Oh Great Knower of All Knowledge: On the Olmsted County building permit reports website, it has changed where you can only see the total number of reports, not the individual reports. A lot of data on the site is no longer available such as the dollar amount of the developments and more specific information on what work is actually being done. Is that an oversight or the way it's going to be? — Wants Clear Picture.
Dear Clear,
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First, thank you for addressing me by my more formal name. I didn't go to Smartypants College for all those years to be called "knower of some knowledge."
Second, while what is online in these reports for 2025 is curtailed from what was available in 2024, rest assured, you can know all the knowledge that you knew before.
Emma Diercks, spokeswoman with Olmsted County, said the more detailed information was removed from the county website because — and here's where you need to follow the bouncing ball — Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act's and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 state that all web content must be available for all users.
Because of the way those reports in 2024 were auto-generated, they were not produced in a way that blind or visually impaired users can access them.
Wait, you might say, how do blind people read the internet? Well, there are programs that read content for them. But if the report was not created in a way that is compatible with these programs, then it's not ADA compliant.
"This is to ensure all accessing our website can do so independently, without having to rely on others to navigate pages for them," Dierks noted.
If you think this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, well, imagine how people who are blind or have low vision feel about not being able to get any information from those reports you've been perusing.
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That's the bad news.
Here's the good news.
"Olmsted County will continue to work toward making information available on our website accessible and will be exploring how the detailed reports might be made more accessible online," she said.
So, this is, hopefully, a temporary setback to your online overview of construction details in Olmsted County .
And that's not even the best news.
Dierks said that while the online records might have less information in 2025 — details such as what type of permit was approved in different categories such as residential or commerical, and what the valuation of those properties might be — all this 2025 information is available in person at the Olmsted County Planning Department directly at [email protected] or by calling 507-328-7100.
So, whatever information you seek is still available, and — better still — the county is working to make sure everyone, even the blind, can have a look-see at what is happening in construction around the county.
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Your questions will always see the light of day. Send questions to Answer Man at [email protected] .
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