Municipal governments + inSuit = standards + people + transparency

When considering the design of suitable websites and ensuring they are correctly maintained, municipal governments face two major challenges:

Compliance with the W3C’s WAI recommendations regarding web accessibility, meeting level AA – the minimum level stipulated for public bodies.
Ensuring that citizens make full use of city services and information offered to them via municipal government websites, to maximise effectiveness. This is the main vehicle of communication between municipal government and its citizens, and should be made available to them regardless of their functional capacities or income.

With regard to the second point, it is worth highlighting the work of municipal governments in attaining greater transparency, voluntarily offering information that should be accessible to all citizens.

A tool such as inSuit, which offers accessibility and usability from the cloud, is of great assistance in this regard. This easy-to-use and flexible tool will help municipalities face these challenges at a cost that is minimal when compared to the value obtained by the city and its citizens.

First, inSuit helps them attain compliance with WAI-AA for criteria that can be implemented automatically. This serves to increase ratings given by analytic tools such as Examinator, by up to 3 points. This means, for example, that a website offered by a local council which originally earned a rating of 4.5 / 10 with this test would now be able to offer a website with a rating of up to 7.5/10 without having to resort to costly redesigns or maintenance, offering a more citizen-friendly webpage that is more usable for everybody, all the time.

Secondly, with the assistance provided by inSuit via the cloud – services that are under constant development with the latest improvements in the field of accessibility and usability – citizens are able to navigate in such a way that adapts to their needs and preferences in the following ways:

If they are unable (or don’t wish) to use their hands, users can make use of voice commands to tell inSuit what they want to do while browsing the website or even navigate using any sound they wish.
If they cannot see the screen (or if they wish to hear the text in addition to reading it), inSuit can read the content out to them.
If their vision is impaired (or if they wish to make navigation easier), inSuit allows them to enlarge the content displayed and choose a colour combination that better suits them.
If they are unable (or do not wish to) navigate using a mouse, they can navigate using the keyboard, for example.
If they wish to use their own special navigation hardware or software, inSuit offers them a website that is more usable and more user-friendly when using these devices.