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Ross County board approves website redesign to meet DOJ ADA guidance
Summary
The Ross County Board of Commissioners approved a county website redesign project intended to advance ADA accessibility (alt text, fillable PDFs) and create a unified county brand; staff will coordinate departments and a vendor to implement changes and limit disruption during busy service periods.
The Ross County Board of Commissioners voted to approve a county website redesign that staff said is intended to bring county pages into alignment with recent U.S. Department of Justice guidance on web accessibility.
Staff told the board that the DOJ’s guidance requires steps such as adding alt text for images and making PDF forms fillable. “There is a Department of Justice officially is the one putting out the ruling for websites having to have ADA compliance which is essentially alt text for pictures. PDFs have to be fillable forms,” a county staff member said.
The proposed approach is a full redesign handled by a vendor (Westside Media was discussed) with accessibility built into the work rather than attempting piecemeal retrofits. Staff described an hourly estimate from the vendor and said they have budgeted funds for website improvements. One commissioner noted the county typically budgets about $8,000–$10,000 per year for website work and staff said they do not anticipate needing additional funds beyond currently budgeted amounts.
Staff emphasized that much of the work — converting scanned PDFs into readable, fillable forms and choosing what archival material remains online — will require participation from individual county offices. “A lot of times people scan a PDF and it’s more or less an image…that will likely fall on us,” the staff member said, describing the need for OCR and department involvement in providing source documents.
Board members discussed design process and timing, urging a collaborative approach so each office’s pages have a unified ‘brand kit’ and to avoid rolling out major changes during high-volume periods such as tax collection. Staff suggested a short vendor turnaround once functional requirements are provided and said the county will aim for phased work to avoid disrupting users.
A motion to proceed with the redesign and ADA-compliance project was made and seconded; the board voted verbally in favor and approved the project. The board asked staff to return with design options and a timeline for implementation and to notify affected departments about responsibilities for making content accessible.
Next steps: staff will finalize engagement terms with the vendor, circulate guidance to department heads about document preparation and form conversion, and present mock-ups to the board for feedback before a broader rollout.
