The recent Web Accessibility in Local Government report from CivicPlus and CivicPulse found that 42 percent of respondents said that “lack of staff time” stands as a “significant barrier” to web accessibility efforts.
Financial resources, at 35 percent, and lack of training and awareness, at 32 percent, also challenged local governments seeking to make their websites and online and mobile services more accessible to people with disabilities.
The two government technology operations based their findings on a survey of 1,004 officials and department heads for cities, townships and counties with more than 1,000 people.
"The use of online services in local government varies widely, whether looking at community size, region or functional domain," said Nathan Lee, founder and managing director of CivicPulse, in a statement. "It's therefore critical that we have more comprehensive benchmarking for local government technologies to understand where things stand.”
This new report shows wide theoretical support for more web accessibility.
That trend gained energy during the pandemic and continues to grow, in part because of last year’s updating of a Department of Justice nondiscrimination rule telling state and local governments to do better with web accessibility.
Part of the explanation for that updated rule seems especially meaningful now, given the potential cuts to Social Security, which could result in more users of that program — including people with disabilities — having to make often laborious trips to federal offices instead of conducting business quickly via digital channels.
“Public entities are increasingly providing the public access to government services through their web content and mobile apps,” the Justice Department explained when updating the rule. “Just as stairs can exclude people who use wheelchairs from accessing government buildings, inaccessible web content and mobile apps can exclude people with a range of disabilities from accessing government services.”
The new report finds that 75 percent of survey respondents consider web accessibility as a “very high” or “somewhat high” priority.
That’s certainly a high percentage, but not as high as the 83 percent that said the same about improving existing website content, the 80 percent who said it about improving the “general user experience for residents,” or the 78 percent who said it about “creating new content and information for residents.”
Priorities aside, 84 percent of respondents said that web accessibility is “important” to build trust in government. As well, 83 percent said that making sure digital content is accessible is “the government’s responsibility,” an attitude that can potentially lay the groundwork for future efforts.
Those efforts will likely depend on more education of public agency employees, including those working jobs that tend to have constant contact with residents.
Only 19 percent of respondents from law enforcement, for instance, and 12 percent from public works expressed confidence in their knowledge of federal requirements regarding web accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
By contrast, 49 percent of communication department heads and 35 percent of parks and recreation leaders had the same confidence.
When creating more web accessibility, local governments need to keep up communication with residents, who can guide those efforts and tell officials what they really need, said Don Torrez, director of partnerships with CivicPlus, in a Government Technology interview.
“Accessibility is about people,” he said. “And so you really have that human-centered focus, that we want to make sure that everyone can use our programs and services. And then you want to focus on compliance of the law, but the law is something that guides you towards accessibility.”
Julia Edinger contributed to this report.
