ADA Honest Discussion: Real Organizations Finding Their Way

Lynn Wehrman: Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us today at the ADA Honest Discussion, Real Organizations Finding Their Way. We are going to get started in a few minutes. Just a reminder to make sure that you have muted yourself. There will be a chance to ask questions at the end, and you can chat over questions — just pop them in the chat box and we will try to respond to those.

Lynn Wehrman: Just a reminder about the accessibility — there is automatic closed captioning. We are in Zoom, and that appears at the bottom of your screen. The session is being recorded, and we will do post-production captioning on this.

Lynn Wehrman: I just want to introduce first our staff behind the scenes before we get going. We have Val Lockhart, who is our tech today. If you are having any issues with accessibility and don’t want to interrupt the panel, you can simply text Val and she will assist. As is the custom at WeCo, we’d like to take a minute before we begin to ask if anybody needs any assistance with accessibility.

Lynn Wehrman: My name is Lynn Wehrman. I am the President and CEO of Digital Accessibility by WeCo. We are a consulting group of digital accessibility professionals who also live with disabilities, and we’re sponsoring this ADA Honest Discussion series to help organizations, large and small, get ready to conform with the ADA web rule. We’ve got two big dates coming up — larger organizations serving 50,000 or more individuals in April, and another date in April of 2027 for organizations that serve less than 50,000 individuals.

Lynn Wehrman: I feel really fortunate in the work we do at WeCo because we’re able to connect with lots of different types of organizations. One of the things that we really try to do is connect people with each other — people who are actually doing the work. So while we are experts in lived experience and certified experts of digital accessibility, we don’t have that on-the-ground experience of being in an organization and actually trying to figure out how to make the resources work, how to educate staff, and how to get people involved. That’s why we think panels like this are so important.

Dan Marfield: I’m Dan Marfield, Digital Communications Coordinator for the City of Bloomington. I’ve been here about 13 years. I handle the bulk of the front end of our external website — content, some light development — and a lot of helping people throughout the city who are web content editors. They sometimes get things up on their own, sometimes need help, but are a big part of the accessibility push for April. I also work with email marketing and social media, but the bulk of my role in the accessibility deadline has been with our website.

Lisa Yang: Hi everyone, I’m Lisa Yang, Digital Accessibility Coordinator at Hennepin County. I’ve been there for about 11 years now, and started in this line of work at the Minnesota Department of Transportation, where Lynn and I worked together for a while. I was a web content specialist there, and when I moved to Hennepin County I brought my knowledge of digital accessibility with me. We have a digital accessibility policy at the county that has been in place since 2022. Through that policy, I’ve been in the role of digital accessibility coordinator to help implement and operationalize it — advocating for tools, supports, and trainings for our staff to meet the policy and the ADA web rule.

Lisa Yang: I’m part of a department called Digital Experience at Hennepin County. Our department focuses on user experience and customer experience for the public through our internal business areas. We do things like usability testing and making sure we’re following accessibility requirements. My role has been to support our staff by helping other internal partners in various areas.

Abby Tequila: Hi everybody. My name is Abby Tequila. I am the Water Resources Program Coordinator for the South Washington Watershed District. My role is basically running the education outreach program — everything from the website to social media. I write articles about water resources and water quality, and it touches on all aspects of web accessibility. I have no real formal background in accessibility work. Coming up on my two-year anniversary here, web accessibility has become a big topic of discussion and just another part of my work at the Watershed District.

Lynn Wehrman: Abby, since you didn’t have a background in digital accessibility prior, it sounds like you were just kind of thrown into this. When did your agency become aware of the ADA web rule requirements and the deadline, and what happened from there?

Abby Tequila: The organization basically became aware when I became aware. Our team is about five people, so it’s a small team. I became aware when I attended a WeCo presentation back in January of last year. There was some discussion between our district and another district administrator about it — legal concerns to be aware of. So I took it upon myself as the communications person within our organization to start investigating it, and that started with the WeCo presentation. From there, we’ve just been learning as much as possible, as fast as possible.

Lynn Wehrman: Dan, when did your organization become aware, and what was the initial response?

Dan Marfield: I think I saw it through an email, because I’m subscribed to federal communication updates about Section 508. I remember first being aware of it around early 2025, late 2024. I knew it had kind of been in discussion for a long time — they were doing rounds of public comments and feedback — and I’d been keeping an eye on it. When it became official, I started paying closer attention and working on our response as a city.

Lynn Wehrman: Lisa, what about Hennepin County?

Lisa Yang: At Hennepin County, we already had our digital accessibility policy in place since 2022, so we were already working toward accessibility. But the ADA web rule made it more urgent and gave us an external deadline to point to. It helped bring focus and attention to the work we were already doing internally, and gave us more leverage to push for resources and staff training.

Lynn Wehrman: What were some of the biggest challenges your organizations faced in getting started with accessibility work?

