On April 20, 2026, the Department of Justice extended the date of the upcoming Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ruling one year until April 24, 2027.
Welcome to the Web Accessibility Resources site. Information here will help you understand the importance of accessibility on Nashville.gov and help you make your site content fully accessible to visitors with needs of all kinds.
If you’re new to web accessibility, we recommend watching the video below for a brief overview of the topic.
This site was last updated on April 20, 2026.
##Web Accessibility in Action
Here are some great examples of best practices in use on Nashville.gov and elsewhere. We encourage you to use these as inspiration and guidance for your own content. We will expand this list over time.
License Plate Reader Map Metro Nashville Police Department created a detailed text description of this complex map including an explanation of the highlighted map areas and a list of points on the map.
Budget Dollars Infographics The Finance Department provided helpful text explanations of their budget infographics.
Access Management Manual Project Timeline NDOT included a detailed but clear text description of a timeline graphic for this project.
Codes Contact List Metro Codes broke up a large amount of information using multiple levels of headings and lists to make the content easy to navigate for screen reader and alternative input users.
Music City Minute This video gives an example of using “burned in” captions on video that display all the time, which are useful for hearing impaired people and for many other situations.
Post from @POTUS on X (formerly Twitter) This post highlights an example of using accessibility features on social media platforms. The image used has alt text that includes the full text found in the image. Most social media platforms provide this option when posting images.
Accessible documents can be created using tools you already have, particularly Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. We have developed a written step-by-step guide on creating new accessible documents from scratch, adapting existing documents, and creating alternative versions of complex documents.
📄 Creating Accessible PDF Documents Using Microsoft Word
Note: This guide recommends using the Acrobat plugin to create PDFs. A recent update to Microsoft Word causes issues with this plugin. Until these bugs are resolved, we recommend using the built-in Save as PDF feature in Word. The guide will be updated to reflect this soon.
As a supplement to the written guide we have created a video demonstration showing much of the process in real-time so you can get an idea of what it looks like to perform the process.
▶️ Video Demo
We plan to offer additional guides over time as we are able to produce them. If you have a specific process you would like us to cover, get in touch.
📋 Accessible Document Cheat Sheet
This brief document covers the most common issues that prevent your document from being accessible. It’s a good quick reference after you’ve read the full guide and watched the video demo.
Templates Our team is working on building document templates for Word that when exported using Word’s built-in Save as PDF option will result in a fully compliant accessible document. These templates can be used as-is or as a reference for building your own templates according to the above guide.
We will add to these templates over time. If you have a suggestion for a type of document we could add a template for, let us know!
Board / Commission Meeting Document (Agenda, Minutes, etc.)
Check Documents for Accessibility The industry standard tool for checking accessibility of PDF files is PAC PDF Accessibility Checker. This is a free tool that can be downloaded and installed on Windows PCs. If you have trouble downloading the software, try a different web browser. You should be able to install the PAC software without ITS support.
To better understand the failures or warnings you may get when running your document through PAC, please check our guide to Common PDF Accessibility Issues Identified with PAC. This guide provides some possible fixes for errors you may see. These fixes range from easy to more advanced. If you find errors or warnings that aren’t explained in this guide and need further help with them, contact us.
PDF Forms Forms that are intended to be printed and submitted in person or by mail still need to be accessible if provided in a digital form. The guide provided should help with that.
For fillable forms, you should start with a fully accessible Word document made by following the guide and then add form fields using Adobe Acrobat’s built-in features such as Detect Form Fields and Prepare Form. We recommend following these simple guides for more help:
Accessible Forms in Acrobat - WebAIM.org
Convert documents to PDF forms - Adobe.com
PDF Remediation While it’s always better to plan for accessibility from the start and resolve issues before converting to PDF, there are some methods of making existing documents more accessible. This process is called PDF remediation. This is a skill with a learning curve and can be time-consuming. In many cases it will be faster to recreate the document.
We don’t yet have a guide on PDF remediation, but here are some great outside resources to help with this process:
Creating Accessible PDFs - Adobe.com Adobe provides an overview of the workflow for adding accessibility features to existing documents.
PDF Remediation Tutorial - Wichita State University on YouTube This video playlist is a very detailed guide that can help you remediate accessibility issues on even complex PDF documents from beginning to end.
