Public Library WordPress Accessibility
For most libraries the WordPress site is a lobby. Nearly every service a patron actually uses — searching the catalogue, borrowing an e-book, booking a room, running a database search — happens inside somebody else's software. Knowing exactly where that line falls is most of the work.
Your date depends on how the library is constituted
ADA Title II
April 26, 2027
Public entities with a population of 50,000 or more
About 8 months from today.
ADA Title II
April 26, 2028
Public entities with a population under 50,000, and special district governments
About 20 months from today.
Libraries are not all organised the same way, and it changes which date applies:
- A department of a city or county follows that entity's population
- An independent library district with its own board and its own levy is a special district government under the rule, which has its own date regardless of population served
- A regional or consortium system may be several entities sharing one website
That last case causes the most confusion, because one site can serve members with different dates. If your library is an independent district, the special district page covers that reading of the rule. Confirm your own status with counsel — how an entity is constituted is a legal question, not a technical one.
All four dates, in full
| Compliance date | Rule | Who it applies to |
|---|---|---|
| April 26, 2027 | ADA Title II | Public entities with a population of 50,000 or more |
| April 26, 2028 | ADA Title II | Public entities with a population under 50,000, and special district governments |
| May 11, 2027 | HHS Section 504 | Recipients of HHS federal financial assistance with 15 or more employees |
| May 10, 2028 | HHS Section 504 | Recipients of HHS federal financial assistance with fewer than 15 employees |
Where these dates come from. Verify current guidance before relying on any date for planning — both rules have already moved once.
- U.S. Department of Justice — ADA Title II web rule: ada.gov/resources/web-rule-first-steps
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — Section 504 deadline extension: hhs.gov press release
MakeWPCompliant provides technical accessibility services, not legal advice. How a rule applies to a specific organization is a question for current federal guidance and, where appropriate, qualified legal counsel.
What is yours, and what belongs to a vendor
This split is the first thing we produce on a library engagement, because until it exists nobody can say what the project even covers.
Usually yours to fix
- The theme: navigation, focus behaviour, colour, headings, mobile menu
- Branch pages, hours, closures and holiday notices
- Staff and department directories
- News, blog posts and reading recommendations
- Contact, feedback and purchase-suggestion forms
- Local history and digital collection pages built in WordPress
- Uploaded policy documents, board packets and annual reports
- Everything on the page surrounding an embedded vendor widget
Usually a vendor's
- The catalogue and discovery interface
- Subscription research databases
- E-book, audiobook and streaming apps
- Event calendars and program registration
- Room and study-space booking
- Museum and park pass reservations
- Chat and text reference widgets
- Interlibrary loan and account management
We do not pretend we can remediate the right-hand column. We can test it, describe what fails in terms a vendor can act on, and tell you whether a patron can complete the task at all — which is the information a renewal conversation actually needs.
You control more about an embed than you think
When a calendar or catalogue widget is dropped into a page, it is tempting to file the whole thing under "vendor" and stop. But the embed sits inside your markup, and several things that decide whether a patron can use it are on your side of the line:
- The frame has no accessible name A real title on the frame — yours, in your template
- Keyboard focus enters the embed and cannot get out Test it, document it, and give the patron a way past
- The embed is the only route to the service Publish a plain link to the vendor's own page as an alternative
- The frame is a fixed height and clips at 200% zoom A container fix in your CSS, not the vendor's
- A search box on your page posts into the catalogue The label, the hint and the error path are yours
- Nothing tells the patron they are leaving for another system Say so in the link text, where it helps everyone
"That is the vendor's problem" is true far less often than it is said.
Point your procurement at the list
Libraries already ask vendors for accessibility conformance reports during database and system purchasing — it is one of the few sectors where that habit is genuinely established. The gap is usually not the process. It is that the request goes out for the big renewals and not for the small widgets that patrons touch daily.
The boundary document above doubles as that list. Each vendor row can carry when the agreement renews, whether a current conformance report exists, and what we observed when we tested it ourselves — which is worth more than a report the vendor wrote about a version from three years ago.
Where purchasing runs through a consortium or a state library agreement, that is usually the more effective place to raise it. One consortium asking is a different conversation from one library asking.
April 2027 is a deadline, not a starting date
If your public-sector WordPress site needs to meet the Title II technical requirements, start identifying the real remediation work now.