For the MassHire Metro North Workforce Board · RFQ Website Vendor

What we found on your site today, and the plan that clears Title II by April 26, 2027

An automated pass over four pages of masshiremetronorth.org, one fix you can hear, and the schedule, hosting stack and price that match your RFQ line for line.

Prepared by Platos Collective LLC · November 7, 2026 · companion to our emailed proposal

1. Found on the live site, November 7

We ran an automated pass over the Home, Contact, Events and a 404 page. Automated checks catch roughly a third of WCAG failures; the manual audit in week one covers the rest. Everything below is reproducible with any browser's accessibility inspector.

11links with no accessible name on the home page
6h1 headings on the home page, three of them empty
15form fields with no programmatic label across Home and Contact
2page builders active at once (Avada Fusion and Elementor)
FindingWCAG 2.1 AASeverityWhereFix
Social media and email icon links have no accessible name. A screen reader announces "link" five times in a row.2.4.4 Link Purpose, 4.1.2 Name, Role, ValueHighFooter "Let's Connect" on every page; social row in the header areaAdd visually hidden text or aria-label to each icon link, plus "opens in new tab" where applicable.
The footer phone link is malformed: an anchor nested inside an anchor's href, and the href dials 1-1508-658-3528 with a doubled country code.4.1.1 Parsing, 2.4.4HighFooter on every pageReplace with a single <a href="tel:+15086583528">508-658-3528</a>.
Heading structure is not a hierarchy: the home page has six h1 elements, three of them empty, and jumps h1 → h3 → h4.1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 2.4.6 Headings and LabelsHighHome, Events, ContactOne h1 per page, builder section titles demoted to h2/h3, empty heading widgets removed from the Avada and Elementor templates.
Contact form fields use placeholder text (NAME, COMPANY NAME, EMAIL, PHONE) as their only label; 16 inputs, one label. Placeholders disappear on focus and are not announced reliably.1.3.1, 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions, 4.1.2HighContact page (Contact Form 7), newsletter signup (Mailchimp embed)Visible labels, required-field markers, error messages tied to fields with aria-describedby.
Site search inputs have no label.4.1.2, 3.3.2MediumHeader search, 404 pageLabel the search field; name the submit button.
Mobile logo image has no alt text.1.1.1 Non-text ContentMediumEvery page, under 1024pxalt="MassHire Metro North Workforce Board home".
Two page builders are active (Avada Fusion Builder theme and Elementor 4.3.6), plus GTranslate, a 3D flipbook plugin, Instagram feed and the Events Calendar. Each adds scripts, CSS and its own markup patterns.Performance and maintainability; affects 2.4.3 Focus Order and 1.4.10 ReflowMediumSite-wideConsolidate on one builder during remediation, retire the flipbook (its PDFs are not navigable by assistive technology), keep plugins to the ones staff use.
PDF reports and meeting materials are served as flipbooks and downloads. Title II covers documents too.1.1.1, 1.3.1 (PDF/UA)MediumBoard agendas and minutes, reportsInventory, tag the current year's documents, publish an accessible HTML version of recurring items.
Keyboard focus, color contrast, 200% zoom, reflow at 320px and motion are not testable from markup alone.2.4.7, 1.4.3, 1.4.4, 1.4.10, 2.3.3ManualSite-wideCovered in the week-one manual audit with NVDA, VoiceOver and keyboard-only passes.

Method: fetched the HTML of four pages and inspected headings, link names, image alt attributes, form labels, page language and markup validity. No credentials, no automation against your server beyond a normal page load.

2. One fix you can hear

Your footer's "Let's Connect" block, as it is today and as it will be. Switch on the screen reader view to see what a blind visitor is told in each version.

Today

After remediation

Same visual design, zero layout change. The difference is accessible names, a valid phone link and a heading that sits in the page's hierarchy. This is the shape of most of the remediation: markup and templates, not redesign.

3. The plan to April 26, 2027

The federal ADA Title II rule sets April 26, 2027 for public entities of your size. We finish four weeks early so your final conformance report is in hand before the date, not on it.

  1. Dec 15 · contract startHosting migration to the managed stack below, staging environment, baseline Lighthouse and axe scores recorded. Hosting and maintenance fee invoiced per the RFQ.
  2. Weeks 1 to 2Full audit: automated (axe, WAVE, Lighthouse) on every template and the 25 most-visited pages, manual keyboard, NVDA and VoiceOver passes, contrast and zoom checks, PDF and document inventory. Written findings with a severity order you approve.
  3. Weeks 3 to 7Template remediation on staging: header, footer, navigation, forms, event listings, blog, staff pages. Builder consolidation. Each template re-tested before release.
  4. Weeks 8 to 9Document pass: current-year agendas, minutes and reports tagged or republished as accessible HTML; flipbook retired.
  5. Week 10Assistive-technology verification on the live site, plus a session with your Communications team so new content stays compliant.
  6. Week 11 · by March 31, 2027Conformance report (WCAG 2.1 A and AA, mapped to Section 508 and Title II), accessibility statement for the site, editor's checklist. Remediation fee invoiced on completion.
  7. Ongoing · to Dec 14, 2027Quarterly automated re-scan and a fix pass inside the maintenance plan.

4. Hosting and maintenance, December 15, 2026 to December 14, 2027

ItemWhat you get
HostingManaged WordPress hosting (WP Engine or Kinsta, your choice; both run daily backups with 30-day retention, a global CDN, a web application firewall and server-level caching). Staging site included for every change.
UptimeMonitored every minute from two regions; 99.9% monthly target; you get the monthly uptime figure in your report.
UpdatesWordPress core, theme and plugin updates applied weekly on staging first, then production. Security patches within 24 hours of release.
SecurityTwo-factor login for all admins, least-privilege roles for the Communications team, login throttling, malware scanning, SSL renewal.
SupportBug and defect fixes with a response inside one business day; email and a shared ticket sheet; a 45-minute recorded training for the Communications team on page, post, event and document publishing.
ReportingMonthly one-page report: uptime, updates applied, issues fixed, Google Analytics summary, accessibility scan score.
OwnershipHosting account in MassHire's name; full admin access at all times; nothing depends on a vendor-held license.

5. Price, exactly as the RFQ structures it

Hosting, maintenance and technical support

$2,500One payment at contract start for the year December 15, 2026 to December 14, 2027. Includes the managed hosting plan cost, so no separate hosting bill.

ADA, Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA remediation

$7,500One payment on completion, due with the conformance report by March 31, 2027.

No third-party fees beyond the hosting plan, which is inside the $2,500. No premium plugin licenses are required; if consolidating the builders calls for one, it is disclosed before purchase and bought in MassHire's name. Out-of-scope work, if any, at $95 per hour on written approval.