Who is affected by inaccessible government websites?

Two moments decide whether a resident gets served

A resident comes to a government website to get something done: pay a water bill, apply for a permit, report a pothole. Two moments decide whether that happens. The first is the page they land on, which they have to read and find their way around. The second is the form, which they have to finish.

Over the past three months (July 8 to October 5, 2026), Esther found the same few barriers at those two moments on nearly every government website it assessed. Each one falls hardest on a particular group of residents. Knowing who they are tells whoever runs the site where to look first.

At the first page: residents who can't read the text or name the controls

People with low vision. On 98% of the sites, Esther found body text too faint to read comfortably against its background. It's the most common barrier of all, and it's there before a resident clicks anything. Instructions, notices, and the labels on a form become hard to make out, for people with low vision and for anyone reading a phone in bright sunlight. On 77% of sites, buttons and other controls were faint too: a second barrier for the same readers.

People who use screen readers. A screen reader speaks the page aloud. On 94% of sites, Esther found menus, buttons, or dialogs built without a name the screen reader can say. Where the control sits, the resident hears nothing useful, and can't tell what it does or whether it's open.

People with dyslexia. Many readers with dyslexia or low vision widen the space between lines and letters to read more easily. On 80% of sites, some text clipped or overlapped when they did.

At the form: residents who can't tell what a field is for

On 81% of sites, Esther found form fields with no label, or with only the gray hint text inside the box, which disappears at the first keystroke. People using a screen reader, or controlling a computer by voice, can't tell what each field asks for. That raises the risk that the payment, the application, or the report never goes through.

On 70% of sites, form fields also didn't tell the browser what they were for (a name, an email, a street address), so autofill couldn't complete them. Every form takes longer, and longest for people who find typing slow or painful.

The barriers, ranked by how many sites carried them, with their criteria in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG):

• Text too faint to read (1.4.3): 98% of sites
• Controls a screen reader can't name (4.1.2): 94%
• Form fields without labels (1.3.1, 3.3.2): 81%
• Text that can't take extra spacing (1.4.12): 80%
• Buttons and controls too faint to see (1.4.11): 77%
• Form fields autofill can't recognize (1.3.5): 70%

The rule, and the size of the work

Residents with disabilities are the people the ADA's Title II rule protects. The U.S. Department of Justice requires state and local government websites to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Governments serving 50,000 people or more have until April 26, 2027. Smaller ones, and special district governments of any size, have until April 26, 2028.

The deadline is real. The panic is not. Barriers like these usually come from one shared template or style, so a single change clears every page built from it. In an earlier finding, for example, a typical site's 1,746 barriers traced back to 34 changes (How much work is it to fix website accessibility?).

Where your own site stands

Three questions show where a site stands at both moments. Each takes a few minutes on the page residents use most, such as paying a utility bill.

• Can the text be read on a phone outdoors? Faint gray text is the barrier on 98% of sites, and the one that reaches the most residents.
• Does every button and menu say what it is? Most phones and computers have a screen reader built in. A control it reads as nothing, or only as "button", is the barrier on 94% of sites.
• Does every form field keep its label once someone starts typing? A field labeled only by the hint text inside the box loses that label at the first keystroke. That's the barrier on 81% of sites.

A "no" to any of them marks a place where some residents can't get through, and the order of the questions is the order the evidence gives for the work. Whoever owns the site can begin with the first.

The barriers sit at the same two moments on nearly every site, and they stop the same residents at each. Knowing which residents a barrier stops is how a coordinator decides where the work begins.

What this looks like for state and local government: For government. How these barriers map to legal risk: ADA compliance.