Our Progress Toward Universal Access

01/27/2025 Accessibility and Language Access at the Nevada Legislature

The Nevada Legislature is committed to complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and ensuring that all people, regardless of ability, have access to the legislative process and can participate in that process. Additionally, the Legislature is committed to making its programs and services accessible to all people without regard to their race, color, national origin, ability, or any other protected class of which they may be a part. This commitment, in relevant part, includes ensuring that public meetings held at legislative facilities are accessible to all who wish to participate.

Interpretive Services and Transcription

American Sign Language (ASL) and oral interpretive services are available upon request for individuals who attend public meetings in person. Historically, the Legislative Counsel Bureau (LCB) has hired third-party, certified interpreters to provide interpretive services at public meetings. Interpreters with previous experience in the governmental arena were found to have provided quality services given the unique nature and terminology of the legislative process.

While the LCB prefers to secure in-person interpreters, the LCB also has the ability to videoconference interpreters from remote locations. For example, if a remote ASL interpreter is used for a public meeting, the LCB will use its picture-in-picture technology to ensure that the video of the ASL interpreter is always shown on the screens in the committee room. This technology is similar to how your face appears on the screen when videoconferencing with another individual. Similarly, the LCB is able to use this picture-inpicture technology if an ASL interpreter can only be secured in Las Vegas, but not Carson City (or vice versa). This technology ensures that the ASL interpreter is visible no matter if the individual is attending the public meeting in Carson City or Las Vegas. The remote technology has also expanded the pool of available interpreters.

To address some of the functional issues associated with securing third-party interpreters, the LCB has purchased software that displays a real-time transcript of the hearing in the committee rooms. This software can provide transcription in English, Spanish, and Tagalog, the three most common languages spoken in Nevada. In terms of timeline, the goal is to have this software operational by the first committee hearing of session.

Additionally, the LCB makes closed captioning in English automatically available for public meetings through its live stream of the meeting. However, the real-time translation software is also able to display the closed captioning in Spanish and Tagalog on the live video feed, upon request. To view the closed captioning, an individual should go to the Legislature’s website ( www.leg.state.nv.us ) and click “View Events” in the top righthand corner. Once the individual finds the meeting of their choice, they can click “view event” to see the live stream with closed captioning. If the individual misses the live event, they can also view the archived video of the event, which includes closed captioning, at this website: ( www.leg.state.nv.us/Video/ ).

Assistive Listening Technology

For individuals who are hard of hearing, the LCB has assistive listening devices (ALDs) available for use at legislative facilities in both Carson City and Las Vegas. By way of background, an ALD amplifies sound to help individuals hear better, especially in noisy environments. These ALDs use radio frequency to transmit sound directly to headphones worn by the listener.

Additionally, the LCB has installed an assistive listening system in Room 165 of the Nevada Legislature Office Building and each of the hearing rooms located in the State of Nevada Hearing Rooms Building at the Legislature’s campus in Las Vegas. This system is also installed in Rooms 2144, 2149, 3142, and 3143 in the Legislative Building in Carson City. Operationally, the assistive listening system connects through Wi-Fi servers, which transmit the sound through an application downloaded onto the listener’s smartphone or through a device, which can be checked out from the LCB. The listener then wears headphones to receive the enhanced sound. It is important to note that this technology is also compatible with certain hearing aids.

Accommodations and Language Service Requests

An individual may request an ASL or other interpreter, the use of the real-time transcript software, or an ALD by submitting a request to the LCB’s ADA Public Accommodations Coordinators (ADA Coordinators).

Such requests may be submitted to the ADA Coordinators by phone at (775) 684-6903 or via email at [email protected]. This contact information is posted on the Legislature’s website and is available on most agendas.

The LCB asks that requests for such accommodations or other services be made as soon as possible, but not less than 72 hours in advance of the need, if practicable. This timeline is especially important as relates to interpreters, as logistical issues arise when attempting to secure third-party interpretive services on short notice.

The LCB also asks that the individual needing the interpreter, transcription, or ALD make the request personally, or through an authorized representative. This protects the confidentiality of the request itself, as well as any information necessarily provided in support of the request, and it also facilitates the direct communication that is often necessary when clarifying the requesting individual’s needs.

Once such a request is received, the ADA Coordinators review the request to determine what action can reasonably be taken to facilitate the needs of the requestor. The ADA Coordinators use their best efforts to respond in a timely manner to sufficiently detailed requests for accommodations or other services.

Please note that this memorandum focuses on language services, and accommodations provided to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. An individual may request any other accommodation using the procedure discussed above, and the ADA Coordinators will do their best to facilitate any reasonable accommodation request.

Other Accessibility Software and Technology

The LCB has taken steps to improve its audio and visual technology, which will provide a better experience for all members of the public, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing. For example, the LCB has improved the microphone technology in its public meeting spaces. This technology will enhance sound quality during public meetings and allow attendees, or individuals viewing the meeting online, to hear the speakers better.

Additionally, the LCB has secured and implemented various forms of accessibility software. For example, having implemented specialized software, the LCB’s in-house website developers are now better equipped to analyze and support the Legislature’s website with a focus on accessibility and remediating potential accessibility issues. The LCB has also procured software that will promote document accessibility by facilitating the compatibility of our online documents with screen readers. Committee staff and other relevant personnel will be trained before and during session to use this software. In this vein, the LCB has also hired a Software Engineer Manager with expertise in implementing accessibility solutions in the governmental arena.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this interim the LCB streamlined the procedures used to request accommodations and language access services, purchased software and other technology that will enhance accessibility and language access for the upcoming session, and hired and trained staff to facilitate the LCB’s accessibility and language access goals. By way of background, staff in multiple departments were consulted in an effort to obtain a concise strategy for meeting accessibility and language access standards.

