Recently, we talked about how Colorado local governments must comply with HB21-1110 by July 1 2024, requiring cities and counties in Colorado to have all website pages and documents accessible to people with disabilities. In our October 5th post, we boiled this down to three verbs: Find, Test and Fix. If you reduce the problem into these buckets, the project becomes significantly more manageable. Now, let’s talk about some pro tips to consider when you engage the project:
First, not all content is equal. Just because you have dozens, hundreds or thousands of pages of content, doesn’t mean it all has equal value to your team or your constituents. Digital accessibility brings about a natural cleansing and prioritizing of your data. Here are 3 specifics:
- Find broken links in your website – this shows up immediately when performing an automated scan!
- Identify web pages and documents that are no longer valid and should be removed – we often hear this: “we had no idea those old documents were still out there!”
- While performing a scan, you can also utilize diagnostics that will reveal which documents are retrieved most often. This is critical in assigning priority to the remediation of that content but also reveals what content your internal teams and constituents need the most
Additionally, as soon as you arrive at a rough prioritization or which content to tackle first, second and so-on, the process lends itself to automated workflow processing which can systemize your processes, and measure results, something that senior leadership craves, especially given that digital accessibility is the law and requires oversight. In our next post, we will go into more detail about prioritization and workflow and how it can both shorten your time-to-accessibility but also build a better, more accessible environment for the future.
