For nearly 25 years, MetroMap has helped city partners, planners and the public alike better understand our region by making data about political boundaries, property values, environmental features and more searchable in a single app. Following a recent, comprehensive rebuild, the app is now more compatible with phones, desktops and tablets and includes new data and tools. It's also been redesigned to be more accessible to people with people with low or no vision, limited use of their hands, cognitive challenges and other disabilities.
Many of these updates were made as a result of accessibility testing performed by professional testers with disabilities in partnership with the Center for Accessible Technology. In today's article, MetroMap's lead developers, Julie Stringham (she/they) and Forrest Deters (he/him), share how partnering directly with people with disabilities has helped them build a better MetroMap for everyone – and changed how they think about accessibility generally.
It's not that geospatial developer Julie Stringham and systems analyst Forrest Deters had never thought about web accessibility before. As Julie explains it, even before their recent efforts to test – and then improve – the accessibility of MetroMap, accessibility was central to their work. Their team, housed in the planning department's data resource center, had always aimed to follow the well-established standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium to produce software that's usable by people with a variety of hearing, movement, sight and cognitive differences.
But following a list of best practices is one thing, and learning directly from people with disabilities is another – and the difference between the two, even though it wasn't unexpected, took Julie by surprise.
"Through accessibility testing, I came to realize a crucial issue: adhering to guidelines alone isn't sufficient. In fact, it was like following a technical challenge on The Great British Bake-off where a baker gets an untitled recipe for a mysterious dish that says, 'add one pound of butter.' Without knowing what the end product is, the baker can't make a good judgement on whether the butter should be neatly folded into the dough, or haphazardly mashed. Are we making croissants or biscuits? Similarly, before engaging in the accessibility testing, I think I wrote a lot of code that technically passed the standards but didn't have the intended outcome."
Forrest too emphasizes that he couldn't have obtained the insights accessibility testers provided any other way. During the testing, Forrest and Julie were able to watch in real time as users who rely on assistive technologies to navigate the web – things like screen readers, voice controls and magnifying software – explored MetroMap.
"Talk about eye-opening," Forrest says. "I'm grateful for the first-hand accounts of things that make it easy, or frustrating, for some users to navigate the internet. At the end of the process, we had a really solid list of issues to work through to make MetroMap a better tool for everyone."
The testing came about after data stewardship manager Madeline Steele, who helped direct the MetroMap upgrade, learned that Metro had a contract with accessibility advocacy group the Center for Accessible Technology. ADA coordinator Heather Buczek had set up the contract not long after she began work at Metro, so when Madeline reached out to her for advice on who to go to for end-user testing, they were able to get started right away.
The testing also turned out to be well-timed. In April, the Department of Justice updated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities act with a ruling introducing new accessibility requirements for online data. "In the next few years," Heather explains, "all public-facing publications and materials produced by Metro's venues and departments must be digitally accessible."
The resource center's accessibility testing for MetroMap was already in progress when the Department of Justice's ruling was handed down but stands to serve as an example of how the new requirements can be met – and why they make a difference for everyone. After all, Heather adds, "Digital accessibility benefits not only individuals with disabilities but also the public. Many accessibility features enhance the user experience for everyone, regardless of ability."
So, what kinds of changes were made to MetroMap as a result of the testing? "Some of the changes were small," Forrest says, "like changing the contrast of text or adding a screen reader-only label to an icon. Other changes required more thought. For example, we moved our feedback form to a more accessible platform and reworked the mobile version of the website so it supports zooming in the browser up to 400%."
Many small – and large – adjustments later, and the current version of MetroMap is the most accessible yet. But it's possible that the testing's most lasting legacy will be how it's changed the way Julie and Forrest think about their work. Developers will always have a need, as Julie puts it, to "test code with more code," but even the best-vetted guidelines can't replace the insight gained by engaging users directly. This is particularly true of users with disabilities, who often run into difficulties using software that its developers never considered.
"Having the opportunity to watch accessibility testers use MetroMap greatly deepened my understanding of how people use assistive technology to navigate the web, which is knowledge I can carry over into many other projects. I think the development team has more confidence now in designing accessible interfaces with a human element, which helps situate my team as an accessibility resource to other work groups in the DRC and beyond," Julie said.
Explore the new MetroMap here. Questions about the new map can be directed to [email protected].
MetroMap Lunch and Learn
Meet Julie and Forrest and learn more about MetroMap at an in-person demonstration and information session. If you can't make it to the Regional Center, you can also join virtually on Teams.
- Thursday, Sept. 26
- 12:15 to 1:00 pm
- Regional Center, Room 328A/B
- Join by Teams