Title
Civic Plus Website Accessibility Solutions
History
On April 24, 2024, the Federal Register published the Department of Justice’s (Department) final rule updating its regulations for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which includes the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 2.1. The WCAG is the technical standard for web content and mobile apps and sets a specific technical standard that state and local governments must follow to meet their existing obligations under Title II of the ADA . The rules are being phased in based on the size of the local government. As the Village of Orland Park has over 50,000 residents, the Village must meet the requirement by April 24, 2026 or risk being out of compliance.
The Communications and Marketing team along with DoIT have been investigating solutions to make the website fully compliant. Originally the Village's current website provider, Granicus, was contacted to help bring the Village's website into compliance but due to ambiguity on the work they were willing to complete and if the website would be compliant by the deadline, it was determined that other solutions should be investigated.
After reviewing solutions, Marketing and Communications and DoIT are recommending a three software suite from CivicPlus that provides an automated tool to bring the Village's website into compliance and provide the ability to review PDF attachments on the website that will allow the Village identify those that need to be brought up to the standard.
The full platform includes three main parts;
Acquia Optimize reviews the website and identifies misspellings, broken links and overall website compatibility and provides recommendations. During the review phase, CivicPlus analyzed a portion of the Village website for compatibility and found it on 65.69% (see Attachment 1) compliant and was at 40% for quality assurance (see Attachment 2).
AudioEye, an automation platform that according to CivicPlus "delivering trusted ADA and WCAG accessibility compliance. Our software finds and fixes accessibility issues on websites and provides all necessary ADA compliance must-haves for local governments. analyzes and recommends website fixes for compliance." In addition, it provides a Visual Toolkit overlay that sits on top of the Village website that provides visitors the ability to improve their experience by allowing them to alter the look of the website based on their needs.
Alliant is an automated document remediation software integrates with Microsoft and Adobe to help bring documents into WCAG 2.1 standards.
The current year cost for Year 1 annual subscription is $24,999.30 with 2026 cost being $27,779.30 plus a 5% annual uplift for a total Year 2 annual subscription of $29,168.27.
The CivicPlus software suite is a temporary solution to enable the Village web site to meet the WCAG compliance rules until a full redesign of the website can be completed.
Financial Impact
There is remaining budget in the software fund to cover these costs in 2025 and will be budgeted for in 2026.
Recommended Action/Motion
I move to approve the waiver of the competitive bid process to authorize the approval and execution of a sole source vendor contract for the purchase of Web Accessibility, AudioEye, Alliant and Acquia from CivicPlus in the amount of $24,999.30 for Year 1; with the option to extend for 1 additional year at a cost of $29,168.27 for Year 2 - for an overall not-to-exceed contract amount of $54,167.57.
AND
To authorize the Village Manager to execute all related contracts subject to Village Attorney review.