site as it is that week. An independent record, dated finding by finding, shows each finding, the day it was found, and whether it has been resolved, which is something the organization's counsel can answer with. Esther assesses a site and dates every finding, so the answer to "since when?" is on file before the question comes.

A yes is closer than it sounds

Faint text usually comes from a color choice made once for the whole site, and an unnamed button from a shared page template. Changing either at its source clears the barrier wherever it repeats. Esther's earlier finding on how much work fixing takes shows a typical site's long list of barriers coming down to a few dozen changes.

State and local governments have dates under the ADA's Title II rule: April 26, 2027, where the population served is 50,000 or more, and a year later, April 26, 2028, everywhere else. Private organizations have no federal rule naming a standard, and claims against their websites are filed routinely. The deadline is real. The work behind it is countable.

Questions about your own organization

• ?Can anyone say today whether the text on your site is easy to read for a person with low vision, and show how they know?
• ?If a person using a screen reader went through your most-used form, would every button say what it does?
• ?If a letter arrived this afternoon about a page as it was last spring, could your organization show what that page was like then?

An answer of "we don't know" to any of the three is a finding in its own right, and the place to begin. The barriers are common and easy to describe. What separates one organization from the next is whether someone can answer for them, with a date. What this means for a city, county, or other public body is at For government, and for a private organization at For business.