Dan Marfield: For us, one of the biggest challenges was the sheer volume of PDFs on our site. We have years and years of documents. Figuring out which ones actually needed to be remediated versus archived or removed was a big undertaking. We ended up cataloging every PDF on our site and what page it links from so we could start a remediation plan.

Abby Tequila: For a small organization like ours, the challenge is really capacity. We’re a team of five, and accessibility work is on top of everything else we’re already doing. Finding the time, the budget, and the expertise to do this work has been the biggest hurdle. We’ve had to be very strategic about what we prioritize.

Lisa Yang: At the county level, the challenge is scale. We have a large number of staff, a large number of web properties, and a large volume of documents and content. Getting everyone on board and understanding their role in accessibility has taken a lot of effort. It’s not just a web team issue — it touches every department and every content creator across the organization.

Lynn Wehrman: What tools or approaches have been most helpful in your accessibility work?

Lisa Yang: We’ve used a combination of automated scanning tools and manual audits. The automated tools help us get a broad picture, but the manual audits — especially those done by people with lived disability experience — give us the most accurate and actionable results. We’ve also invested heavily in training, making sure that staff who create content understand the basics of accessibility so that new content coming onto the site is accessible from the start.

Dan Marfield: For us, working closely with our web team across departments has been key. Making sure that the people who actually post content understand why accessibility matters and what they need to do has been more impactful than any single tool. We’ve tried to make accessibility part of the normal workflow rather than a separate checklist.

Abby Tequila: I’ve leaned heavily on resources like WeCo’s presentations and guidance. Starting from almost no background in accessibility, having practical, plain-language information that I could actually apply to my work has been invaluable. I’ve also found it helpful to connect with peers at other organizations who are going through the same process.

Lynn Wehrman: What would you do differently if you had to begin your ADA web rule effort today?

Dan Marfield: I would probably try to catalog earlier. For us, we cataloged every PDF on our site and what page it links from so that we could start a remediation plan. But also that idea of — is this cell phone tower installation report from 1998 really needed? Starting that conversation earlier would have helped a lot.

Abby Tequila: I just wish I knew earlier. I wish I knew that this requirement was coming up sooner, and I think that would have helped a lot of folks. I’m starting to see people panic, especially at the local government level. We’re not the county, we’re not even the city. We have limited capacity funding-wise and staff-wise. Folks are starting to worry because budgets have already been set, and finding a consultant when you don’t have the staff capacity to do this work internally is a real challenge. Some of these water districts are literally one person — one administrator — and the weight of this requirement on them is very real.

Lisa Yang: I think if I could redo anything, it would be to have more tailored messaging for each business area. Even though we sent out newsletters and presentations, it just wasn’t connecting as much with everyone. Business managers would say, “I heard about that, but I don’t know how that impacts my team.” And when they find out later there’s a deadline they’re supposed to meet, there’s panic and anxiety. Having more targeted, one-on-one conversations earlier — meeting with teams to understand the kind of content and resources they have — I think that could have helped a lot.

Audience Question (via Val Lockhart): There’s a question about larger print documents, like village newsletters or recreation guides — more of a magazine-type format. How are you handling those?

Lisa Yang: We have a priority list. We look at the exceptions for the ADA web rule — there are five of them — and use that as a guide for what to prioritize first versus leave for later. Beyond that, we look at what is emergency-type information. If a document has really important emergency or health-related information, we focus on that first — either making the PDF accessible or taking the content out and turning it into a web page. From there, we prioritize emergency, safety, most-used content, and content specifically serving people with disabilities.

Lynn Wehrman: How has the ADA web rule effort changed the culture in your organization?

Abby Tequila: It has certainly made us more mindful and more aware of the community we’re serving. I’ve enjoyed working with my coworkers to figure out the best way to serve the broader community, and it’s definitely changed our awareness for the better.

Dan Marfield: I’m starting to see a shift away from “we need to PDF everything.” It varies by staff member and department, but the awareness has set in. Even when people are creating PDFs, they’re thinking about what they need to do to make sure it works for the website. And people are starting to see how accessibility practices are just better usability practices for everyone.

Lisa Yang: The rule has helped people pay more attention to accessibility. It’s not only about following the county’s policy anymore — there’s external pressure and a real threat of litigation that’s helping people focus. Our hope is that this rule changes our culture and mindset moving forward, and that our employees begin to understand that accessibility is just part of our work. It needs to be part of how we do things and how we think, and that everyone has a role in it.

Lynn Wehrman: Thank you so much to Abby, Lisa, and Dan for these really great insights. There’s nothing more powerful than hearing from your peers about how they’re doing things. We’re going to do more of these ADA Honest Discussions — one in April and one in May as a test pilot. Thank you to our technical team, Val Lockhart and Jackie Mennie, our graphic artist. And thanks everyone for attending. Have a great afternoon, and good luck with your ADA efforts.