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Auditor: county will post agendas — not full packets — to meet ADA rules; IT warns full‑packet compliance is time‑consuming
Summary
The auditor told supervisors the county will post only meeting agendas on the website to comply with ADA document requirements; IT staff said making every packet image accessible would be a large technical lift and recommended alternatives like emailed copies on request.
The Des Moines County auditor told the board on July 28 that state-driven ADA requirements mean the county will post the agenda itself — rather than the entire agenda packet — on the website going forward, and asked residents to contact the auditor’s office for copies of packet materials.
“From here on out, it will just be the agenda that is posted,” the auditor said, explaining that state changes require greater accessibility for posted documents. County IT staff described the technical challenges of converting mixed-origin packet material (images and documents pulled from disparate county sources) into formats that meet screen‑reader and other accessibility standards. “The text is very easy to do compared to all the images…we're really required to post the agenda itself,” IT staff said, noting the additional effort to make full packets compliant.
Supervisors and staff discussed interim options. IT and the auditor agreed that staff can email requested documents to residents and that the county will continue to evaluate whether posting links to documents while preserving compliance is possible. Staff said the full technical compliance effort is not trivial and likely will take time to implement before the statutory compliance deadline.
