Accessibility Training for Government Staff: Building Internal Capacity

Accessibility Innovations has designed and delivered accessibility training programs for government staff at four municipalities across the United States. In each case, the objective was the same: build enough internal competence that staff can maintain compliance independently after the engagement ends.

Under ADA Title II and the DOJ’s 2024 final rule on web accessibility, state and local governments are required to ensure their digital content meets WCAG 2.1 Level AA. For municipalities with small communications teams and no dedicated accessibility staff, the gap between knowing that obligation exists and being able to meet it on a Tuesday afternoon when someone needs to publish a board agenda is enormous. That gap is what our training programs close.

The staff responsible for publishing documents, updating web content, and managing social media in most municipalities are not developers. They are communications coordinators, administrative assistants, and program managers who use Word, Adobe Acrobat, and a CMS they did not choose and may not fully understand. Telling them to “ensure WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance” without translating that into the specific actions they perform in the specific tools they use every day produces anxiety, not compliance.

Each municipality also had different tools, different publishing workflows, and different levels of prior accessibility awareness. A single generic training deck applied uniformly would have checked a box without changing behaviour.

Before designing any training material, we audited each municipality’s actual publishing workflow, the CMS they use, the document templates they start from, the review process (or lack of one) before content goes public. Training was then built around their tools and their workflows, not around abstract WCAG success criteria.

Each program included two components:

Practitioner sessions covered accessible document authoring in Microsoft Word and PDF, alt text writing, heading structure, accessible link text, colour contrast checking, and how to use free automated testing tools (Axe, WAVE) as a first-pass quality check. Sessions were delivered live via Zoom with recordings provided for on-demand access by current and future staff.

Train-the-trainer sessions equipped one or two designated staff members to onboard new colleagues, answer common questions, and perform basic accessibility checks without requiring external support. We provided written quick-reference guides, checklists, and step-by-step instructions customised to each municipality’s CMS and document workflow.

Every program included a follow-up Q&A session 30 days after delivery to address questions that emerged once staff began applying what they learned.