As important as it is to public content that is relevant and useful to residents, that content is useless if everyone cannot access it. 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 Metro's Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Safety Services page.