Every route to ADA Title II web readiness, side by side

Accessible.org, the manual audit firm

Pick it instead of this when. Somebody is going to ask who evaluated the site and what their credentials were. This is the only route on the grid where a certified person tests every page in scope by hand, and it publishes its whole rate card, so a council can budget it without a call. If the entity is already past a complaint, or expects to have to defend the evaluation itself, the manual audit is the thing being asked for. accessible.org

What you receive: A manual WCAG evaluation and a report. Its own pricing page: "Audits are fully manual evaluations (not automated scans)". The standard is stated as "WCAG 2.1 AA or WCAG 2.2 AA standard". A VPAT or Accessibility Conformance Report is an add-on at $350, and certification "is included at no additional cost, contingent upon conformance".

What it costs: $1,250 to $2,750 for most audits. Its own words: "Most accessibility audits cost between $1,250 and $2,750." Per page it publishes "$100 to $250 for primary pages or screens and $25 to $100 for light pages or screens". Technical support is $195 per hour and user testing is $550 per session.

What the price is a function of: How many pages or screens are in scope. The scope is a sample rather than the whole site: "We select a representative sample of pages / screens for scope." The total is a function of how large that sample is and how many of its pages count as primary.

Who or what does the evaluating: Certified human auditors. Its own line: "All auditors are certified DHS Trusted Testers". This is the only route on this grid whose evaluation is a person rather than a scanner.

What it leaves the entity to do: The fixes, and the adoption record. An audit is an evaluation. Remediation is the entity’s or its vendor’s work, and the rate card prices help with it separately: "Technical support is $195 per hour". Nothing on the page is a policy or a statement drafted for a governing body to adopt.

accessiBe accessWidget, the overlay subscription

Pick it instead of this when. The entity has no development capacity at all and wants something in place this week without touching the site’s code. It installs as a script and re-scans on its own. Read its own excluded-issues note before choosing it: the page states plainly that there are accessibility issues it does not remediate. accessibe.com

What you receive: A script on the site, re-scanned every 24 hours. The smallest plan’s own listed features are "Automated web accessibility", "Ongoing scans & fixes every 24 hrs" and "Accessibility report & documentation". What is installed is a widget rather than a change to the site’s own markup.

What it costs: $490 to $3,990 a year. Micro is $59 a month or $490 a year. Growth is $179 a month or $1,490 a year. Scale is $479 a month or $3,990 a year. A fourth tier, Enterprise, is listed as Custom with no figure.

What the price is a function of: Monthly traffic to the domain. Its own page says the plans "are priced according to your website’s monthly traffic", measured with Similarweb over the past six months. Micro is "Up to 5,000 website visits/month" and Scale is "Up to 100,000". A small town site that gets linked once can cross a band without changing at all.

Who or what does the evaluating: The product’s own automation. The smallest two tiers are automated. Manual testing appears at the Scale tier, listed there as "Manual testing & custom remediation" alongside litigation support.

What it leaves the entity to do: Whatever the widget excludes, plus the adoption record. The pricing page carries its own caveat: "For a list of accessibility issues that are not remediated by accessWidget, read our excluded issues article." Nothing on the page is a policy or a statement for a governing body, and the subscription has to be renewed to keep running.

WCAGsafe, the monitoring subscription

Pick it instead of this when. The site changes often and the worry is drift rather than a single deadline. This is the cheapest published route on the grid, it re-scans on a schedule you set per page, and it issues a dated certificate each time. It also has a free tier that needs no card, so an entity can see its own violations before deciding anything. wcagsafe.com

What you receive: Scheduled scans and a dated certificate. The Basic plan is listed as "15 pages/scan · 1,000 pages/month", monitoring 5 pages "auto re-scanned weekly", and carrying an "ADA Audit Certificate". Pro adds a scan-on-deploy webhook and PDF report export.

What it costs: $70, $290 or $990 a year. Its own page title reads "Plans from $7/mo". Basic bills $70 a year, Pro $290 and Agency $990, each described as "Cancel anytime · no contracts". There is also a free tier: "3 free scans/day · see every violation · no credit card".

What the price is a function of: Pages scanned and pages monitored. Basic is "15 pages/scan · 1,000 pages/month" and monitors 5 pages. Pro is 50 pages a scan and monitors 25. Agency is 250 a scan and monitors 250. A municipal site with hundreds of documents outgrows the lower bands on page count rather than on traffic.

Who or what does the evaluating: Automated scanning, on a schedule. The monitoring is the product: pages are "auto re-scanned weekly" on Basic and on per-page schedules above it. The page describes no manual evaluation by a person at any tier.

What it leaves the entity to do: Every fix, the policy and the adoption. A scan reports and a certificate records. Beyond a separately sold "One-Time ADA Audit + Certificate", the page sells no remediation work and no document a governing body adopts, so both stay with the entity and its web vendor.

Level Access, the enterprise platform

Pick it instead of this when. The entity is large enough to run an accessibility programme rather than clear a deadline, with staff who will use a platform year round. It is the broadest offering on this grid: scanning, manual evaluation, remediation tooling, CI integration, mobile testing and training under one contract. It is also the route that cannot be budgeted from a web page. levelaccess.com

What you receive: A platform: scanning, evaluation, tooling. Its own product list names "Audit & Test: Automated scanning and manual evaluation", "Build & Fix: AI-powered remediation and developer tools" and "Governance & Reporting: Monitoring, documentation, and program management", with Level CI, mobile testing and an academy as add-ons.

