San Juan County approves Granicus contract to upgrade website and communications to meet WCAG 2.1 AA

Viv Neely presented a proposal to upgrade San Juan County’s website and communications platform with Granicus, citing an impending accessibility mandate and an implementation schedule of roughly six months.

Neely said the county’s combined website debuted in 2020 and that the current platform and communications tools — which include email newsletters and text messaging for nearly 4,000 subscribers and web traffic of roughly 200,000 users annually — are now outdated. "Our website must now meet the WCAG 2.1 AA standard," Neely said, and staff recommended a contract that would move the county toward compliance with an April 27 deadline for municipalities meeting the larger-municipality threshold.

Estimated costs discussed in the meeting included about $60,000 for implementation and migration and a recurring fee of $36,700 per year. Neely described accessibility features the upgrade would provide, such as alt tags for images, closed captioning for videos, adjustable font sizes, high-contrast views and language-translation widgets; he added that the county would continue interim mitigation on current properties while the new platform is built.

Commissioners asked whether contracting now would put the county in compliance while the migration is completed; Neely said it would not be immediately fully compliant but that the contract and mitigation measures show good-faith efforts and access to higher-level support from the vendor. County staff and another presenter noted many smaller municipalities are behind the deadline and that the county meets the threshold requiring an earlier compliance date.

The commission moved and approved the Granicus contract by voice vote. Staff said the upgrade will include stakeholder input and training and that full implementation was expected to take about six months.