When Pacific Gas and Electric Needed a Remediation Solution, CommonLook® Delivered (Case Study)

Challenge

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), incorporated in 1905, and based in San Francisco, is one of the largest natural gas and electric energy companies in the United States. PG&E provides energy transmission and distribution to nearly 16 million people.

PG&E places great emphasis on diversity and provides opportunities for women, minorities and service-disabled veterans. Within this context, having its documents and various forms of communications content accessible to all individuals, is an important priority for the company.Additionally, PG&E wanted to comply with the requirements of accessibility legislation.

They established the key objective of rebuilding the PG&E corporate web site, which holds many digital documents, ranging from single page PDF’s to 500 page documents. The web site routinely receives 2 million unique visits per month. Many of the documents required remediation, as do new documents being produced for the web site on an ongoing basis. PG&E’s staff are frequent content contributors to the corporate web site.

Solution

To be compliant with the existing disabilities legislation, PG&E conducted a thorough rebuild of its corporate web site in 2016. As part of this process, some 2,500 documents had to be brought up to the legislated standards of accessibility. They turned to CommonLook for help with remediating the web site documents.

Lisa Burrell, Digital Project Manager at PG&E and a small communications team have the responsibility to handle all web site projects including document remediation. “We had a relationship with CommonLook software prior to my taking on these responsibilities”, she said.

Ms. Burrell points to a number of factors that make for a strong and positive working relationship with CommonLook. “I find the service excellent. They pay attention to the details and the turnaround times are quick. I’d add that they are friendly and easy to work with.”

Outsourcing document remediation to CommonLook for the web site rebuild, and on a monthly basis thereafter, proved to be an effective solution for PG&E’s accessibility requirements.

Results

CommonLook successfully helped Pacific Gas and Electric upgrade the accessibility of thousands of documents, as part of the rebuilding of their web site. PG&E has continued to meet its standards for accessibility. The ongoing relationship with CommonLook keeps PG&E’s documents current and compliant with all relevant standards.

Tallying the Benefits

• Web site document accessibility always meets ongoing compliance objectives.
• Faster remediation project completion with the assistance of outsourced services.
• Remediated documentation as required, regardless of volume, document length or complexity.

Download pdf: CommonLook at Pacific Gas and Electric Company