Working demonstration
A public zoo's website has to work for every visitor, including those on a phone in bright sun or using a screen reader. So we measured it. Below is a real automated audit of the current site next to this rebuild concept.
On June 3, 2026 we scanned 12 of the most-used pages on louisvillezoo.org with axe-core, the industry-standard automated accessibility scanner, against the federal standard (WCAG 2.1/2.2 Level A and AA). We ran the same scan on this prototype. Automated testing catches a large share of issues; the rest we confirm by hand and with assistive-technology testing.
These are real numbers, not estimates, from a committed script (scripts/louisvillezoo-audit.ts, axe-core 4.11.3 via Playwright) that anyone can rerun against both sites. The current site already does a lot right: it carries skip links and a correct language tag, and 7 of the 12 pages we scanned came back clean. The issues concentrate on the pages visitors use most, the homepage, Plan Your Visit, the map, and above all the A-to-Z animal index, which alone accounts for 474 of the 509 issues from just two repeated problems: low color contrast and image links with no text a screen reader can read. The homepage also carries no top-level heading at all. The full page-by-page results are in the Accessibility Pre-Audit appendix that accompanies our proposal.
Filter by severity or success criterion. Everything runs in your browser, no page reload.
Loading findings…
Beyond the scanner
The current site offers translation only through an automatic Google Translate widget. Auto-translation is unreliable and is not tagged for screen readers. This concept ships real Spanish pages for the most common visit tasks, tagged so screen readers read them in Spanish.
The single A-to-Z animal page carries 474 of the 509 issues because the same two problems repeat across every tile. A rebuilt, accessible Animal & Plant Finder solves them once, in one reusable component, and adds filtering and search on top.
How we get to AA
Automated and manual testing of every template, with assistive-technology testing and a cited findings report you can act on.
Semantic HTML, full keyboard support, labelled forms, contrast-checked color, and reusable components that fix repeated issues once.
Ongoing monitoring, a yearly conformance statement, staff training, and periodic re-audits so the site stays compliant as content changes.
The RFP asks for work toward WCAG 2.2 Level AA, and the Department of Justice's ADA Title II rule is phasing in a WCAG 2.1 AA requirement for state and local government web content. A measured plan now is the difference between meeting it comfortably and scrambling later.
