Our review of the accessibility of key online services offered by four departments — California Community Colleges (Community Colleges), California Department of Human Resources (CalHR), Covered California and the State of California Franchise Tax Board (Franchise Tax Board) — highlighted the following issues:
- Despite the growing use of government services online and the state’s accessibility requirements, the California websites we reviewed are not fully accessible to persons with disabilities.
- Some of the accessibility violations are so severe that, under certain circumstances, they may prevent persons with disabilities from accessing online services.
- A CalHR online job exam did not appropriately label the exam questions — persons using screen readers would have had to leave the exam question response area and use other methods to determine what information to enter.
- At Franchise Tax Board, users who cannot use a computer mouse cannot register an online account for submitting tax returns.
- At Community Colleges, screen reader users who were applying to college online were not warned that they could not register for an account if they took too long to complete individual registration pages.
- At Covered California, users who cannot use a computer mouse could not start an application for health insurance because the button on the Covered California website that begins the application process could not be accessed using only the keyboard.
- At the start of our audit, most departments did not provide information on their websites to the public about how to complain about website accessibility problems.
- Three of the four departments we reviewed could improve the type and frequency of accessibility testing that they perform on updates to their online services.
- Best practice guidance suggests that departments provide specific training on Web accessibility to staff involved in the development of websites and Web-based services; however, there is no statewide requirement for such training.
- Although updated standards are available that could help California make its websites more accessible, the state has not adopted them.
