April 17, 2019 – Westchester County Government, prioritizing transparency and accessibility, has been working over the past year to completely redesign its website. Together with Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) and Westchester Council of the Blind (WCB), the County is taking steps to ensure that the disabled community has full autonomy on WestchesterGov.com.
The County is currently working to make the new Westchester County website compliant with WCAG 2.1 by the end of this year. Additionally, DRA’s clients asked that the County prioritize accessibility of the paratransit request service and the calendars of public events for use with a screen reader and the County has agreed to do so.
Westchester County Executive George Latimer said: “Increasing accessibility to County information and services, the website included, has been a top priority of this Administration. The County has been working on a top-to-bottom redesign and redevelopment of the County’s website, with the ultimate goal being conformance with WCAG AA guidelines.”
Over the past year the County has made significant progress on this website work, including:
- Development of back-end architecture necessary to support the new site;
- Reviewing applications and enhancing accessibility;
- Reviewing PDFs for accessibility issues and remediating any problems found;
- Template design, testing, and refinement; and
- Initial implementation of the new design with testing and refinement to ensure proper functionality in a live environment.
Also, as the County continues work on the redesign it is currently:
- Continuing refinement and testing of the website;
- Continuing review and enhancing applications;
- Continuing review and remediation of PDFs;
- Culling old and/or superfluous pages from the website; and
- Continuing live implementation.
IT Commissioner and Chief Information Officer Marguerite Beirne said: “While the County has been diligently working on its website, a complete redesign and redevelopment is a time and resource intensive process, as is reviewing and enhancing accessibility on the hundreds of applications contained on the website. The County is committed to doing the work in an efficient, responsible, and effective manner; it is better to ensure the work is done right rather than fast.”