What it costs: Not stated on the page read. The page read carries no dollar figure of any kind and routes enquiries through a demo request. That is not a claim it is expensive or that no figure exists, only that the page read did not carry one. Enterprise accessibility platforms are sold on negotiated annual contracts, which is a normal shape and not a fault.

What the price is a function of: Not stated on the page read. With no figure published there is no unit published either. What the contract is a function of, seats or domains or pages or programme scope, is settled in the conversation rather than on the page.

Who or what does the evaluating: Both, by its own description. The platform line pairs them explicitly: "Automated scanning and manual evaluation". It is the only route here other than Accessible.org that names human evaluation on the page read.

What it leaves the entity to do: Running the programme, and the adoption record. The platform is bought to be used. Somebody at the entity operates it, reads its reports and drives the fixes, which is the staff cost a small town does not have. The page names a public sector practice but no policy or statement drafted for a governing body to adopt.

Axe DevTools, the developer tooling

Pick it instead of this when. The entity has developers, or a web vendor with developers, and wants the checking to happen while the site is being built rather than after. Its free tools cost nothing and need no contract: axe-core, the Chrome extension and the VS Code linter. For a council whose site is maintained in house, this is where the fixes actually get made, whatever else is bought alongside it. deque.com

What you receive: Tools for the people who build it. The plans page lists a web bundle, a Pro browser extension with guided testing and Jira integration, and CI and API integrations. Three tools are published as free: "Axe-core", the "Axe DevTools Extension (for Chrome)" and "Axe Linter (for VS Code)".

What it costs: Free tools, no figure for paid tiers. The free tools are named on the page. For everything else the page read carries no dollar figure and offers "Schedule a Demo" and "Get a Free Trial" instead. That is not a claim no figure exists, only that this page did not carry one.

What the price is a function of: Not stated on the page read. Developer tooling is usually sold per seat and this page does not say so, so the cell does not say so either. The free tools have no unit at all.

Who or what does the evaluating: Automated rules, run by your team. The linter is described as a "Spellcheck" for static code and the extension runs in the browser. The evaluation happens on a developer’s machine, at the moment the code is written, which is the one position on this grid where a failure can be caught before it is published.

What it leaves the entity to do: What a rule cannot see, and the record. Automated rules catch a portion of WCAG and no tool on this grid claims otherwise. Nothing here is an evaluation somebody outside the entity signed, and nothing here is a policy, a statement or a dated remediation plan.

How much does ADA Title II website compliance cost for a small city?

Four of the six routes on this page publish a figure. WCAGsafe bills $70 a year at its smallest tier and publishes "Plans from $7/mo". CivicBinder is $299 for entities under 50,000 and $499 for school districts and entities of 50,000 and above, one payment rather than a subscription. accessiBe accessWidget is $490 a year at its smallest tier and $3,990 at its largest published one, priced by monthly traffic. A manual audit from Accessible.org is "$1,250 to $2,750" for most audits, on its own rate card. Level Access and Deque publish no dollar figure on the pages read on 2026-09-19 and route enquiries through a demo request. Every figure here was read off that provider’s own page on that date.

Does an accessibility overlay make a government website Title II compliant?

No route on this page, including an overlay, is a compliance certificate. The accessWidget pricing page carries the caveat in its own words: "For a list of accessibility issues that are not remediated by accessWidget, read our excluded issues article." An overlay is a script that runs on top of the site. It does not change the site’s own markup, it does not produce a document for a governing body to adopt, and it stops working when the subscription lapses. The Department of Justice rule names WCAG 2.1, Level AA as the technical standard, and what an entity is judged on is the site itself.

What is the difference between an accessibility audit and a readiness binder?

An audit is an evaluation of what is currently wrong. A readiness binder is the record an entity keeps of what it decided and when. Accessible.org sells the first: a fully manual evaluation by certified testers, with a detailed report, and remediation priced separately at $195 an hour. CivicBinder sells the second: an Accessibility Policy prepared for adoption by the governing body, an Accessibility Statement ready to publish, a dated and phased remediation plan written to be handed to a web vendor, and an appendix naming every page evaluated. They answer different questions, and a large entity past a complaint usually needs both.

When is the ADA Title II web deadline?

The Department of Justice's own fact sheet, read on 2026-09-19, gives two dates. State and local government entities with a total population of 50,000 or more have until April 26, 2027. Entities with a population under 50,000, and any special district government, have until April 26, 2028. Both were extended by an Interim Final Rule published in the Federal Register on April 20, 2026. The technical standard is WCAG 2.1, Level AA.

Which accessibility vendors publish their prices?

Of the six routes here, Accessible.org, WCAGsafe and accessiBe publish figures, and CivicBinder publishes a flat fee. Level Access and Deque publish none on the pages read on 2026-09-19. That split is not a judgement about quality: enterprise platforms are sold on negotiated annual contracts and scoping a manual audit honestly does take a conversation. It is a fact about procurement. A clerk who needs a number for a budget cycle can get one from four of these six today and has to book meetings for the other two. The separate survey of who publishes a rate covers seven outside vendors in more detail.