City of Portland has developed the first Map/Geospatial Application Accessibility Guidelines.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) created a new rule which sets an accessibility technical standard following the WCAG Level AA guidelines by April 24, 2026 for state and local government web content. Wondering how this affects maps and geospatial applications? How the user experience will be? After 3 years of continuous work, the City of Portland has developed and standardized Map/Geospatial Application Accessibility Guidelines to meet our accessibility responsibilities.
See the complete document:
The guidelines are a key element to bring to compliance more than 700 public geospatial web applications developed and maintained by more than 30 GIS Professionals across all bureaus. Our top 10 applications get over 200,000 monthly hits. Some are PortlandMaps, Open Data Portal, Winter Weather Center, City Council Districts Lookup tool or the Impact Reduction Program Dashboard.
These guidelines are targeted and should be review by GIS Professionals and map makers. It applies to geospatial web content development, in particular for ArcGIS Experience Builder, general cartographic making and configuration, as well as embedding content in Portland.gov.
The new guidance includes:
- General map accessibility design.
- How to determine when to use a map application in place of another more accessible format.
- Application configuration and ArcGIS Experience Builder checklist.
- Language translation guidance.
The new guidelines were developed through collaboration between the Bureau of Technology Services (BTS) Corporate GIS, BTS Digital Services, Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) and the Office of Equity and Human Rights.
In addition to the Map Application Accessibility Guidelines, the GIS Accessibility Team is working with the Citywide Digital Accessibility team to include geospatial applications in a remediation and maintenance plan.
When do these new guidelines go into effect?
June 13, 2025
Need more information?
For more information, please reach out to maps@portlandoregon.gov