Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Accessibility Policy and Remediation Plan

Accessibility Policy

The Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology (NBMG) is committed to ensuring accessibility of its website and intranet to people with disabilities. New and updated web content produced by our organization will meet Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended (Sec. 508), the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, as amended (ADA), and University of Nevada, Reno Benchmarks for Measuring Accessibility by March 1, 2020.

NBMG has a wide variety of content served to the public, including interactive maps and web applications, hand-drawn historic documents relating to mining, geology, hazards, and more, logs relating to oil, gas, and geothermal wells and exploration, and much more. By nature, much of this content is difficult to translate into an equitable experience for our valued users with disabilities. As the state geological survey for Nevada, it is imperative that we continue to make our data available to the public and present it in such a way that will be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust to a wide variety of users.

Where possible, content will be remediated to directly comply with technical ADA standards. Some content requires using best judgement to provide an equitable experience. As part of the remediation effort, data will be grouped by content type and tags and OCR will be used where possible. NBMG also invites the public to reach out if additional accommodations are needed at eodean@unr.edu.

Existing web content produced by our organization will meet our standard, when possible, by March 1, 2020. This document defines how data are divided into groups and remediated where possible.

Types of NBMG online data

Websites

NBMG will make every effort to ensure that all websites are 100% compliant. We will follow guidelines defined by the University of Nevada, Reno’s Creating Accessible Web Content Documentation. All NBMG pages will be assessed at the beginning of the effort using SiteImprove and will be updated as needed.

Images

NBMG will add meaningful and descriptive alternative text to all images hosted online.

PDFs

NBMG has tens of thousands of historic scanned documents hosted on the web for public consumption. These are generally scanned as high DPI tiffs, and then converted to a lower resolution PDF and served online. These are accessible through interactive web applications or through text search.

Every effort will be made to create accessible content when possible. Content will be reviewed and divided into groups for processing.

• handwritten notes
• drawings
• digitally produced maps
• hand drawn maps
• digital text (scanned, not digital)
• tabular data (scanned, not digital)
• images

Where possible, images will be converted back into an image format and alternative text will be provided. PDFs with digital text (e.g. originally typed on a typewriter, then scanned) will have OCR software run on them and will be tagged with structure when possible.

Maps

Geologic mapping is one of NBMG’s responsibilities as Nevada’s geologic survey. Geologic maps exist for many different uses, included hazard mitigation, characterizing energy and mineral resources, waste repository siting, land management planning, general education, and much more.

Geologic maps use color and shapes to describe landscape features, and are highly interpretive. By nature, it is difficult to provide an equitable experience for our blind or sight-limited patrons. Moving forward, NBMG will publish tabular data associated with geologic maps when it is non-confidential. These data can be read by screenreaders. NBMG will also provide accompanying text describing critical features of each geologic map, as well as digital versions of all legend and key information. When possible, maps will be presented in high contrast for those with color-deficient vision.

NBMG is available and willing to work with individuals to make any products more accessible and to accommodate specific disabilities.

Web applications

There seems to be no great way, at this moment in time, for visually impaired and blind users to interact with ESRI maps, StoryMaps, etc. People who use screen readers, however, can interact with tables of data.

• Present the data: Most maps you can create on ESRI, StoryMapsJS, CartoDB, etc. have an accompany set of tabular data you can view and alter. Presenting that data, as an alternative to viewing that map, can be helpful.
• Title and description: Always include an accompanying title, and description of the map that details the findings, and how it is laid out.
• Audio description: Think about adding an audio description of the map for users. Just like in a text-based description, tell the user about the layout of the map, its purpose, and findings.
• Non-mouse users: Make sure that keyboard controls can be used to access interactive information in the application

Esri has made an effort to make all of their web applications ADA accessible. For more information, see Esri’s page on accessibility support and Esri’s blog on accessibility.

Some information here is taken from Carnegie Museum’s Web Accessibility Standards