[Colorado-Talk] Accessibility Issues With The General Assembly Website

[Curtis Chong]

Greetings to my fellow blind Coloradans:

 

In years gone by, whenever anyone wanted to register to testify at a
legislative committee hearing, it was possible to sign up to testify,
whether in person or remotely, using a website that was useable by and
accessible to screen reader users. This year, however, some of us have
noticed that there are significant problems filling out the online
registration form.

 

People using the NVDA screen reader and the Firefox browser have reported
that the combo boxes where one would select the hearing date and time and
the hearing item were simply not accessible. It was necessary to switch to
the Chrome browser.

 

It was also reported that when filling out the personal information form,
while using Chrome, the phone number, email, address, and zip code fields
were not properly labeled, and consequently, a nonvisual user might hear
"email" while actually entering information into the phone number field.

 

These issues have been were reported to the appropriate Legislative Council
staff. While the problems have not yet been fixed as of this writing, we
have received the following information from Elizabeth Burger, Deputy
Director, Legislative Council Staff.

 

".I have shared your information about the problems with the registration
website with our IT department to see if we can get a fix as quickly as
possible.  The General Assembly is committed to making our website
accessible for all users.  If you need assistance or information in the
future, in addition to emailing this address and the accessibility at coleg.gov
<mailto:accessibility at coleg.gov>  address, you are welcome to contact me
directly at 303-866-6272 or elizabeth.burger at coleg.gov
<mailto:elizabeth.burger at coleg.gov> ."

 

I believe this problem is one that a person familiar with coding accessible
web pages could solve in a matter of minutes. Who knows how long it will
take the Legislative Council Staff to fix this.

 

Bottom line, if you want to register to testify at a legislative hearing,
please be aware that the current system does have some nonvisual access
issues and that if you encounter these issues, reach out to Elizabeth
Burger.

 

Kind regards,

 

Curtis Chong

 

 

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