Web Portal ADA Compliance Program

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

When websites and applications follow accessibility best practices, they find wider audiences, improve our search engine rankings, and protect our County from legal liability. In 2019, when the current iteration of miamidade.gov with thousands of updated pages launched, a web accessibility analysis revealed a low overall compliance score. Subsequently, the Communications & Customer Experience (CCED) and the Information Technology (ITD) departments joined forces to launch a comprehensive program with the core web support teams that included external expert reviews, staff ADA training, strengthening internal ADA review processes, developing reusable templates, and promoting ADA efforts throughout both departments. While these efforts are still ongoing, the program already resulted in a vastly improved compliance score across miamidade.gov of 91.7, surpassing the industry benchmark for government web sites of 73.9 by a comfortable lead. Therefore, this program already ensured that information on the County’s web portal, especially critical during the pandemic, is accessible to an extended community audience.