Same principles, different doors.
A shopper checking out, a patient booking a follow-up, and a resident paying a water bill run into the same kinds of barriers. What changes is the journey that matters most, the regulator watching, and the date on the calendar.
The code is the same. The stakes are not.
An unlabeled button fails the same WCAG success criterion on a storefront, a patient portal, and a county permit site. A third-party script adds the same main-thread work to a checkout page and a bill-pay page. Our method doesn't change from sector to sector: test with real assistive technology, fix the source code, rank by who is blocked, and keep watching.
What changes is where we look first. In retail, it is the cart drawer and the payment step. In healthcare, it is the intake form and the PDF that arrives after the visit. For a city, it is the utility payment portal a vendor hosts on a subdomain nobody remembers setting up. For a software company, it is the Accessibility Conformance Report a procurement officer reads before anyone schedules a demo.
Each sector also answers to a different authority. Public entities have the Justice Department's Title II rule. Health care organizations that receive HHS funding have Section 504. Retailers selling into Europe have the European Accessibility Act. Some of those dates have passed, and some moved this year. Each page below covers what applies, in plain English, with links to the primary sources.
Six sectors, six different first questions
Pick the one closest to yours. Each page lists the journeys we test first, the rules that touch you, and the dates worth knowing.
E-commerce & Retail
Checkout, cart drawers, variant pickers, filters, and search tested with real assistive technology, plus tag governance and EAA readiness.
Healthcare
Patient portals, scheduling, intake forms, bill pay, PDFs, and telehealth tested for the HHS Section 504 rule and WCAG 2.2 AA.
Public Sector
ADA Title II web and mobile app work for cities, counties, utilities, school districts, special districts, and the vendors who serve them.
Higher Education
Public colleges and universities under Title II: LMS course content, PDFs, captions, edtech procurement, and training for faculty and editors.
Financial Services
Banks, credit unions, insurers, and lenders: accessible sign-in and one-time codes, session timeouts, statements, calculators, and charts.
SaaS & Software Vendors
Software vendors selling to government, education, health care, and enterprise: credible ACRs, procurement answers, design systems, and CI gates.
Where each sector usually starts
A quick comparison. Many organizations sit in two rows at once, such as a county hospital or a university with an online store.
| Sector | Journey we test first | Rule that usually applies | Date to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| E-commerce and retail | Search to order confirmation, including the cart drawer and payment step | ADA Title III; the European Accessibility Act for EU consumer sales | The EAA has applied since June 28, 2025 |
| Healthcare | Patient portal sign-in, appointment scheduling, and intake forms | HHS Section 504 web and mobile app rule | May 11, 2027 for recipients with 15 or more employees |
| Public sector | Utility and tax payments, permits, agendas, and minutes | DOJ ADA Title II web and mobile app rule | April 26, 2027 for public entities of 50,000 or more |
| Higher education | Course shells, registration, financial aid, and lecture video | DOJ ADA Title II for public institutions | April 26, 2027 or April 26, 2028, depending on population |
| Financial services | Sign-in with one-time codes, transfers, and statements | ADA Title III; the EAA for EU consumer banking | No single federal date; WCAG 2.2 AA is the working benchmark |
| SaaS and software | Trial signup, onboarding, and the core task flow | Your customers' rules, passed down through contracts and ACR requests | Your public-sector customers' April 26, 2027 date |
What stays the same in every sector
Source code, never overlays
We fix the templates and components your team owns. We don't install widgets that sit on top of the page and leave the code underneath unchanged.
Evidence for every finding
Each issue records the success criterion, the location, the assistive technology we used, and what we heard or saw.
Ranked by who is blocked
A barrier that stops a payment outranks one that slows down a footer link, whatever the rule names suggest.
Accessibility and speed together
Slow, script-heavy pages and broken controls usually share a cause, so we look at both in the same pass.
Monitoring after launch
Baclion Watch rechecks your key templates every week so fixes stay fixed after the project ends.
The common ground, in numbers
of U.S. adults (more than 1 in 4) reported a functional disability in 2022
CDC, Disability and Health Data Now (Disability and Health Data System, 2022 BRFSS)of the top one million home pages had detectable WCAG 2 failures in February 2026
WebAIM, The WebAIM Million (2026)Questions about sectors and scope
We fit more than one sector. Which page applies?
Probably two of them, and that's normal. A county hospital is a public entity under Title II and may also receive HHS funding under Section 504. A university can run an online store. We scope against every rule that touches you and test the journeys that matter to each, in one engagement.
Do the same WCAG criteria apply in every industry?
Yes, the technical standard is shared. The Justice Department's Title II rule references WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and HHS's Section 504 rule uses the same level. Most private-sector programs target WCAG 2.2 AA, which builds on 2.1. The differences between sectors are in deadlines, enforcement, and which journeys matter most.
Do you work with organizations outside these six sectors?
Yes. Nonprofits, associations, publishers, and manufacturers all have websites with the same kinds of barriers, and our method doesn't depend on the sector. Tell us what your site needs to do on a free scoping call.
Where can we see every deadline in one place?
Our compliance deadlines page lists every accessibility and privacy date from 2025 to 2028, with the rule, the standard, and a link to the primary source for each.
Keep reading
Tell us what your website needs to do.
Send a link and a sentence about your deadline. You will hear back from a person within one business day, usually with a short list of questions and a proposed scope.