16,000+
administrative staff
CASE STUDY
Building an accessible and future-ready digital experience for every Austinite
Austin’s website had grown into a complex digital ecosystem spanning thousands of pages, dozens of departments, and hundreds of authors. With accessibility requiring significant manual effort, the City of Austin used Siteimprove to build quality, consistency, and accessibility directly into its publishing process.
50+
departments
300+
content authors
The problem
Austin, Texas is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States, now home to more than one million residents who rely on digital services to navigate daily life. As the city expanded, so did expectations for its website. Austinites needed to quickly find accurate information, complete tasks, and access essential services without friction.
"Austin's website had grown into a complex digital ecosystem spanning thousands of pages, dozens of departments, and hundreds of authors. With accessibility requiring significant manual effort, the City of Austin used Siteimprove to build quality, consistency, and accessibility directly into its publishing process. 'Accessibility wasn't built into our website. It was something we were constantly chasing, and that simply wasn't sustainable at our scale,' says Liza Katz, Content Strategist, Austin Communications and Engagement, Web and Creative Services."
The result was an inconsistent experience for residents and a growing accessibility challenge for the digital services team. Accessibility scores had dropped below 70%, and maintaining standards required significant manual effort.
Accessibility also placed a heavy burden on individual authors, who were expected to understand and apply detailed accessibility requirements while managing their day-to-day responsibilities. The City needed a scalable approach that would make accessibility part of the system itself rather than something teams had to continually address after content was published.
The biggest success isn’t just improving our accessibility score. We’ve built a more consistent and sustainable approach that helps our teams create accessible content and better serve our community.
Caleb Sanchez
Digital Services Supervisor
The solve
Austin’s digital services team knew accessibility needed to become part of the publishing process rather than something hundreds of content authors had to manage independently. That required a platform that could bring visibility, consistency, and accountability to a digital ecosystem spanning more than 50 departments.
"'The turning point was realizing accessibility shouldn't depend on individual authors. It has to live in the system itself,' explains Liza."
Led by the Austin Communications and Engagement Web & Creative Services team in collaboration with internal technical teams and implementation partners, the City rebuilt its website with accessibility embedded into the foundation of the platform and publishing experience.
Siteimprove complemented those built-in controls by giving authors real-time feedback on accessibility and content quality as they worked, while providing central teams with a single view of website health across the City’s digital presence.
Instead of relying on manual reviews after publication, authors could identify issues earlier, receive guidance on how to resolve them, and publish with greater confidence. Component-based templates and standardized layouts also helped guide authors toward accessible structures without requiring deep accessibility expertise.
Continuous monitoring and reporting gave web teams the visibility needed to maintain standards at scale and move from reactive fixes to proactive governance.
With this foundation in place, the City also tackled its extensive legacy content. Every department participated in a structured review that reduced the website from more than 18,000 pages to approximately 3,000 high-value pages, creating a digital presence that is easier to manage, maintain, search, and navigate.
The results
90%
accessibility score improved from ~70% to ~90%, surpassing the 85% government industry benchmark
3,000
high-value pages
300+
authors supported
Discover the Siteimprove effect
Discover how Swiss Post operationalized
accessibility scores and governance across multi‑brand digital channels.
