ADA Title II school website checklist: 20 starting steps

Use this ADA Title II school website checklist to organize an initial accessibility review, assign owners, and identify work that needs specialist help. Start with the digital services families depend on, including enrollment, transportation, meals, calendars, and contact information.

This is a planning tool, not a complete WCAG audit or a legal determination that a school complies with the ADA. Confirm your entity's obligations with its ADA coordinator or legal adviser.

Confirm the deadline before planning backward

As checked on September 27, 2026, DOJ's April 2026 interim final rule sets these compliance dates for its Title II web and mobile app requirements:

Use the rule's population method, not student enrollment. School districts are not special district governments under this definition. City and county school districts use the corresponding government's population; independent districts use the applicable Census school-district population estimate. Confirm the correct data and entity classification before choosing a date. DOJ's compliance-date guidance.

The technical standard is WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Existing ADA obligations continue before these dates. The Title II rule applies to public entities; private schools should not assume that its dates determine their separate accessibility obligations. DOJ's introduction and planning guidance.

Use the checklist with an issue log

For every item, record the owner, evidence or page address, next action, and review date. Mark work complete only after checking the result. An item that does not apply needs a reason recorded by the appropriate reviewer.

Scope and responsibility

• 1. Record the applicable deadline. Document the public entity, population source, and person who confirmed the date. Keep the source with your project records.
• 2. Name an accountable lead. Identify who coordinates work across communications, IT, school offices, procurement, and accessibility staff, and who resolves stalled issues.
• 3. Inventory digital services. List school and district sites, mobile apps, forms, portals, documents, videos, and contracted services used to deliver school programs.
• 4. Identify complete family tasks. Map enrollment, meal applications, transportation information, attendance reporting, and other priority journeys through their final confirmation or destination.
• 5. Review any proposed exceptions. Record the exact content and rationale with the appropriate adviser. An old document, an archive folder, or a vendor login does not by itself establish an exception. DOJ's discussion of exceptions.

Pages and documents

• 6. Review page structure. Check titles, headings, lists, and link labels on representative templates and priority pages. Record confusing or missing structure for correction.
• 7. Check images and visual announcements. Give meaningful images suitable text alternatives. Put essential dates, locations, and actions from flyers into accessible page content.
• 8. Review contrast and color cues. Check text and essential controls with suitable tools. Add another way to convey information that is shown only through color.
• 9. Test enlargement and narrow layouts. Review enlarged text and zoomed pages for missing content or blocked controls. Assign formal resize and reflow testing to a qualified reviewer.
• 10. Review current documents and media. Prioritize PDFs, forms, and videos families need now. Record document remediation, captions, and other applicable media alternatives as specific work items.

Interactive tasks

• 11. Test keyboard operation. Follow priority tasks through menus, dialogs, calendars, and forms. Record controls that cannot be reached, operated, or exited.
• 12. Check focus visibility and sequence. Confirm that users can tell where they are while moving through controls and that the sequence supports the task.
• 13. Test form labels and instructions. Confirm that fields have meaningful labels, required information is explained, and assistance is available before a family gets stuck.
• 14. Test errors and confirmations. Use test data to trigger common mistakes. Check that users can find errors, correct them, and understand whether submission succeeded.
• 15. Arrange assistive-technology review. Have a qualified reviewer assess important tasks with appropriate tools. Include language versions and the external services those tasks use.

Fixes and ongoing publishing

• 16. Ask vendors for evidence. Request current accessibility findings for the actual product and version, known limitations, remediation ownership, and dates. Verify the tasks your school uses.
• 17. Prioritize barriers and assign fixes. Start with problems that block essential tasks and issues repeated across templates. Give each action an owner and a retest date.
• 18. Train the people who publish. Use examples from school notices, enrollment instructions, and staff documents. Supply a short publishing checklist and approved templates.
• 19. Provide a clear help route. Make it easy to report an accessibility barrier or request assistance. Assign someone to receive, respond to, and track those requests.
• 20. Retest and maintain the inventory. Recheck corrected tasks and review new templates, documents, and vendor updates. Keep records of unresolved barriers and the next planned work.

The task checks above are starting points. W3C's Easy Checks explains introductory checks; its evaluation-tool guidance explains why automated results require human judgment.

Turn findings into work someone can finish

Use a short record such as this hypothetical example:

Keep unresolved problems visible at the next project meeting. A list of completed tickets does not show whether families can finish the original task.

Choose the next resource for your team

Use the WCAG 2.1 AA guide to explain the standard to publishers, the accessible PDF checklist before uploading documents, and the 90-day accessibility action plan to organize ownership and review.

For help discussing your school's starting point, explore EdPilotHub's accessibility offering or contact our team.