Title of Nomination: State of Connecticut Web Accessibility Initiative Project/System Manager: John Forbes, ConneCT Management Advisory Committee (CMAC) Kathleen Anderson, CMAC Accessibility Subcommittee Job Title: Chair, ConneCT Management Advisory Committee (Forbes) Chair, CMAC Accessibility Subcommittee (Anderson) Agency: State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management (Forbes) State of Connecticut Office of the State Comptroller (Anderson) Address: 450 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, Connecticut 06106 (Forbes) 55 Elm Street, Hartford, Connecticut 06106 (Anderson) Phone: (860) 418-6271 (Forbes) (860) 702-3355 (Anderson) E-Mail: john.forbes@po.state.ct.us kathleen.anderson@po.state.ct.us Person Nominating: Rock Regan Job Title: Chief Information Officer, State of Connecticut Department of Information Technology Address: 101 East River Drive, East Hartford, Connecticut 06106 Phone: 860-622-2419 Fax: 860-291-8526 STATE OF CONNECTICUT Department Of Information Technology State of Connecticut Web Accessibility Initiative Executive Summary On July 26, 2000, the tenth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the State of Connecticut launched an initiative to improve the accessibility of the state web site (www.state.ct.us) to people with disabilities, including more than 100,000 state residents with visual impairment. Under the initiative, state agencies having a presence on the state s website, ConneCT, would incorporate the World Wide Web Consortium s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0, by January 2002. They are among the most stringent accessibility standards available today.
To date, training on the new standards has been provided to more than 150 web developers from 58 state agencies in all three branches of government. This accessibility initiative represents the most active and vigilant approach to date in ensuring all state government web sites are accessible. It is one of the largest voluntary cooperative efforts between state agencies in all three branches of government. In conjunction with the Department of Information Technology, the accessibility initiative is being executed by the ConneCT Management Advisory Committee (CMAC), which manages the state website, and led by the CMAC Accessibility Subcommittee. The State of Connecticut has had a web accessibility policy since 1996, the year the state web site was launched. The policy has been updated periodiclly as standards have changed. The ConneCT web site receives more than 8.1 million page views per month. The site offers more than 780,000 pages of images and documents, from state park locations to public health reports. As the state moves more and more information and services on-line, ensuring they are available to those with disabilities is a high priority. STATE OF CONNECTICUT Department Of Information Technology State of Connecticut Web Accessibility Initiative DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT On July 26, 2000, the tenth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the State of Connecticut launched an initiative to improve the accessibility of the state web site (www.state.ct.us) to people with disabilities, including more than 100,000 state residents with visual impairment. Under the initiative, state agencies having a presence on the state s website, ConneCT, would incorporate the World Wide Web Consortium s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0, by January 2002. They are among the most stringent accessibility standards available today. To date, training on the new standards has been provided to more than 150 web developers from 58 state agencies in all three branches of government.
This project involved significant planning to involve web developers from the state s 60 executive branch agencies, Judicial and Legislative Branches and state public institutions of higher education. This project has 6 separate phases. 1. Policy Preparation On July 26, 2000 the state ConneCT Management Advisory Committee (CMAC) upgraded its Universal Web Site Accessibility Policy for State Web Sites. The policy provides a set of established guidelines and a checklist of design requirements to provide a quick reference for numerous design issues. The guidelines adopted by CMAC were the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 W3C Recommendation 5-May-1999 (WCAG) as the primary guideline to meet the objectives of the Universal Accessibility for State Web Sites policy. These guidelines explain how and why to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. They are intended for all Web content developers (page authors and site designers) and for developers using authoring tools. The primary goal of these guidelines is to promote accessibility. However, following them will also make Web content more available to all users, whatever user agent they are using (e.g., desktop browser, voice browser, mobile phone, automobile-based personal computer, etc.) or constraints they may be operating under (e.g., noisy surroundings, under- or over-illuminated rooms, in a hands-busy environment, etc.). Following these guidelines will also help people find information on the Web more quickly. These guidelines do not discourage content developers from using images, video, etc., but rather explain how to make multimedia content more accessible to a wide audience. To comply with this policy, agencies must be able to demonstrate two things: They have achieved WCAG Conformance Level "A" which means that all Priority 1 checkpoints are satisfied They have successfully addressed all the items in the CMAC Checklist of Design Requirements Agency webmasters were encouraged to achieve WCAG Conformance Level "AA". 2. Training Planning The Department of Information Technology and the CMAC Accessibility Subcommittee evaluated several potential training organization proposals before selecting New Horizons to provide accessibility training to webmasters.
