If your organization is a state or local government body and you test people online, the Department of Justice’s web accessibility rule is on your calendar whether you put it there or not. Exams, registration pages and score reports are web content.
This article describes the rule and how exam programs commonly plan for it. It is not legal advice. Whether and how the rule applies to your organization, and what counts as conforming for your content, are questions for your counsel.
What the rule says
The U.S. Department of Justice’s 2024 ADA Title II rule requires WCAG 2.1 Level AA for state and local government web content and mobile apps. An April 2026 interim final rule moved the compliance dates: April 26, 2027 for public entities serving 50,000 people or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones. The National Law Review summarizes the extension.
WCAG 2.1 Level AA is a published set of technical success criteria for web accessibility. It covers things like text alternatives for images, keyboard access, color contrast, captions, consistent navigation and error messages a screen reader can announce.
As of this writing, the larger group’s date is under six months away. For a public body with exams in several systems, that is not much time.
Who tends to be in scope
Title II covers state and local government entities. Bodies that run exams and are commonly asked about the rule include:
- Public universities and community colleges.
- K-12 school districts and state education agencies.
- State licensing boards and the agencies that house them.
- City and county civil service commissions.
- Public workforce and training programs.
Private certification bodies and employers are generally outside Title II, though other laws may apply to them, and many follow WCAG anyway. If you deliver exams on behalf of a public body, your contract may carry the requirement to you. Ask counsel to confirm where your organization sits.
What counts as exam content
The candidate interface is the obvious part. It is rarely the whole picture. A typical online exam touches several systems, each with its own content.
- Registration and eligibility. Application forms, document upload, payment and scheduling.
- Candidate notices. Emails, handbooks and PDFs about the exam day.
- The delivery interface. Navigation, timers, flagging, review screens and error messages.
- The items themselves. Images, charts, tables, math, audio and video inside questions.
- Proctoring software. Check-in, identity steps and any browser lockdown.
- Score reports and certificates. Results pages, PDFs and digital badges.
- Practice tests and study guides. Often built separately and forgotten.
A vendor can build an interface to WCAG 2.1 AA. The items, notices and documents are usually your content, and their accessibility is in your hands. Exampit’s candidate interface is built to WCAG 2.1 AA and tested with screen readers each release. That is one piece of your evidence, not a statement that your program conforms.
Accessibility is not accommodation
WCAG conformance and individual accommodations solve different problems, and you need both.
Conformance makes the exam usable by default: a screen reader user can navigate it, a keyboard user can answer every item, a low vision user can enlarge text without losing content. Accommodations adjust the conditions for one person: extra time, extra breaks, a reader, a separate room.
A program that conforms still needs an accommodation process. A program with a good accommodation process still needs content that conforms. Keep both on the plan.
Plan back from the date
Most programs that have done this work follow a sequence like the one below. The durations depend on how many exams and systems you run.
- Inventory. List every system and document a candidate touches, from first email to final certificate. Note who owns each one.
- Ask vendors for evidence. Request accessibility conformance documentation for each product, and the date it was last tested.
- Test a sample. Run a real exam path with a screen reader and a keyboard only. Have people who use assistive technology try it where you can.
- Review the items. Check images for text alternatives, charts for data tables, videos for captions, and color for meaning that is lost without it.
- Fix by impact. Start with barriers that block a candidate from finishing, then those that slow them down.
- Update procurement. Add WCAG 2.1 AA language to new contracts and renewals.
- Record what you did. Keep dated test results, fixes and vendor responses in one file.
Item review is often the largest job. A bank of 2,000 items with diagrams can take a team weeks. Starting with live forms, then items scheduled for the next window, keeps the work manageable.
Name an owner and a budget
Accessibility work stalls when it belongs to everyone. Give one person the inventory and the file, with authority to ask vendors and item writers for changes.
Then put a rough cost against each finding. Some fixes are a vendor’s job under an existing contract. Some are staff time, such as writing text alternatives or retagging documents. Some need money: a new document template, an external audit, or replacing a tool that cannot conform.
Write each finding as a row with an owner, a cost estimate and a target date before the compliance date that applies to you. A board or leadership team can approve a list like that in one meeting. A general request to “make exams accessible” tends to wait for the next budget cycle.
Keep the list alive after the date passes. New items, new forms and new vendor releases each bring fresh content, so the review becomes part of every exam cycle rather than a single project.
Example: a licensing board’s path
Example scenario. Say a state board for a skilled trade runs one 120-item online exam, an application portal and a PDF candidate handbook. Its state serves well over 50,000 people, so the earlier date is the one counsel points to.
In month one, the board inventories six systems and asks each vendor for conformance documentation. Two vendors send current reports; one has none. In month two, staff run the exam path with a screen reader and find that the handbook PDF is a scanned image and 140 items have diagrams without text alternatives.
The board rebuilds the handbook as a tagged document and assigns the diagrams to its item writers in batches, starting with the active form. It adds accessibility language to the contract that renews in the spring and notes, in writing, the vendor that could not supply documentation. The file it keeps shows each step and date.
Questions to put to every vendor
- Which WCAG version and level do you design and test to?
- When was your candidate interface last tested, and by whom?
- Can you share your conformance documentation and the known issues list?
- Which item types are fully usable with a screen reader and keyboard?
- How are accommodations configured, and where are they recorded?
- Does the proctoring step work with screen readers and magnifiers?
- Are score reports and certificates accessible, including any PDFs?
Ask these of us too. Our assessment software buying guide has a fuller list for any selection.
What to do this week
- Ask counsel which compliance date, if any, applies to your organization.
- Start the inventory: one row per system or document a candidate touches.
- Email each vendor for its conformance documentation and test date.
- Run one exam path yourself with only a keyboard. Note every place you get stuck.
- Pull ten items with images and check whether each has a text alternative that conveys what the item needs.
Our accessible exam checklist walks through each area and how accommodations are usually configured. If you run a public program, see how we work with state licensing boards, colleges and universities and K-12 districts. A Test Health Check (indicative, from $1,900 per exam) includes an accessibility review of one existing exam, with a written report in ten business days. The online testing platform page covers the candidate interface and accommodations in detail.
