Pittsfield Officials Detail New Website
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| The new site comes with new accessibility features such as AudioEye, a platform described as the "gold standard for accessibility," and Google Translate so that everyone in the community has equitable access to resources. |
PITTSFIELD, Mass.— You may have noticed a different look to the city website.
Pittsfield moved its web page from a .org to a .gov in July, aiming to bolster legitimacy and increase access for the people it serves.
On Tuesday, Chief Information Officer Kevin Zawistowski and Director of Administrative Services and Public Information Catherine VanBramer detailed the new site to the City Council.
Zawistowski reported that former cityofpittsfield.org "was a little bit old." It was last refreshed about a decade ago and "needed some help," he explained.
Pittsfield was awarded $50,000 from the Massachusetts Community Compact Cabinet for a refreshed municipal website, and the grant specifically helped with website hosting, the migration design, and training for city staff.
The new site comes with new accessibility features such as AudioEye, a platform described as the "gold standard for accessibility," and Google Translate so that everyone in the community has equitable access to resources.
"And along those lines, we received notice in 2024 that the Department of Justice will be requiring that we comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG, by 2028," Zawistowski reported.
"This satisfies those requirements for accessibility guidelines that will be required from the federal government, and hopefully, we can take it a step further and make the website even more inclusive than the minimum requirements."
The city will sit down with its vendor CivicPlus quarterly for an accessibility score of the website, and make needed improvements.
The website domain was moved, meaning that the .org was moved to a .gov. Only official government entities can be granted this domain, and it is a "surprisingly difficult application process," Zawistowski said.
"So that helps give the community some legitimacy. When folks from outside the community or within navigate to our website, they know that this is the official website of the City of Pittsfield."
CivicPlus also gives departments more granular control over their pages, so there is less of a bottleneck through IT.
"There's less of a technical burden for folks to keep relevant and up-to-date information on the website. As you can imagine, we have many departments within the city," Zawistowski added.
"It can be rather burdensome for one department to go and try to police each department's content on the webpage, so this enables each department to control that better."
VanBramer thanked all of the departments that were involved in the transition.
"At one point, our old website had over 500 pages that we needed to cut down to 250 for the vendor to transfer over, so that was a feat in itself," she said.
"But without them stepping up and taking on the responsibility of looking through their pages, figuring out which content they wanted to carry over, this work would not be possible."
She went through highlights of the new website. There are four main sections on the top: government, departments, community, and How do I?, and six main buttons: agendas, online payments, permits and forms, jobs, stay connected, and report an issue.
"You can put in a variety of topics and find it should take you to those relevant pages," VanBramer explained while pointing to the search bar at the top right of the webpage.
"So if you're really struggling, use the search, and most likely you will find it if not, please let us know, and we can do our best to help you."
The agenda center is meant to be one-stop shopping for all boards and commissions' materials, such as agendas and minutes. There is a direct link to Pittsfield Community Television, recognized as a vital Pittsfield resource, for meeting recordings.
There is also a new city alerts function that can be used for public health advisories, road closures, and more. The calendar is now separated into community events and city meetings.
Ward 6 Councilor Dina Lampiasi admitted that the new website took some getting used to, but is impressed with the final product and finds the trash and recycling section "beautiful."
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