Government Sites Should Be Transparent, Not Invisible

Government sites are infamous for having tons of different types of content that live (or rather decay) on their sites. PDFs, PowerPoints, and long pages of hard to understand text are unfortunately common on government websites. But here at the City of Austin, we’re trying to change that.

It’s Transparent if it’s Online, Right?

While immediately uploading all documents, images, and PDFs may seem like being transparent, that’s not always the case. Especially when it comes to digital content. Certain types of content can be inaccessible, invisible, and not serve all residents, so we need to keep in mind the importance of accessibility on government sites.

The City of Austin is working on its digital services strategy and giving content creators the training they need to put their best content online. With a new digital services style guide and a series of interactive “funshops,” City staff will know the difference between accessible content and the content to just leave on file servers.

PDFs - The Needle in a Digital Haystack

When we started the conversation about why uploading PDFs, Powerpoints, Word and Excel documents was not being transparent, we had a lot of pushback. In fact, we heard many of the same things several times:

• “But it’s beautifully designed and has great photos.”
• “But it has our important information and we want to be transparent.”
• “But there are 12 members of the public who want this information online and will bug us about it if they don’t see it.”
• “But we don’t have time to organize the important parts of this document onto a web page.”

While those are understandable thoughts, they are not good enough reasons to make our city website into a file cabinet.

Non-HTML content like PDFs, PowerPoints, Word and Excel documents should be avoided because:

• They are not usually accessible, making them invisible to residents with disabilities.
• Most residents don’t want to read through long-page documents to find what they need. They want to locate information quickly.
• You often can’t obtain analytics from them, meaning you can’t determine their effectiveness or lack thereof.
• They are much more difficult to keep updated than a web page, making them more likely to have broken links, errors and outdated information.
• Unless there is supporting content linking to the PDF, the public can’t find them through online searches. This is especially true if the PDF doesn’t have the necessary alternative-text required for screen reader technology.

Government sites should serve the needs of the public. Keeping the site up-to-date, easy to understand, and accessible is the best way to ensure its transparency, rather than dumping all related documents online.

And if you ask me, if the same three residents are clamoring for your 65-page PDF, they can always submit a public information request for it.

A Lot of Pages

Some City staff may feel that more pages is equivalent to the significance of a program or service. Repeat after me: “More pages does not equal more important.”

Actually, more pages is closer to, “more frustrating” when it comes to the public. The more information you place in front of them, and the more time they have to spend searching for what they need, the more irritated the public becomes.

The most effective digital content is clear, concise and to the point. That provides the best user experience for the public.

Emphasis - Use Your Words, Not the Underline

Some content creators use italics, red font, or underline words to emphasize information they really want the public to see.

While this may be helpful for some residents, it generally makes text more difficult to read for others, again making it inaccessible or invisible.

For example, if you changed the font color for a sentence to the color red, it could be difficult to see for someone who has color blindness or a visual impairment. It’s also likely inconsistent with the color palette chosen for the site, which is jarring to some users.

So to review, avoid using these styles on text:

• Random, unapproved colors- use the approved, accessible colors set by the site.
• Italics- it can be hard to read.
• All caps-DON’T SCREAM AT THE PUBLIC.
• Underline- It can be hard to read.
• Centering- people naturally read left to right. Centered text can be confusing.

Text-Full Images

Let’s say you created a flyer for an event and the flyer had over 200 words on it. Next, you upload the image of the flyer to your event page because you want the public to see the flyer and come to the event. You know you need to add alternative text for those who need screen-readers to view images online. So how would you handle alternative text?

1. Alternative text? What’s that?
2. I’d add it, but just say “Event flyer.”
3. I’d add it, but only add the first sentence on the flyer.

If you answered any of the above, then you have added content to the site that is invisible to some users.

If an image doesn’t have any alternative text or the alternative text doesn’t fully encompass what is in an image, then when anyone with visual disabilities using a screen reader comes to that image, the screen reader will either not “see” it, or won’t be able to accurately read what’s in the image.

In essence, again, an attempt to be transparent can lead to being inaccessible and invisible if we forget who we are serving- the public . The better approach would be to not add the image and just include the important information of the flyer on the page as HTML text.

Remembering the vitalness of accessibility helps governments ensure that they are not only serving all people, but also maintaining a site that is simple and easy to use, making it truly transparent to everyone.