LaSalle Countys IT director told the IT and Central Services Committee on Jan. 9 that staff are advancing a focused effort to improve website accessibility and closed captioning for recorded meetings.

John said the county has acquired "a bunch of the tools in place now to help us get better on the, ADA compliance stuff for the website" and that closed captioning for YouTube is part of the work. He explained that the countys agenda center will need a technical overhaul and that departments must change how they submit documents to ensure screen-scraping and accessibility tools can read content.

John told the committee that when departments scan a document it becomes an image the screen reader cannot parse: "Once you scan something in, it's a JPEG... It's an image now. And it goes it'll just say image such and such... It has no idea what's there except for it is a picture." He proposed convening a meeting with six major contributing departments so staff can demonstrate new rules and onboarding steps. John said the effort will be the "biggest thing going forward till April" and asked permission to schedule targeted training sessions.

Committee members discussed a related procedural change: requiring speakers to state their names before speaking so automated captions and archived recordings better identify speakers. John said he would take a proposal to the full board so committees and the board can adopt the practice.

Next steps: IT will schedule the multi-department meeting to standardize document submission, continue captioning work, and return with progress updates toward the April target.