3. Outreach to Agencies and other Branches In October, Chief Information Officer Rock Regan sent letters to all state agency commissioners, the Constitutional Officers, and the heads of the state s legislative and Judicial Branches offering free training for their staff and explaining the benefits and need of their attendance. In addition, the CMAC Accessibility Subcommittee mobilized its membership to promote enrollment by their peers in state agencies. 4. Training The outreach conducted achieved the desired result. During the months of November and December 2000 14 training classes were held and attended by approximately 150 web developers from the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. 5. Testing Testing of agency web sites for accessibility is currently being conducted as agencies request. This testing is being done by members of the CMAC Accessibility Subcommittee and will continue throughout the year as agencies are ready. 6. Recognition In April 2001 CMAC presented its first special Certificates of Compliance to the first agencies to come into compliance. These certificates are the tangible recognition of the significance of achieving the state standards for accessibility. To promote awareness, agency commissioners are invited to attend the CMAC meetings to accept their certificates. SIGNIFICANCE TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF GOVERNMENT The development, availability and use of assistive technologies for people with disabilities is on the rise. Ensuring the state s on-line presence is compatible with assistive technologies ensures all have access to the internet as a resource. BENEFITS TO CUSTOMERS, TAXPAYERS AND THE STATE The internet is tool of empowerment to access information and services. However, the State of Connecticut recognized early on that the site must be accessible to those with disabilities. According to the latest statistics available from the Bureau of the Census, there are 9.7 million people in the United States who have difficulty seeing the words and letters in ordinary newsprint, equal to 5.0% of the total population. Another 10.9 million people, or
nearly 6% of the total population, have difficulty hearing what is said in an ordinary conversation with another person. The state of Connecticut has an estimated 35,000 people who were legally blind, and twice that number who were visually impaired. Additionally, there are estimated to be 25,000 people who are profoundly deaf and 175,000 people who are hard of hearing in Connecticut. The use of the state s guidelines will ensure that web sites created by the State of Connecticut are developed to serve the largest possible audience. Compliance with these guidelines provides an added benefit to those users with text-based browsers, low-end processors, slow modem connections and/or no multi-media capabilities on their computer. It also allows for access to Connecticut web sites by new technologies, such as WebTV, internet phones, and personal organizers with internet connectivity. This collaborative process has also given rise to collective solutions to common problems faced by webmasters. For example, the CMAC Web Site Accessibility Committee has discovered workarounds and tools that can eliminate most, if not all, of the invalid code that FrontPage 2000 can generate. One workaround is to modify the template used by FrontPage as the basis for all new pages, to include a valid DOCTYPE statement, and a correct META Tag to set the default language of all pages in the web site. Another tool that state webmasters are using is called TP_ErrOmi, which can validate a page or an entire site, looking for the existence of DOCTYPE declarations, and alt text for images. In addition, a free Jimco Add-in called Alt-text for Image Maps makes it easy to add popup text for hotspots in image maps. Through the use of listervs, e-mail, news pages and other methods information is shared and applied by all working to make their sites accessible. RETURN ON INVESTMENT / LONG TERM PAYBACK While the monetary investment in this initiative was small, the return on the state s investment is significant. The Department of Information Technology spent approximately $15,000 to train webmasters in the new accessibility standards. The long-term payback of the State of Connecticut s Web Accessibility Initiative is the opportunity for people with disabilities to benefit from the internet in the same way as non-disabled members of the public.