Creating Accessible PDFs Video Course on LinkedIn Learning If you have access to a LinkedIn Learning subscription, this video course is a great way to learn how to fix accessibility issues in existing PDFs for those wishing to go a little deeper on the subject. (Nashville Public Library card holders can get access to LinkedIn Learning for free.)
External Resources These great sites offer guides to troubleshoot any issues you might run into during the process of creating or remediating PDFs, and are the go-to resources the Nashville.gov Support Team uses for our own knowledge on the topic.
MakeThingsAccessible.com PDF Guides
Accessible-PDF.info
TaggedPDF.com
The Nashville.gov Support Team and our development partners are responsible for the public-facing site found at www.nashville.gov. Any external websites for Metro departments and agencies not hosted by our team are not under our purview but are still subject to the ADA Title II updates going into effect in April 2026.
Our team doesn’t have the resources to help directly on these external websites before the deadline. We may be able to do a brief consultation with you depending on our availability. Please feel free to use the information on this SharePoint site to help.
If your website was created by an outside vendor, please get in touch with them and ask about the accessibility of your site and what they can do to help you get it compliant. If you’re not currently engaged with a vendor that works on your website, here are some tools that may help you:
WAVE Browser Extensions
Silktide Browser Toolbar
WCAG Plus
PAC 2026 PDF Accessibility Checker
These tools are free, but some will require you to install a browser extension or application on your PC. Unfortunately the Nashville.gov Support Team cannot help with this as we don’t have access to the appropriate permissions and tools to manage Metro PCs. If you have trouble using any of these tools, please contact the ITS Help Desk.
What are the accessibility standards for Nashville.gov? Nashville.gov has followed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for at least a decade. WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the standard required by the new Title II updates to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) starting April 24, 2026. Nashville.gov is expected to be in full compliance with this standard by the deadline.
Nashville.gov content providers don’t need to know the technical details of this standard. We have created a plain language guide to WCAG so anyone can understand the requirements.
How many people really need accessibility features? Informed estimates from industry professionals suggest as many as 20% of adults use assistive technology of some kind when browsing the web. For Nashville.gov, this could mean as many as 1 million visitors per year using some form of accessibility feature on our site.
Do updated federal accessibility requirements apply to existing content on Nashville.gov from before the deadline? In most cases, content that was created and posted on Nashville.gov prior to the deadline is exempt from new requirements.
If a page or document is changed after the deadline, all content on that page or within that document must be brought up to the new requirements.
In addition, all documents that provide a method of applying for a service from Metro must be updated prior to the deadline without exception.
I want to make my page visually interesting. What can I do? The Nashville.gov website template is built with accessibility in mind, and all of our available page components (the building blocks you use to put a page together) are accessible by default when used in their intended manner. To get an idea of the components available to use on pages, please see our Component and Feature Specimen page.
My event has a flyer with information. Can I post this on the website? Images like event flyers usually have lots of text. This type of image isn’t accessible because visually impaired users can’t perceive any of this text. These types of images should not be used. Instead, include all the event information as typed text on the page.
Where can I get accessible images to use on the website? The Nashville.gov Support Team has a subscription to Adobe Stock, which has millions of images available. If you need an image for a web page, please send us the link or the ID of the image you’d like to use. Look for images that don’t contain text. Adobe Stock even includes suggested alt text for many images in the catalog.
Nashville.gov Content Editor Manual Accessibility section, pages 10-11
WCAG 2.1 AA Success Criteria in Plain Language for Nashville.gov Content Providers and Content Editors
Accessible Charts, Graphs, and Infographics
The Beginner’s Guide to Web Accessibility
Introduction to Web Accessibility
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
US Department of Justice Guidance on Web Accessibility
Screen Reader Demo ▶️
Sip and Puff (Alternative Input) Demo ▶️
Descriptive Audio Demo ▶️
Archived versions of important messages on the topic of web accessibility sent to PIOs, Content Editors, IT Community Contacts, and other distribution lists.
Important Update: New Federal ADA Law and Website Content Compliance - March 27, 2025
Web Accessibility Update: Creating Accessible Documents in Microsoft Word - May 14, 2025
Web Accessibility Update: Accessibility of Internal Documents and Nashville.gov Chatbot - July 29, 2025
Web Accessibility Update: Accessible PDFs Guide and Chatbot Testing - September 30, 2025
Web Accessibility Update: Accessible Forms - January 23, 2026