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Cowlitz County IT reports 92% web accessibility compliance, proposes department leads and training ahead of April 24 deadline

Cowlitz County Board of Commissioners · April 8, 2026

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Summary

County IT reported about 92% compliance with WCAG checks across county sites, proposed departmental accessibility leads, internal training and periodic audits, and offered to run compliance reports for the commissioners.

County Information Technology staff briefed commissioners on the county’s plan to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level AA and a Department of Justice expectation for public entities.

Mac McCoy, Director of IT, framed the work as a risk‑mitigation and modernization effort and said web accessibility is essential because roughly 15.6% of Cowlitz County residents under age 65 live with a disability. He said the county’s vendor and internal tooling show about 92% compliance across county websites and that IT plans to prioritize high‑impact items such as online forms and documents for remediation.

Calvin (IT staff) explained that compliance focuses on structure and tagging in website code so assistive technologies and screen‑reader software can reliably read page content. He said compatibility is on the user’s end for screen‑reader software but that county sites must expose content in standard ways to be usable. McCoy said IT will identify accessibility leads in each department, produce training (including short videos uploaded to the county LMS), and offer scheduled compliance reports; he offered to run auditing reports at intervals requested by the commission.

Commissioners asked whether the county would need outside vendors for training and how to handle one‑off user issues. McCoy and Calvin said in‑house training tailored to Cowlitz County needs was the preferred near‑term approach and that a web‑form contact link could be used to triage individual access issues. McCoy emphasized documenting good‑faith remediation for Department of Justice interactions.

The commissioners thanked IT for the briefing and asked staff to return with proposed reporting intervals and a departmental rollout plan.