CivicPlus Product ADA Compliance Approach

Accessibility is a shared responsibility between CivicPlus and our customers. This approach identifies each party's ownership, key processes, and helpful resources. We value our partnership with you to extend services to your community.

CivicPlus Responsibility

Build and Maintain

Our constituent service software applications are highly compliant with ADA (Section 508) and WCAG 2.0 A and AA levels. CivicPlus recognizes that compliance is not an exact standard with varied interpretations and recommended guidelines that are evolving. This means that we regularly employ a continuous improvement approach to product compliance with three key components:

• Assessment: Cadence to evaluate products through analysis of third-party scans, customer community enhancement requests, public feedback, and regulatory review.
• Mitigation Requirements Scoping: Product development changes are defined and documented to improve system accessibility.
• Enhancement Release and Implementation: Deployment and announcement of code-based changes to upgrade product functionality

Training

We know that systems and content are always changing which is why we go a step further. Our trainers use CivicPlus best practices to teach your staff to keep your content accessible and up-to-date with the latest standards. This might mean that they teach staff to include alternative text when they upload pictures or help you test drive your system with a screen reader in mind.

On-Going Education

Regulations are updated at least annually by the W3C, an organization that publishes the WCAG guidelines, and intermittently by the United States legislative system, which updates the Section 508 regulations. Our product team closely follows these regulations and provides regular updates to customers through our CivicPlus website, blog articles, webinars, and other publications. We also update our own CivicPlus best practices to ensure that we continue to be up-to-date with the latest compliance regulations.

Customer Responsibility

Although we strive to deliver a compliant system, as well as training and ongoing education, we know that even the best products require proper use and an occasional check-up.

System Content and Setup

At regular intervals, it is a best practice to use a CivicPlus-provided Compliance Checklist to review your system and content. We encourage you to establish a member of your team as your internal best practices expert. CivicPlus will provide you with Compliance Tools and Resources, which your team can use.

Addressing Concerns

When you believe any content falls outside of ADA/WCAG guidelines please assist your staff to make the necessary corrections. Your Customer Success Manager is trained to assist you with any questions. When you encounter regulatory changes or system elements that fall outside of guidelines, we ask that you bring them to our attention.

Remediation and Ongoing Scans

CivicPlus uses third-party scanning tools to identify areas for improvement in our products. Scan results can be highly subjective and vary by provider. Our remediation efforts take this into account, however conflicting or false-positive results may be reported by third-party scans.

You can also learn more about our AudioEye partnership which may be available as an accessibility remediation and scanning package for the CivicPlus products you are using.

Zero Errors

There are no error-free sites and applications. Compliance is a fluid measurement and different scan tools produce different results - there’s a lot that is open to interpretation. The most important thing CivicPlus and our customers can do is work to accommodate the needs of users and secondly to maintain an ongoing approach and good-faith effort to remain regulatory compliant. To learn more about what you can do as a CivicPlus software user, please view our Compliance Tools and Resources.

Questions

If you have any further questions about ADA Compliance, please contact your Customer Success Manager.

Article Glossary

• ADA: Americans with Disabilities Act
• WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• W3C: World Wide Web Consortium