ada.gov website review

30 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (917 KiB).

4 images could be 483 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.7 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 56. Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

2 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 750 ms.

About 129 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 450 ms faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 329 ms of main-thread work and 488 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 300 ms).

About 254 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page.

6 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, cloud.gov and digitalgov.gov and others), adding 600 KiB and 391 ms of main-thread time.

5 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 99 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

10 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

6 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

The layout shifts by 0.765 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

Your largest element takes 5.2 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “'American flag flying in front of a government building'”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 6.9 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

14 images have no width and height attributes, so the layout jumps as each one loads.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 96 ms to 96 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.1 s to 1.2 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

5 images (656 KiB) are JPEG, PNG or GIF. The same pictures as WebP or AVIF are usually much smaller at the same quality, and every current browser shows them.

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example doj-logo.png at 200 px wide, shown at 45 px. Resized copies would save about 39 KiB.

4 images further down the page (272 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 0.43 g of CO₂e: 51.2 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

There are 2 <h1> headlines (“The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protect…” and “You are now leaving a Department of Justice websi…”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

4 links use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind them.

The homepage links to 44 pages on ada.gov and 15 external pages.

There is no Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.

There is no /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.

/infoline and /communityoutreach use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 28 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

4 of 11 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

1 image is served at too low a resolution for sharp phone screens.

No Content-Security-Policy header, the main browser-side defence against injected scripts.

No Referrer-Policy header, so full URLs can leak to the sites you link to.

No Permissions-Policy header to switch off camera, microphone and location for embedded content.

There is no /.well-known/security.txt telling researchers how to report a security problem to you.

ada.gov has no CAA record, so any certificate authority may issue a certificate for it. A CAA record naming your provider (for example letsencrypt.org) closes that door.

On a phone, there is no call to action on the first screen: visitors have to scroll to find out what to do next.

No testimonials, customer logos, ratings or customer counts on the homepage: nothing tells a new visitor that others already trust you.

Your homepage shows a street address but no LocalBusiness JSON-LD, so Google and AI assistants have to guess your address, hours and phone from the page text.

The homepage shows no opening hours. If customers visit or call, show when.

There is no link to Google or Apple Maps. A directions link is one tap for a phone visitor.

No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

The homepage carries about 709 words of visible text.

We found no DKIM key on the selectors the big email providers use. If you send through one of them, turning on DKIM signing improves delivery.

ada.gov has no MX record, so it receives no email. SPF -all and DMARC reject still matter: they stop others sending mail as you.

Email authentication: SPF record 25 points, plus 15 when it ends in -all (10 for ~all); DMARC record 25, plus 25 for a reject policy (15 for quarantine); a DKIM key on a common selector 10.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager (measured from a US location before any click). No consent tool was detected. Visitors from the EU, UK and several US states must be asked first.

Opening the homepage sets 3 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

No known cookie consent tool loads with the page. Some sites build their own banner, and some only show one to visitors from the EU.

Loading the homepage contacts 6 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.