State of Colorado: Accessible To All

When the state of Colorado approached Eighty Grit to help manage a stable of seven existing websites, including ChooseColorado.com (pictured), we knew we had our work cut out for us. All of these websites were on different platforms, managed by different teams, and hosted in various locations. Eighty Grit accepted the challenge, and over the following months took over hosting of all seven sites, and set up a plan to ensure that they were kept up-to-date with the latest security patches and had regular backups. Next, we identified areas of content redundancy, and worked to condense all the information to just two websites, both on WordPress, while maintaining redirects from thousands of URLs on the old websites to prevent broken links. But we still weren't done.

In order to comply with both section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as well as C.R.S. 24-85-104, Article 85, we had to make significant changes. These laws ensure that websites are accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired and required us to ensure we met WCAG 2.2 AA standards. These websites serve millions of Coloradans, so we took this task very seriously.

Because these sites were never built with accessibility in mind, we had to make significant changes to the site's structure in order to meet compliance. Once we completed the task, we ran multiple tests to verify we could successfully navigate the websites while blindfolded.

Eighty Grit continues to host and maintain these websites to this day, and is proud to work with the state of Colorado on ensuring their websites serve everyone in the community equally.