Before the Clause Arrives: Why Consulting Firms Should Build an Accessibility Function Now
ACCESS BRIEF INSIGHTS — September 25, 2026
In the last post, I wrote that enforcement pressure on public agencies turns into procurement pressure on the firms that serve them. So I went looking for the contract clause. The short answer: it is starting to show up, but it has not reached most engineering and planning contracts. Firms that wait for it risk building a new skill on a live project, inside a fee no one set aside for it. Firms that are proactive, before the clause arrives, are in a much better position to help their clients.
Agencies Comply. Deliverables Conform.
The Department of Justice rule applies to state and local governments, not to consulting firms. A firm has no Title II deadline of its own.
But the agency is responsible for web content it provides “directly or through contractual, licensing, or other arrangements” (28 CFR 35.200). It cannot hand that duty to a contractor (89 Fed. Reg. 31367). That is true for state DOTs and also for cities, counties, transit agencies and metropolitan planning organizations, which hire many of the same firms.
The compliance date is April 26, 2027, for agencies serving 50,000 people or more, including state DOTs. Smaller agencies and special districts have until April 26, 2028. Those dates set when a technical standard applies. They do not start the obligation. The Department has said agencies have an ongoing duty under Title II now (91 Fed. Reg. 20908), and Section 504 applies to agencies that receive federal funds. After its compliance date, any environmental document, study report or meeting packet an agency posts online must meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA.
The distinction I use is simple: agencies comply, deliverables conform, and the consultant verifies. The firm that produced a deliverable is the only one in a position to know whether it conforms before it is submitted.
What I Found
Technology contracts already carry the requirement. A Sept. 1, 2026, analysis by the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine reports that many states and public entities are shifting accessibility responsibility to technology vendors through contract terms. In a 2025 national survey, 92% of state chief information officers said they use contract terms to require accessible technology. Only 22% said they run regular audits. The requirement is written down far more often than it is checked.
Transportation agencies know the standard, but mostly for websites. In September 2026, I reviewed 24 public solicitations and contract provisions that cite WCAG. In transportation agencies’ contracts for website design or accessibility services, four of five named WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Their planning and engineering solicitations rarely named any version. Of six I reviewed, one did: a Montana MPO’s long-range transportation plan, which cites WCAG 2.2. The rest asked for accessible or ADA-compliant plans without naming a standard. The Tennessee and Florida consultant documents I read in full fit the same pattern.
A few agencies already apply it to consultants.
-
Minnesota DOT. All MnDOT contracts include accessibility language covering deliverables other than designs, plans, layouts and maps, and its web team rejects documents that do not meet the standard. Minnesota moved that standard from WCAG 2.0 to 2.1 Level AA in 2024. A newer MnDOT standard, effective Aug. 31, 2026, adds a contractor warranty and indemnification for contracts involving digital products or services.
-
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Everyone the agency contracts with must deliver documents that meet the state’s standard, which points to WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
-
Caltrans District 7. Since July 1, 2019, the district has not posted environmental documents that fail state accessibility requirements. The public has to request a copy instead.
The environmental examples matter most. In my experience in public involvement, the environmental phase is where most of a transportation project’s public-facing work happens. Federal rules require public involvement throughout environmental review (23 CFR 771.111(h)). The documents consultants produce in that phase are the ones the public is asked to read and comment on.
Two cautions. First, under qualifications-based selection, the firm is chosen first and the fee is negotiated later, so requirements are often not in the advertisement. Tennessee DOT’s notices say the scope and all technical requirements are set with the prospective consultant before a cost proposal is invited. A requirement can arrive in a negotiated scope or contract template without ever appearing in a solicitation. Second, this is a sample, not a census. I am treating it as a baseline to measure against in six months.
Why I Expect More
This is a forecast, and I am labeling it as one. Three reasons support it.
First, the same agencies already write WCAG 2.1 Level AA into website contracts. Extending it to consultant deliverables is a short step.
Second, the agency’s duty does not depend on the clause. A deliverable that does not conform gets rejected, fixed at someone’s expense or kept off the website, as Caltrans District 7 shows. A clause only settles who pays.
Third, officials and the planning profession are saying it publicly. In 2024, Stacey Peace, then Georgia’s state ADA coordinator, told agencies they cannot contract away their responsibilities under the rule, StateScoop reported. In March 2026, the American Planning Association published a blog series that names environmental review among the services planners contract out. It recommends writing WCAG 2.1 Level AA into the scope of work for all deliverables, including PDFs, along with testing before acceptance, fixes at no added cost and final payment tied to accessibility verification.
Agencies may still lean on “comply with all applicable laws” boilerplate or fix files in-house. If so, the clause will arrive slowly. But the deliverable still has to conform, so the cost gets settled project by project instead.
Why Waiting Costs More
Accessibility is less expensive to build in than to add later. A heading structure built into a Word template carries into every PDF made from it. Added after the fact, it has to be rebuilt by hand, one file at a time.
AEC work adds a wrinkle. The person who exports a file is often not the person who decides to publish it. A CAD manager plots a plan set to PDF for a submittal. Months later, that PDF is on a project website. Nobody decided to publish an inaccessible document. The workflow decided for them.
A firm that meets its first accessibility requirement on a live project learns all of this the more expensive way.
What an Accessibility Function Looks Like
In recent conversations, firm leaders have told me their staff has this covered. That may be true. A function is how a firm proves it. It is not a department. It comes down to six things:
-
A named owner. One person accountable for the standard, the way a QA/QC manager is accountable for quality.
-
Accessible templates. Report, memo, presentation, and public meeting templates with structure built in.
-
A check before submittal. An accessibility review inside the existing QC process, using an automated checker such as PAC 2026, plus manual keyboard and screen reader checks. Automated tools alone do not prove conformance.
-
A conformance statement. A short record with each deliverable of what was tested, how and the result.
-
Role-based training. Authors, designers, CAD and GIS staff, and public involvement leads each need different training.
-
A specialty partner. Maps, plan sheets, and dense data tables are where general training runs out.
Add one more item to the proposal: a line in the scope and fee. In my experience, work that is priced gets done, and work that is absorbed is the first to slip when the schedule tightens.
These six parts match what the American Planning Association recommends agencies require: testing, documentation, and editable source files. If final payment depends on accessibility verification, work a firm did not price becomes work it pays for.
In Chapter 8 of Real. Relevant. Required., I recommend that agencies write consultant clauses that do four things: name the standard, define which deliverables are in scope, assign testing responsibility and set consequences for nonconformance. A firm with a working function can answer all four on the day the clause appears.