From the Citizen Engagement & Services edition of November 10, 2026
Mendocino County's $259,296 Granicus website relaunch: reporter tests find axe-core errors on 6 of 26 pages, an unreadable 985-page scanned ADA transition plan, unlabeled form CAPTCHAs and 49 dead links
County of Mendocino, California (Information Services) · County website and digital front door · Mendocino County, California, United States
- Publisher
- The Mendocino Voice (with Bay City News)
- Original publication
- 2026-11-09
- Source retrieved
- 2026-11-11
- Event date
- 2026-10-22
What happened
The Mendocino Voice's Nov. 9, 2026 report says the county's new site on Granicus OpenCities, contracted at $243,444 plus $15,852 for forms ($259,296 through June 2030), launched Oct. 22 after slipping from Sept. 17. In the outlet's own tests, axe-core found no errors on 20 of 26 pages, Lighthouse gave the homepage a perfect accessibility score, every tested page had a skip link and all 1,223 crawled images had alt attributes; search now returns the right page first. Remaining gaps: the complaint-form CAPTCHA has no screen-reader label, 49 links hit the error page, about two dozen pages (including Behavioral Health language-help) are hidden from search, and the 985-page ADA transition plan is an image scan with no readable text. The old site's undisclosed Lucky Orange session recording was removed.
Why it matters
Independent journalist testing of a county relaunch ahead of the April 26, 2027 Title II deadline, showing both what a platform migration fixes and what it leaves (forms, scanned documents, dead links). Published Nov. 9, after the last run; ADA accessibility was an empty CE subtopic on Nov. 9.
Evidence and measured results
Reporter-run automated tests (axe-core on 26 pages, Lighthouse, a site crawl) plus county statements and contract figures; automated tools miss many WCAG failures and no manual assistive-technology testing is reported.
Limitations and uncertainty
Automated testing on a 26-page sample; reporter, not auditor; county has not published its own audit; dead links and indexing may be fixed quickly.
Put this evidence to work
Lighthouse Advisory interpretation, grounded in this source. Enriched 2026-11-10; this does not change the original publication date. Each role follows the same checklist so takeaways compare across sources.
Sales
Role takeaway
- Customer problem
- Counties racing the Title II deadline with legacy forms, scanned documents and fragmented content.
- Stakeholders
- County IT director
- ADA coordinator
- Department web editors
- County counsel
- Discovery questions
- Which forms and documents sit outside the new CMS?
- Are old URLs redirected?
- Has anyone tested with a screen reader?
- Value hypothesis
- A post-migration audit can find residual barriers platform templates miss; risk reduction, not guaranteed compliance.
- Potential engagement
- A post-launch accessibility audit combining full-site scans, manual assistive-technology testing and a redirect check.
- Unsupported claims
- CMS purchase equals compliance
- Lighthouse score proves conformance
- Cost-per-resident benchmarks
Pre-sales engineering
Role takeaway
- Fit
- Fits counties that recently migrated, or are migrating, to a hosted government CMS.
- Architecture and integration
- Hosted CMS with legacy form tool and document library; redirects and indexing controlled in CMS settings.
- Prerequisites
- Redirect map
- Forms inventory
- Document triage of scanned files
- Constraints
- Automated tools catch a subset of WCAG failures
- Legacy form vendor unsupported
- Scanned archives partly exempt
- Security
- Remove undisclosed session recording, keep TLS strong and review third-party scripts.
- Proof of value
- Full-crawl automated scan
- Manual screen-reader test of every form
- Old-URL redirect check
Delivery
Role takeaway
- Work
- Audit the relaunched site, rebuild forms, add redirects and remediate priority documents.
- Dependencies
- CMS vendor
- Department editors
- ADA coordinator
- Ownership
- County information services with the ADA coordinator.
- Skills and adoption
- Train editors on accessible documents and forms, and on checking indexing settings.
- Governance checkpoints
- Pre-launch accessibility gate
- Form rebuild sign-off
- Quarterly scan review
- Acceptance criteria
- Zero critical automated errors on full crawl
- All forms pass manual screen-reader test
- No old document URL returns an error page
- Risks
- Forms left on unsupported tool
- Hidden service pages
- Scanned key documents
Implementation considerations
Lighthouse Advisory interpretation across the operating dimensions a public-sector buyer must settle before this evidence becomes a design. Each note answers the question under its heading for this specific source.
Architecture and integration
What must connect, and where does the AI sit in the workflow?
Migration to a hosted CMS with ~1,000 pages and ~8,000 documents; forms built on an unsupported legacy tool remain the weak point; old document URLs were not redirected.
Governance
Who approves, reviews and stays accountable for outcomes?
Launch was delayed to fix quality issues; county says forms will be rebuilt and flagged items followed up; no formal conformance statement is cited.
Security and privacy
What data, permissions and controls need testing?
Removal of undisclosed visitor session recording (Lucky Orange on ~290 of 375 old pages) is a privacy improvement; new site earned an A+ SSL Labs grade in the outlet's test.
Accessibility and workforce
Who is affected, and what skills or accommodations follow?
Screen-reader users still face an unlabeled CAPTCHA and an unreadable ADA transition plan; hidden language-help page affects limited-English residents.
Procurement
What should contracts, pricing and exit terms secure?
Contract value and term are public; buyers can compare platform cost per resident, though commenters dispute benchmarks.
Operating model
Which teams own the service once it runs?
Content clean-up (duplicates, drafts, outdated COVID pages) was done department by department; ongoing link, indexing and form maintenance is now an IT responsibility.
Publication history
Read preserved resource versions (JSON)Stable resource ID: mendocino-county-new-website-accessibility-testing-gaps-20261109