What is the digital divide?
Not everyone can afford high-speed internet. Not everyone has the skills to use computers and all the apps that help us live life. You might have someone you can call when you have a question about doing something online. Not everyone has that. All these things and more make up the digital divide. It’s the gap between people who have what they need to live in an online world and people who don’t.
What is digital equity?
We want everyone to have the right tools and skills to be a full part of society. To be a part of democracy. To contribute to the economy – and to benefit from it. Everything happens online. Digital equity is when everyone has what they need to vote online. To learn online. To build a resume. To apply for a job online. To pay bills online. To buy groceries online. To see the doctor online. To learn online. The list goes on. Everyone else should be able to do everything you can online, too. That is digital equity. And to get there, we must provide more than help and resources. We also have to work together to knock down barriers, some of which have been in place for hundreds of years.
What is digital Inclusion?
Digital inclusion is the work we do to ensure that everyone in every neighborhood can access and use information and communication technology. Technology doesn’t stay the same. It changes in a snap. And people get left behind, especially people of color, Indigenous people, low-income households, people with disabilities, people in rural areas, older adults, and formerly incarcerated people. Some of our neighbors have more barriers they have to overcome. There are historical barriers, institutional barriers, and structural barriers. It’s our job to break these down to cut a clear path to equity. National Digital Inclusion Alliance says that our digital inclusion work is making sure that everyone has these five things:
- Affordable, high-quality internet service
- Devices that can access the internet and meet their needs
- The right training to help them get and stay up to speed
- Technical support
- The right applications and online content that help people take care of themselves, participate in society, and connect and work with others.
Website Accessibility
As a government website, we are legally required to make sure our website is usable by people of all levels of ability. This includes people with vision or mobility issues.
Beyond the legal requirement, it is the right thing to do for our users. Ensuring our website is accessible helps us in many other areas as well. It makes the website more usable for everyone, and it makes our content more easily findable by search engines.
We strive to meet recommended accessibility guidelines. These guidelines cover the following areas:
Images
We avoid the use of images of text on Nashville.gov (logos are an exception).
- Each image you will find on Nashville.gov has a descriptive alternative text that describes the image for people who can’t see it. This alternative text is fully descriptive but brief, and we strive to make it as accurate as possible.
- We avoid images such as “clip art” that are purely decorative or don’t add meaning or information to a page.
Headings
We use headings to structure our content in an outline format. Visitors using screen reader software or navigating with alternative input devices use this structure to navigate the page without being able to see it or use a mouse.
Links
- Our link text is descriptive of the destination.
- We do not use just the filename or the destination URL.
- We avoid generic text such as “click here” or “download.”
- We make the text of each link unique so visitors can tell links apart from one other
Tables
- We us tables to present data, not for layout purposes.
- The data we present in tables is relational and logical
- We us row and column headers to make content organization clear.
Text
- We ask content owners and editors to spell out acronyms, at the very least the first time they are used on a page.
- We use bulleted and numbered lists where appropriate
Documents
- All uploaded documents are text-based and searchable.
- We ask content owners to avoid uploading scanned images of text to Nashville.gov. (Signatures are not required on documents uploaded to Nashville.gov, because they are not legally documents of record.)
- We ask content owners to convert original Microsoft Office documents to PDF so they are searchable.
If you have accessibility concerns with content posted on nashville.gov, please reach out to the department where the content is posted. That department will work with the Nashville.gov Support team to resolve any reported issues.
Our Website Accessibility Statement is posted on Nashville.gov along with information on how to reach our Accessibility Coordinator. You can also visit the Metro Accessibility Website.