Title/Name/Summary
Website ADA Compliance
History
In April 2024 the Federal Register published an update to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that requires businesses and state/local governments to ensure their websites are accessible to people with disabilities. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 2.1, Level AA is the technical standard for state and local governments’ web content and mobile apps. The Village falls within the 50,000 or more person size of a local government and has an expected compliance date of April 24, 2026.
Granicus is our web support and hosting service provider. They have proposed two options to bring the Village website up to compliance as explained below.
Option 1: We review a 3rd party ADA report, determine responsibility/ownership of any items that are flagged, and Granicus makes necessary changes to items that we are responsible for in order to reach compliance. The most common 3rd party products that some of our customers have used are SiteImprove and Monsido. Some free options include Chrome Lighthouse and Axe Devtools, but I’m unsure of how comprehensive their reports are. It’s important to mention that these automated tools, like SiteImprove and Monsido focus on code-level accessibility issues, covering about 40% of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. They miss many rules and have about a 60% accuracy rate. Estimated cost for this option is $4,000.
Option 2: Granicus performs a comprehensive ADA audit of your website, combining manual and automated testing, providing a more comprehensive evaluation by navigating the site as a user would. For any accessibility flags, if it's something that is in our product structure that we built, we fix it. If it's something in client content that you need to fix, we come back to you with guidance on how to do so. Estimated cost for this option is $12,000.
DoIT and Marketing prefer option 2 as it is comprehensive in scope and costs.
Financi...
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