The SeaTac City Council at its Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024 meeting heard a presentation for a new website design using an approach called “human-centered design.”

The goal is to make the SeaTac City website more accessible and user-friendly for constituents who need to navigate it.

Suzanne Boyd, Founder and CEO of Anthro-Tech, gave the presentation and cited 4 primary areas of concern.

The current SeaTac City Website is:

  • Not useable
  • Not accessible
  • Not user-friendly
  • Difficult to maintain

The accessibility issues were particularly highlighted through a shared video in the presentation of a blind user attempting to navigate the SeaTac City website.

The blind user demonstrated that when using screen-reading software, headings are extremely important. When going through the SeaTac City site, many of the headers were not identifiable by the software as informative, some showing up as a single dash.

Links posed a similar issue. Screen-reading software identified a list of links on a page of the city’s website that were numbered 1-11 without any identifiable information, leaving the disabled user clueless as to their contents. 

This demonstration starkly proved how ineffectual and unusable the website is to members of the community who live with blindness or other sight-related disabilities.

“I do have to admit I am embarrassed about the demonstration and how difficult it is to utilize our current website,” Councilmember Joe Vinson said in his comments. “I am happy to see that there will be some movement here.”

Councilmember James Lovell agreed: “I think this is exactly the kind of work we should be taking on. It’s the way people are engaging with the city. Let’s dive in. Would love to see this decision card coming up and evaluate along with the rest of the budget priorities for the city.   

(Pictured: an example from the demonstration of the current website vs the redesign.)