Commitment to Accessibility
The City of South Bend is committed to not only adhering to the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), but also striving to provide as equitable, robust, and inclusive an experience for Disabled residents as possible.
As such, the City of South Bend will not discriminate against people on the basis of disability in its services, programs, activities or employment. It will also seek opportunities to proactively maintain an accessible presence both online and offline.
Please read this article on South Bend’s ADA compliance to learn more.
Accessibility Assistance
The City of South Bend is committed to making City services, including online services, accessible for residents of all abilities.
To request auxiliary aids or assistance for City of South Bend functions please reach out as soon as possible to the ADA coordinator | Opens Email.
Public meeting accessibility resources
If you are attending a public meeting (virtually or in-person) there are several accessibility resources available to you upon prior request:
In-person:
- auxiliary aids (such as printed material in alternate formats, live captioning, audio description of visual materials
- Presentation materials in both audio and visual form
Virtual:
- The City of South Bend uses Microsoft Teams to administer online meetings. Online meetings will include auto-generated live captions for the meeting.
- Learn more about Microsoft Teams accessibility features.
ADA Coordinator Contact Information
The ADA Coordinator Kylie Connell, may be contacted by either:
- Emailing Kylie Connell at legaldept@southbendin.gov | Opens Email.
- Mailing to:
ADA Coordinator, Kylie Connell
City of South Bend Legal Department
215 S. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Suite 600
South Bend, IN 46601
To submit a complaint please complete and submit the complaint form to the ADA coordinator. Complaints must be made within 60 days of the alleged violation.
If you have any questions or concerns about the accessibility of the City of South Bend’s website, please email webmaster@southbendin.gov | Opens Email.
Digital Accessibility
The City of South Bend is continuously working on improving our website’s accessibility to provide a website experience consistent with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. Our goal is to create an experience that is accessible, robust, and enjoyable for people with all ability levels.
Our ongoing efforts for improving our site accessibility include, but are not limited to:
- Ensuring that alt text is on every image
- Remediating PDFs so that they are accessible by screen readers
- Ensuring that each website page is readable by screen readers
- Having descriptive hyperlinks
ADA Title II Section 508 Timeline
Website updates are ongoing, and our goal is to have the website completely accessible by the end of April 2026.
Current Website Accessibility Tools
The City of South Bend website currently offers the following tools to improve website accessibility:
- Accessibe AccessWidget
- an AI-powered feature which can be toggled to change the color contrast, magnify pages, make the screen compatible with screen readers, and more.
- Portable Document Format (PDF)
- Adobe, the makers of Acrobat Reader for PDF documents, has developed tools to assist blind and visually impaired users. Please visit the Adobe Accessibility area for more information on free conversion tools for Adobe PDF documents.
- Changing Text Size
- To quickly increase or decrease the size the text on our web pages, hold down the Ctrl key and press the + or – key.