Every Bergen County town has until April 26, 2028

The federal rule on state and local government websites has a date for every New Jersey municipality.

Two dates, set by population

In April 2026 the Department of Justice moved the rule’s compliance dates back by a year. A public entity with a total population of 50,000 or more now has until April 26, 2027. One with fewer than 50,000, and every special district government, has until April 26, 2028. Nothing else in the 2024 rule changed, including the standard: WCAG 2.1 Level AA.¹

“Total population” means the population the Census Bureau counted for that entity in the most recent decennial census,² which is still the 2020 Census. Bergen County’s largest municipality, Hackensack, had 46,030 residents that year, so all 70 of the county’s municipalities are on the 2028 clock. The county government, with 955,732, is on the 2027 one.³

What it covers

The rule reaches past a website’s pages to what’s posted on them. It counts PDFs, word processor files, presentations and spreadsheets as web content.² For a clerk’s office, that means agendas, minutes, legal notices, forms and the documents in a board’s packet.

What it leaves out

The rule lists five exceptions to its WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirement.⁴ Existing ADA duties still apply: a person who needs excepted content may need an accessible version or another form of effective communication.⁵ Two exceptions matter most to a clerk:

• Documents posted before the compliance date, unless people still use them to apply for, gain access to or take part in a service, program or activity. An old set of minutes may qualify for this exception. A permit application residents still fill in doesn’t.
• Archived web content that meets four conditions: it was created before the compliance date, it is kept only for reference, research or recordkeeping, it is never altered or updated once archived, and it sits in an area clearly marked as the archive.²

A first month for a clerk’s office

1. Count what’s posted. List every page and every posted document, and mark the ones residents use to apply for something or take part in something.
2. Set up the archive. Move old material into one clearly labeled archive area, and leave it unchanged there.
3. Fix the templates. The agenda, minutes and notice templates produce every document to come. Get them right once, and every new posting starts right.
4. Then the forms. A form residents still use is covered whatever its age, so it goes ahead of every other old document.
5. Name who checks. Decide who reviews each new posting against the standard before it goes up.

The web deadline finder gives the date for every Bergen County municipality and for any population. How each exception applies to a particular document is your municipal attorney’s call. The dates aren’t.

Sources

1. U.S. Department of Justice, Extension of Compliance Dates for Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities, interim final rule, Federal Register, April 20, 2026. Accessed September 27, 2026. ↑

2. 28 CFR 35.104, definitions of total population, conventional electronic documents and archived web content (Legal Information Institute). Accessed September 27, 2026. ↑ ↑² ↑³

3. County of Bergen, Department of Planning and Engineering, Population Summary, Census 2020, from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 Demographic Profile. Accessed September 27, 2026. ↑

4. 28 CFR 35.201, exceptions (Legal Information Institute). Accessed September 27, 2026. ↑

5. U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, “Fact Sheet: New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps Provided by State and Local Governments”, ADA.gov, under “What the exceptions do not change.” Accessed October 5, 2026. ↑

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