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6/20/2019 Accessibility and Mobile Enhancements to Interim Committees Pages

During the interim between sessions, the Interim Committee pages are some of the most widely used on the website, and the web development team is excited to announce the following enhancements that improve the accessibility of these pages:

  • The home page has been restructured and optimized to load faster
  • There is a new “Meetings” page that will allow you to view all meetings for the interim by month
  • All pages have been redesigned to be fully responsive; this improves the usability on devices with smaller resolutions such as mobile devices
  • A new WCAG-2.0-compliant menu has been introduced that includes the ability to drill down into our list of interim committees. This functionality replaces a TreeView and splitter control that were causing accessibility problems.
  • A new “Apply to Serve” tab has been added for each committee that accepts applications from members of the public to serve on the interim committee. You can still access the “Apply to Serve” page for all committees via the “Committees” menu dropdown.
  • Several other minor accessibility improvements and bug fixes

The team continues to improve the accessibility of our website and, as always, we value your feedback. If you have any questions, concerns or feedback, please use our to contact us.


3/22/2019 Accessibility Enhancements to Additional Pages

The web development team has remediated the following pages on our site:

In addition to this, our Support Services group has implemented a process to improve the optical character recognition (OCR) of meeting exhibits.


1/4/2019 Remediation Progress on Nevada Electronic Legislative Information System (NELIS) and Lobbyist Pages

Remediation work on the bills, committees, budgets and meetings "detail" pages is nearing completion. These pages, such as the NELIS page for AB 1 , include a TreeView on the left-hand side of the page and a tabbed interface on the right. We have one outstanding issue affecting Firefox keyboard navigation and are in the process of filing a bug report with the vendor of the TreeView control that is causing this issue.

The Lobbyist application has also been updated to conform to our accessibility standards.


11/5/2018 Web Accessibility Improvements for Nevada Electronic Legislative Information System (NELIS) and Other Pages

The web development team has reworked the Contact the Nevada Legislature page with accessibility in mind. Additionally, the following NELIS changes were made:

  • The PDF document viewer will now show a more noticeable focus outline to improve keyboard navigability
  • Panel-bar listings on the "BDRs", "Bills", "Budgets", "Committees" and "Reports & Links" pages are now fully keyboard navigable
  • The "My Profile" page has been remediated of accessibility issues
  • Reports Improvements
    • The favorite "star" has been remediated of accessibility issues
    • Upgraded our Telerik Reporting framework to the latest version
    • "Status of Legislation" report has been remediated
    • "Bills by Date Introduced" report has been remediated
    • "Subscriptions by Tag" report has been remediated

9/6/2018 Legislative Events Calendar Accessibility Improvements

Based on feedback we've received, we've remediated the accessibility of the Legislative Events Calendar pages to meet our standard of WCAG 2.0 compliance at the AA level. This work includes the following changes:

  • Rendering of pages has been greatly improved for mobile browsers
  • Semantic HTML5 elements and proper heading tags utilized to improve the document outline
  • Controls and links on the Calendar and Request an Event pages now have clear focus outlines
  • PDFs generated from the calendar page have been unlocked so that screen readers can access the content
  • "View all events for this week" links on the Calendar page have been changed from images to text
  • On the Request an Event page
    • We've made the page keyboard accessible, which includes improvements to the "Event Date" field that utilizes a datepicker control. Dates can now be easily changed using the arrow keys.
    • Validation messages have been moved to the top of the form
    • All fields are now properly labelled

7/27/2018 Nevada Electronic Legislative Information System (NELIS) Enhancements

We've made further updates to the Nevada Electronic Legislative Information System (NELIS) including upgrading the PDF viewer to the latest version of PDF.js (v1.10.100) and remediating accessibility issues with:

As always, we welcome your feedback, please use our to let us know how we're doing and where we can improve.


7/13/2018 More Accessibility Enhancements to Session Pages

We've updated following session pages with accessibility and mobile device enhancements:

The Nevada Electronic Legislative Information System (NELIS) is in the process of being remediated and we've released the following updates:

  • NELIS logo converted to text, added abbreviation tooltip
  • Improved color contrast
  • Upgraded JavaScript frameworks to provide better accessibility features
  • Made the landing page, header, footer more accessible

We welcome your feedback. Please use our to let us know how we're doing and where we can improve.


5/31/2018 Announcing the Nevada Legislature's Efforts for Universal Access

We've released a new version of the www.leg.state.nv.us homepage to address the following areas:

  • Keyboard navigability - specifically on the main top-left menu
  • Color contrast
  • Images missing alt tags
  • Ensured that the page has landmarks and proper document structure
  • Set the page language

We've also implemented a feedback form on all pages and would appreciate your feedback. Additionally, we've added a new Universal Access page which details our commitment to universal access with accessibility-related information for our website as well as physical premises. The new pages are:


9/1/2017 Meeting Audio Accessibility in Las Vegas

Our Broadcast and Productions Services group has made the following improvements:

  • Added Assistive Listening systems to rooms 4406 and 4412E in the Grant Sawyer Building in Las Vegas. Meeting attendees can request an assistive listening device from our staff in Las Vegas.