Accessibility & AI visibility
Section 508 and WCAG 2.2 AA remediation across a decade of content, and the structured data that makes the same pages citable by AI answer engines.
Accessibility fixed at the source, in the theme and the editorial rules, with a conformance report you can hand to procurement. The same work makes your pages the ones AI engines cite.
Request an accessibility audit- Alt text, headings and link text across a decade of content
- A conformance report your procurement office can use
- The same work that makes you citable by AI answers
What accessibility work is for
Section 508 has applied to federal technology since the revised standards took effect on January 18, 2018, and the ADA Title II rule now brings state and local governments to WCAG 2.1 AA on a fixed calendar. Beyond the law, an inaccessible site turns away the people who most need it: the applicant with a screen reader, the patient with low vision, the student on a phone with a broken form. Accessibility is the property of a site that everyone can use, and it is measured, not asserted.
What we do with it
We audit against WCAG 2.2 AA with automated tools and with people, including a screen reader pass on the journeys that matter. We fix at the source: the theme, the components, the templates and the editorial rules, so a fix holds for every page rather than one. We remediate archives, ten years of PDFs, images without alt text and documents without headings, in batches sized to your reviewers. We write the conformance report, the accessibility statement and the feedback path, and we put the checks in the build so a regression fails before it ships. The outward-facing half is the same discipline pointed at machines: schema.org structured data, canonical pages, plain language and an llms.txt file, so that AI answer engines cite you and quote you correctly.
How we work
An audit comes first and is written so a non-engineer can read it: what fails, where, how many people it affects and what fixing it takes. Remediation goes in priority order, the journeys people depend on before the archive. Every fix is checked by the automated gate on every build and by a person on the journeys, and the conformance report is updated as the numbers move. Editors get rules and training, because most new barriers arrive through the editor, not the code.
Why now
The ADA Title II rule sets WCAG 2.1 AA as the standard for state and local governments, with compliance due April 26, 2027 for entities serving 50,000 people or more and April 26, 2028 for the rest, under the interim final rule of April 20, 2026. WCAG 2.2 added nine success criteria over 2.1, most of them about focus, targets and forms, and it is the version procurement now asks for. And AI answer engines have become a front door to your content that only reads the pages it can parse. Structured, headed, plainly written pages are both the accessible ones and the cited ones.
The calendar and the standards
Apr 26, 2027
ADA Title II deadline, 50,000+
State and local governments serving 50,000 people or more must meet WCAG 2.1 AA. Smaller entities and special districts: April 26, 2028.
ADA Title II web ruleJan 18, 2018
Revised Section 508 in effect
Federal agencies and what they procure, harmonized with WCAG 2.0.
Section 508 laws and policies9
New criteria in WCAG 2.2
Over 2.1: focus visibility, target size, dragging, consistent help, redundant entry, accessible authentication.
WCAG 2.2 at the W3CSep 3, 2024
llms.txt proposed
A file at the site root that tells AI agents what you publish and where. We ship one on every site.
The llms.txt proposalI want to …
clear a 508 backlog
Years of pages, images and documents, none of them checked. We audit, prioritize by the journeys people depend on, and remediate in batches your reviewers can keep up with.
- An audit in plain language: what fails, where, who it affects, what it takes
- Fixes at the source, in the theme and the editorial rules, so they hold
- A conformance report that moves as the numbers do
meet the ADA Title II deadline
WCAG 2.1 AA by April 26, 2027 for larger governments, April 26, 2028 for the rest. The work is the audit, the plan and the remediation, in that order.
- A dated plan that fits the deadline and the budget
- The journeys the public depends on fixed first
- An accessibility statement and a feedback path that meet the rule
make a checkout or a form accessible
Forms are where barriers cost the most. We remediate the flow end to end: labels, errors, keyboard path, focus, timeouts, and the screen reader experience.
- A screen reader pass on the real flow, recorded
- Fixes in the form components, so every form inherits them
- Retested with people before it ships
describe an archive of images and documents
Ten thousand images without alt text and a decade of PDFs can be described with a model and checked by people at the rate they can manage.
- A pilot on a sample, with the error rate measured
- Batches sized to the reviewers, in a queue they control
- PDFs remediated or replaced with accessible pages
appear correctly in AI answers
When an AI answer engine covers your subject, it should cite your page and quote it accurately. That takes structured data, canonical pages and plain language, the same work as accessibility.
- schema.org on every page type, checked on every build
- An llms.txt file that says what you publish and where
- Answers that cite you, checked monthly
stop new barriers arriving
Most new barriers come through the editor: a heading skipped, an image without alt text, a link that says "click here". Rules, training and a gate in the build stop them.
- Editorial rules and a short training for every editor
- An automated accessibility gate that fails a broken build
- A quarterly check on the journeys, by a person
From audit to a site that stays accessible
The same sequence for a backlog and for a new build. The automated steps run on every build; the human ones decide.
A fix in the theme holds for every page. A fix on a page holds until the next edit. We fix in the theme.
What is changing in accessibility
Checked on ada.gov, section508.gov and w3.org on September 10, 2026.
ADA Title II has a calendar
State and local governments must meet WCAG 2.1 AA by April 26, 2027 if they serve 50,000 people or more, and by April 26, 2028 otherwise, under the interim final rule of April 20, 2026. The audit and the plan are what the calendar asks for first.
WCAG 2.2 is what procurement asks for
Its nine new criteria are mostly about focus, target size, dragging and forms, which is where the largest barriers on institutional sites already are.
Archives are finally tractable
Language models draft alt text and document structure at scale, and people check it at the rate they can manage. The alt text pass is both a remediation and the reason an AI engine can describe your images.
AI answer engines read the same pages
Structured data, headings, plain language and an llms.txt file are how a machine knows what your page says. The accessible page and the cited page are the same page.
Services that pair with this one
Accessibility lives in the theme, the content model and the AI features. These are the services most often bought alongside.
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Drupal development
New builds, major-version upgrades, module and theme work, and migrations from Drupal 7 onward. Every site we build is one we can keep patched, accessible and on a supported version for years, because that is the job after launch.
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AI engineering
We put language models to work inside Drupal on the jobs they do well: alt text, summaries, tagging, and answers from your own pages with citations. They run in your tenancy, your content trains no one else's model, and nothing publishes without a person saying so.
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Digital strategy
The decisions that make or break a platform come before any code: the content, its structure, who publishes it, and what gets measured. We make them with you, in writing, and stay through the build so they hold.
Tell us what fails.
The complaint, the audit finding or the deadline, and the size of the site. We come back with what an audit would cover and what it would take.
Request an accessibility audit