This quarterly report is created to comply with Colorado House Bill 24-1454 and to demonstrate Boulder County’s commitment to meeting the digital accessibility requirements outlined in House Bill 21-1110, part of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA).
Q4 Progress: 2024
Boulder County continues to remediate public-facing documents and websites, develop comprehensive training programs for employees to maintain high accessibility standards across the county, and request third-party vendor VPATs. We created a dashboard for internal tracking of metric reporting, hired professional accessibility contractors to assist in the remediation and awareness of HB21-1110, and recently hired a full-time Web Accessibility Administrator. The county has a Digital Accessibility Team to promote and guide accessibility initiatives throughout the county. Boulder County is in the process of improving digital accessibility across various platforms and has made substantial progress in ensuring all digital assets and communications are accessible to everyone.
The following is a detailed report of the progress made:
October 2024
- Found an accessible replacement to Canva for design needs.
- Created a checklist for social media administrators to help ensure accessibility standards are met.
- Developed a training program on Adobe Tag Tree to ensure document tags are correctly ordered.
- Created manual verification checklists for various document types, including PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations.
- Identified an accessible form solution to ensure all forms used by the county are accessible.
- Worked with GovDelivery to develop accessible newsletter templates.
November 2024
- Completed accessible templates for PowerPoint presentations and county letterheads.
- Began a review of our internal website accessibility features.
- Conducted training for Social Media Administrators on creating accessible posts.
December 2024
- Established a comprehensive approval process for new website edits and PDFs.
Plans for January 2025
- Implement remediation plan for our intranet site to enhance our internal website’s accessibility.
- Begin remediation of forms to ensure accessibility.
Q3 Progress: 2024
Boulder County is currently engaged in inventorying digital assets, requesting 3rd party vendor VPATS, remediating public facing documents and websites, and providing training to all employees regarding authoring accessible documents. Boulder County has created a digital accessibility training program, dashboard for internal tracking of metric reporting, and hired accessibility professionals to assist in the remediation and awareness of HB21-1110. The County has formulated an ADA Advisory Committee to promote and guide accessibility initiatives throughout the county. Boulder County is in the process of hiring a dedicated full-time Web Accessibility Administrator. This position will provide general oversight, technical leadership, expert guidance, coordination, and support for Boulder County’s websites and digital accessibility compliance. Responsibilities of this position include:
- Coordinating with the State of Colorado Office of Information Technology (OIT) to meet technology accessibility requirements, including compliance with Colorado HB21-1110.
- Maintaining compliance with Boulder County’s Digital Accessibility Plan.
- Participating in the design, evaluation, and validation of digital products used within the County’s digital information platforms.
July 2024
- Created a list of all external PDFs and what needs to be remediated or removed
- Created an internal policy/procedure for digital accessibility
August 2024
- Developed disclaimers for complex and third-party documents to inform users about the accessibility status.
- Created a comprehensive PDF remediation plan, outlining strategies for each document.
- Collected Vendor Accessibility Product Templates (VPATs) from all vendors to confirm adherence to accessibility standards.
- Completed an inventory of all county forms and the programs used to produce them.
- Completed an inventory of all county newsletters and the programs used to produce them.
September 2024
- Created an ADA statement for agendas and minutes in eSCRIBE to ensure accessibility.
Accessibility Plan
- Digital Accessibility Statement: Boulder County has posted a Digital Accessibility Statement on all public-facing web pages, including information on how to request reasonable accommodations.
- Site Improve Compliance Tool: The county has implemented Site Improve, a third-party compliance and analytics tool, to measure accessibility compliance and identify digital content that needs remediation. This tool generates weekly reports identifying pages and content with accessibility issues, broken links, misspellings, etc.
- Training for Boulder County: The county provides digital accessibility training for digital content creators. This training includes using built-in accessibility checker tools in applications like Microsoft Word, Excel, Adobe PDF, PowerPoint, and staff awareness training. Each county department and employee is responsible for creating accessible content.
- Accessibility Remediation Tools: 25 key content creators were provided with purpose-built content accessibility remediation tools such as Commonlook PDF and Commonlook Office as well as support training.
- Vendor Collaboration: Work with current vendors to ensure accessibility is incorporated into vendor-supplied applications and public-facing websites as well as reviewing VPATS on file.
- Reasonable Accommodation Process: The county has established a reasonable accommodation process for employees and members of the public coordinated by our ADA coordinator. This includes a dedicated phone number that routes callers to the ADA Coordinator for support or assistance accessing public information.
- Procurement: The County Attorney has included accessibility language and requirements to meet accessible outcomes in contracts.
- Grievance Process: The county has established a grievance process with our ADA Coordinator.
Boulder County is committed to delivering digital content that works for all users. We value each visitor to our websites and strive to ensure a positive experience for everyone.
If you require assistance, please contact Boulder County’s ADA Coordinator at:
Email: ADA@bouldercounty.gov
Phone: 303-441-1386