Benefits

• accessKansas.org is ranked #2 among government sites in the United States for web accessibility.

• accessKansas.org and its services have more than 12,500 pages of accessKansas-managed web content that meet or exceed 508 accessibility standards.

• Macromedia Studio MX makes it easier to achieve and maintain compliance as pages are updated over time.

Project Details

Often considered the birthplace of eGovernment, Kansas legislation authorized the creation of the Information Network of Kansas, Inc. (INK) in 1991. In 1991, INK awarded Kansas Information Consortium, Inc. (KIC.) the network manager contract and began eGovernment operations. Statewide programs began that year with an e-mail service for subscribers, and other components were added over time including legislative, legal, banking and educational eGovernment services. KIC launched the first state website for Kansas in January 1996, and was among the first to offer on-line services, making hunting and fishing licenses available via the web in 1999. accessKansas, the official state website, opened in 2000 and paces the national leaders in the level of information and government services available to citizens via the web.

As KIC continued to drive eGovernment transformation, it was quick to realize that online delivery of services not only proved to be more convenient to many citizens and citizen-owned businesses, but it was also less costly than traditional modes of delivery. Moreover, KIC recognized the logical connection between total size of the cost savings and the number of citizens opting to receive services via the web. Consequently, KIC focused intently on creating a superior web experience to drive increased citizen confidence and increased citizen use of accessKansas.

“accessKansas receives 2.5 million visitors per month. These are users who would otherwise be standing in line, holding on the phone, or utilizing some other, more expensive mode of delivery,” says DiAnna Wages, director of creative services, accessKansas. “Citizen confidence in and comfort with web-delivered eGovernment enables those citizens to receive the same government information and services any time they choose, and at a lower total cost to taxpayers.”

Further, KIC was fully dedicated to providing web-based government information and services to the entire population regardless of disability. Since the launch of the first website in 1996, KIC was committed to providing the broadest possible reach for web-based information and services. As the eGovernment transformation continued, KIC wanted to ensure that disabled citizens were able to reap the same benefits as other citizens within the state.

“Accessibility and the citizen-user experience are guiding principles at the core of accessKansas. We do not look to build a page and then consider these aspects. Rather, we build and maintain code from the ground up with user experience and accessibility standards in mind. Macromedia Studio MX directly supports this approach, making features such as key accessibility tools intuitive, almost second nature.”

-DiAnna Wages, Director of Creative Services, accessKansas

Maintaining a superior citizen-user experience and accessibility compliance for a single website proved to be a demanding but achievable task. But, as state agencies increased the amount of information and services available via the web, the task became much more difficult. “Enforcing standards for user experience and accessibility across several hundred thousand pages of web content is a major challenge,” says Wages. “We found that we can utilize a lot of technologies, but the hardest part is disseminating the standards down to the people in the operational levels in a meaningful way. Not just getting to compliance and usability, but maintaining them across and deeper within the organization.”

In an effort to better manage experience and accessibility compliance within the growing volume of content and pages, KIC turned to Macromedia Studio MX. The leading web authoring suite, Studio MX infuses user experience and standards compliance tools throughout its seamlessly integrated component applications. The result is a common, intuitive interface for building and maintaining accessible, citizen-compelling websites.