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Research ยท October 2026

How local government PDFs scored in every state

The Justice Department's ADA Title II rule requires state and local government websites, including the PDFs on them, to meet WCAG 2.1 AA. We tested 77,960 PDFs on 6,767 local government websites. 84% did not pass a basic accessibility check. Among states where we scanned at least 30 websites, the share ran from 66% in Florida to 92% in Oklahoma.

Published October 2026 by Celsari from its own scan of public websites. Free to cite with a link to this page.

See every state

The first deadline is April 26, 2027, for governments serving 50,000 or more people.

Smaller governments and special districts have until April 26, 2028. Meeting agendas, budgets, permit forms and notices are posted as PDFs every week, and most of those files are not usable with a screen reader.

  • 84%of 77,960 PDFs did not pass a basic check
  • 6,767local government websites scanned
  • 46%of websites had no tested PDF pass

Scorecard by state

States are ranked from the highest share of PDFs that did not pass to the lowest. States where we scanned fewer than 30 local government websites are listed at the end without a rank, because the sample is too small to compare. T- marks a tie. Select a column heading to sort the table.

Showing all 50

Local government website PDFs that did not pass a basic accessibility check, by state, October 2026
1Oklahoma8084192%64%
T-2Connecticut1081,22390%56%
T-2New Mexico5157190%53%
T-4Arkansas1241,27689%71%
T-4Indiana6368789%54%
T-6Wyoming3738288%62%
T-6Mississippi3740888%59%
T-6Kentucky8899288%57%
T-6Maine7080088%43%
T-6Alabama9295688%64%
T-6West Virginia5461388%50%
T-12Tennessee1541,65287%44%
T-12Idaho3942387%54%
T-12Georgia1681,82387%56%
T-12Missouri1501,66487%57%
T-16Texas3694,18386%51%
T-16Utah2552,98886%54%
T-16Washington1221,35886%52%
T-16New York8219,60386%48%
T-16South Carolina5766186%63%
T-16Illinois1922,18586%49%
T-22Vermont5767285%46%
T-22Massachusetts2012,59085%33%
T-22Michigan3073,76585%46%
T-25Pennsylvania1621,99284%45%
T-25Nebraska7986984%53%
T-25Wisconsin4715,51684%47%
T-25Ohio3153,53284%44%
T-29New Hampshire1181,42483%42%
T-29New Jersey1071,24783%31%
T-31North Carolina1531,66882%40%
T-31Minnesota2923,46182%46%
T-31Montana5967182%37%
34Iowa7590681%33%
35Kansas7989880%54%
T-36Virginia1201,34379%38%
T-36Maryland6572679%42%
T-38California3444,11578%37%
T-38Louisiana4343078%60%
T-38Arizona6569378%35%
41Oregon1231,51077%33%
42Colorado1031,25168%23%
43Florida1781,95566%26%
Not ranked, small sampleAlaska1517779%47%
Not ranked, small sampleDelaware109383%40%
Not ranked, small sampleHawaii33181%33%
Not ranked, small sampleNevada1418781%21%
Not ranked, small sampleNorth Dakota2531881%56%
Not ranked, small sampleRhode Island2732685%33%
Not ranked, small sampleSouth Dakota2630588%58%
All states6,76777,96084%46%

Source: Celsari scan of public local government websites, October 2026. A PDF did not pass if it was missing any of four basic features: tags, real text, a document title or a language setting. Counts are of local governments whose websites had PDFs we could test, and a few governments share one website. Governments with no website we could find, or no PDFs we could test, are not counted.

What the deadlines are

The Justice Department's 2024 rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires the websites and mobile apps of state and local governments to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. That covers documents posted on those sites, including PDFs. In April 2026 the department moved both compliance dates back one year:

  • Governments serving 50,000 or more people: April 26, 2027.
  • Governments serving fewer than 50,000 people, and special district governments: April 26, 2028.

The April 2026 change is an interim final rule. Source: Federal Register, April 20, 2026.

What "did not pass" means here

We ran four checks that any accessible PDF has to pass. The file must be tagged, so a screen reader can follow its structure. It must contain real text, not only a scanned picture of a page. It must have a document title, and it must declare its language. A PDF that missed any one of these did not pass.

These are the most basic tests, not a full WCAG 2.1 AA review. A PDF can pass all four and still have problems, such as a confusing reading order or images with no description. So the true share of PDFs that would not meet the standard is higher than these figures.

How we tested

  • In October 2026 we visited the public websites of cities, towns, counties and special districts in every state.
  • On each site we read up to 20 public pages and tested up to 15 PDFs linked from them, following each site's robots.txt.
  • Our list of governments came from the federal registry of .gov web addresses. Governments whose websites use other addresses, such as .org, .com or .us, were mostly not on it.
  • For each state we added up the PDFs tested and the PDFs that did not pass across all the government websites we scanned there.

The national results are also on our study of municipal PDF accessibility.

Limits of these numbers

  • The state counts are websites we scanned, not every local government in the state. In some states, many towns don't use a .gov address and were not on our list.
  • Each website is a sample, not every document on it.
  • The checks are basic, so they understate the problem.
  • Some PDFs may fall under the rule's exceptions for archived content or preexisting documents.
  • Websites change every week, so these results are a snapshot of October 2026.
  • A file that did not pass is not a legal finding about any government.

For reporters

We can send the figures for your state or coverage area from the same scan. Ask by email through our contact page.

How to cite this page

Celsari, "How local government PDFs scored in every state," October 2026, https://celsari.com/research/title-ii-pdf-scorecard-2026/

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