Section 508 Compliance and Accessibility

Interest

Shawnee County has an interest in making this site accessible to all of our residents. It is our desire that this site be useful to as many people as possible. If you are not able to make use of this site, please let us know, so we can work to make it better. We are interested in your suggestions on making the site better, without limitation to the interests of accessibility. If this site is not as good as it can be, please let us know what you would like to see made better, and if you are willing, let us know how.

Our interest in accessibility is first for those who are unable to access it because of disability. However, it is inclusive of those who use other non-standard devices, especially mobile communication devices, like phones, PDAs, etc. If you are not able to make use of our site, we need to know so we can make this content more readily available to all of our residents.

Implementation

As we have recently redesigned our site, we have a few things in mind, some that we have always considered, and some new:

  • Maximize usefulness for users with varying internet browsers, including, but not limited to:
    • PC Web Browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.
    • Mobile Devices: mobile phones, PDAs, etc.
    • Screen readers
  • Section 508 (Rehabilitation Act) compliance
  • Printing well (appealing design on and off the web)
  • Faster page downloads (especially for dial-up residents)
  • More instinctive user interface
  • Standards-Compliance as we move toward HTML5, separated CSS, and
  • “Unobtrusive” JavaScript that adds functionality without rendering the page unusable when disabled

Please keep in mind that this is a gradual process. We are migrating old pages to the new design and continually working to make what is here better.