Our standard
As a public entity, the Court is covered by Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the U.S. Department of Justice's 2024 web accessibility rule, public court websites must conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with compliance deadlines arriving in 2026 and 2027 by population tier.
This redesign is built to that standard from the markup up, not retrofitted afterward. Accessibility is treated as a launch requirement, tested on every page before publication.
How to request help
Need an accommodation to use this site or to participate in a court proceeding? We can help.
- Court interpreters at no cost
- Documents in large print or alternate formats
- Assistive listening and accessible seating
- Help completing online forms
What we built in
Every page of this prototype meets these baseline criteria.
Structure
One H1 per page, logical heading order, and semantic landmarks (header, nav, main, footer) so assistive tech can navigate the outline.
Keyboard
A skip link, fully keyboard-operable menus, search, and forms, with a clearly visible focus outline on every control.
Color & text
Body and interface text meet at least 4.5:1 contrast, and the layout reflows cleanly down to small mobile widths.
Images
Informative images carry descriptive alt text; decorative icons are hidden from assistive technology.
Forms
Every field has a programmatic label, and status messages are announced through live regions.
Motion & media
No auto-playing motion; future video would ship with captions and transcripts.
From Stoa's review of 16thcircuit.org
Findings on the current website
A quick technical review of the live site on June 2, 2026 surfaced concrete, fixable issues. A modern CMS migration resolves each one. These are illustrative observations, not a formal audit.
| Finding | Why it matters | Fix in this project |
|---|---|---|
| End-of-life JavaScript libraries (jQuery 1.9.1 and jQuery UI 1.10.2, both from 2013) | Unsupported libraries carry known security advisories and complicate maintenance. | Retire legacy libraries; build on a current, supported stack. |
| Multiple H1 headings on the homepage | Breaks the document outline (WCAG 1.3.1); screen-reader users lose page structure. | Exactly one H1 per page with logical H2 and H3 nesting. |
| Dead analytics tag (Universal Analytics) loading alongside GA4 | Universal Analytics stopped processing data in July 2023; it is dead weight on every page. | Remove the obsolete tag; configure GA4 and Search Console cleanly. |
| Legacy markup signals (an Internet Explorer 6 compatibility class and XHTML 1.0 namespacing) | Indicates a stack designed for browsers two decades old, not modern assistive tech or mobile. | Rebuild on semantic HTML5 with responsive layout. |
| At least one homepage image missing an alt attribute | Screen-reader users miss the content (WCAG 1.1.1). | Alt text on every informative image; empty alt on decorative ones. |
These findings come from inspecting the live site's served HTML and headers, not guesswork. During discovery we would confirm each with axe DevTools and Lighthouse and capture before-and-after scores. Accessibility is the through-line of this RFP, driven by the 2024 ADA Title II rule, so we lead with it rather than treating it as a checkbox.