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Section 504, Medicaid & Your Website
A 2024 federal rule ties website accessibility to the funding your dental practice depends on. What changed, who it covers, and the deadlines.
7 min read
What changed in 2024
In May 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a rule under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. For the first time, it sets an explicit technical standard for the websites and mobile apps of health care providers that receive federal financial assistance: they must conform to WCAG 2.1, Levels A and AA.
In plain terms: if your practice takes federal health-care dollars, your website is now held to the same accessibility standard that, until recently, was mostly a best practice. It’s a requirement — with deadlines.
Does it apply to your practice?
The rule covers any organization that receives federal financial assistance from HHS. For a dental practice, that almost always means one or more of the following:
- You bill Medicaid or CHIP for patient care
- You accept Medicare reimbursement
- You receive HHS grants or participate in an HHS-funded program (e.g. an FQHC or community health center)
Not sure if you're a recipient?
If any patient revenue flows through Medicaid, CHIP, or Medicare — or you’ve ever received an HHS grant — assume the rule applies and plan to comply. A purely cash-pay or commercial-insurance-only practice may fall outside it, but accessibility is still expected of you under the ADA.
The deadlines
HHS set compliance dates based on the size of the recipient, and later extended them by one year. Mark the one that applies to you:
- May 11, 2027 — practices and organizations with 15 or more employees must conform to WCAG 2.1 AA.
- May 10, 2028 — smaller practices with fewer than 15 employees get an extra year.
These may feel far off, but remediation across an entire site — plus the ongoing monitoring needed to stay compliant as you add pages and photos — takes time to put in place. The practices that start early are the ones that aren’t scrambling in 2027.
What’s actually at stake
Section 504 is enforced by the HHS Office for Civil Rights. A complaint or finding of non-compliance can trigger an investigation and corrective action — and, ultimately, the federal financial assistance your practice relies on (the Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements at the center of your revenue) is what’s on the line.
This isn’t a fine you can write off as a cost of doing business. It’s your standing as a federally funded provider. That’s exactly why getting ahead of it — calmly, well before the deadline — matters.
How to get ahead of it
1
Find out where you stand
A free scan audits your site against WCAG 2.1 AA — the exact standard the rule requires — and shows you which issues apply, ranked by severity.
2
Fix the issues
Our WordPress plugin auto-resolves the most common problems (alt text, contrast, labels), and our engineers handle the complex ones — no migration, no in-house developer needed.
3
Stay compliant continuously
Conformance isn’t one-and-done. Ongoing monitoring re-scans your site on a schedule and alerts you when new content drifts out of compliance — so you stay ready, not just compliant once.
A useful side effect: AI can finally read you
The structure WCAG 2.1 AA asks for — real headings, described images, labelled controls — is the same structure an AI assistant needs in order to summarize and recommend your practice. See how AI search decides which dentist to name.
Common questions
- Does Section 504 apply to my dental practice?
- It applies to any practice that receives federal financial assistance from HHS. For a dental practice that almost always means billing Medicaid or CHIP, accepting Medicare reimbursement, or receiving an HHS grant. If any patient revenue flows through those programs, assume the rule applies.
- What is the Section 504 website deadline?
- Practices with 15 or more employees must conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA by May 11, 2027. Practices with fewer than 15 employees have until May 10, 2028. Both dates reflect the one-year extension HHS granted in May 2026.
- What standard does my website have to meet?
- WCAG 2.1 at Levels A and AA. This is the same standard U.S. courts and the Department of Justice point to for ADA compliance, so meeting it satisfies both obligations at once.
- What happens if my practice does not comply?
- Section 504 is enforced by the HHS Office for Civil Rights. A complaint or finding of non-compliance can trigger an investigation and corrective action, and ultimately puts the federal financial assistance your practice relies on at risk.