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Monte Vista deputy clerk outlines digital accessibility software, compliance timeline
Summary
Deputy Clerk Sarah Doyle presented an overview of comprehensive software the city plans to use to make web content accessible under upcoming standards and recommended department-level responsibility for implementation by July 2025.
Sarah Doyle, deputy clerk for the City of Monte Vista, presented a live overview of a comprehensive digital accessibility software package the city plans to use to remediate and document online content so it meets accessibility standards.
Doyle said the software organizes content via a nested tag tree and requires manual tagging of headings, lists, tables and figures so assistive technology can read them. “I am Sarah Doyle, deputy clerk. I am on the ADA coordination team, and I’ve been tasked with learning the software program we’ll be using to make sure everything is, accessible digitally on our websites,” she said.
Doyle told the council the work includes running standard checks against ISO 32000-1 and WCAG 2.2 AA (even though WCAG 2.1 AA is the minimum in some contexts) and generating compliance reports for each remediated document for accountability. She said some elements that don’t convey information can be marked as artifacts and left untagged, but items such as logos must be described so screen readers can convey them. Doyle recommended the city document progress, publish a plan statement on the website and consider assigning a departmental liaison to oversee remediation work.
Doyle said July 2025 is the key compliance milestone the city should plan for and that the process is user-verified: the software assists but cannot fully validate every document without human review. She offered to share her presentation with council members and staff and said she is still learning the program but confident she can manage the workload.
The deputy clerk also described training she attended and suggested a model used by another municipality, where each department identifies a staff liaison responsible for accessibility tasks. The presentation closed with an offer to answer implementation questions and to provide the PowerPoint to staff for follow-up.
The council did not take formal action on the presentation; staff indicated they will continue implementation planning ahead of the July 2025 timeline.
