Contact: Michael Rupert, 202-657-3831

Washington, DC – The DC Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) today announced they have completed enhancements to more than 170 web forms on its DC.Gov web portal and agency sites in an effort to improve accessibility.

OCTO’s DC.Gov web team replaced the spam-blocking tool CAPTCHA with Google’s reCAPTCHA to improve access for customers with visual disabilities. Both tools ask web visitors to type in words or numbers seen in distorted images.

Unlike CAPTCHA, however, the ReCAPTCHA tool also allows users to listen to audio and type in the number or letter they hear.

“We take accessibility issues seriously and we moved quickly to address this issue,” said CTO Rob Mancini. “Our DC.gov website continues to be ranked among the best in the country and we want  to make sure we live up to those expectations for all users.”

The issue was first reported by WUSA-TV (Channel 9) in an unrelated story on the taxi industry in late June.

The DC.Gov web team, which manages more than 110 DC agency sites, completed the enhancements in late August and continues to research and test other options to further improve accessibility and usability of DC.Gov web sites.