Poor accessibility of water utilities’ consumer confidence reports

Abstract

Public water systems across the U.S. are required to annually issue a water quality report (more formally, consumer confidence report or CCR) and make it publicly accessible. CCRs are ineffective at communicating risk and safety information to the customers for several reasons: they are hard to find and poorly advertised, present complex scientific data at a high reading level, and are written predominantly in English. In this paper, we analyze a representative sample of 268 CCRs to measure their accessibility along three dimensions: adherence to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 standards, their Flesch Reading Ease score, and the availability of translation to non-English languages. Our analysis found that water utilities of all sizes, customer demographics, and geographic locations scored poorly on each measure of accessibility. However, accessibility scores were correlated with utility size, racial composition, and the presence of bilingual speakers. As one of the few mandated non-crisis communication to customers, CCRs present a meaningful opportunity for water systems to share information about water quality, public health, and community concerns. Accessible and easy-to-understand CCRs can achieve all that and build customer trust.