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Working notes from SunRiver.

What we’re building, auditing, and shipping, written by the person doing the work.

Most teams meet Section 508 the hard way, a procurement checklist, a deadline, and a PDF nobody can read with a screen reader. We’ve spent this spring deep in 508 and WCAG 2.2 audit work, and the pattern is always the same: the failures aren’t exotic. They’re missing form labels, focus traps in modals, color contrast that almost passes, and documents that were exported without a single tag.

Our audit cycle runs in three passes. First, automated scanning to map the easy wins, tools catch maybe a third of real issues. Second, a manual pass: full keyboard navigation, NVDA and VoiceOver runs, zoom and reflow checks, and the document remediation work (tagged PDFs, reading order, alt text that actually describes). Third, the part that matters most: a prioritized remediation report written for the developers who have to fix it, not just the auditors who have to file it, plus the ACR/VPAT documentation procurement teams ask for.

The milestone we’re proud of: our latest audit cycle wrapped with every critical finding closed and re-tested, not just documented. If your organization answers to 508 (or wants WCAG 2.2 AA because it’s the right thing to do), this is exactly the work we do.

We’re mid-flight on a reporting migration: moving a portfolio of legacy Oracle financial reports onto SQL Server Reporting Services. These projects live or die on one thing, parity. Finance teams don’t care that the new stack is cleaner; they care that the new report matches the old one to the penny.

Our process: inventory every report and rank it by who actually uses it (a surprising number haven’t been opened in years and don’t deserve migration); map each data source and rebuild the queries; recreate layouts as RDLs; then run side-by-side parity testing against the legacy output before anything goes live. Subscriptions and schedules move last, once the numbers have earned trust.

Status: the inventory is done and the first tranche of reports is through parity testing. If you’re staring down a legacy reporting stack, Oracle or otherwise, this is a lane we know well.

Vital Tails is our own product build: a pet-care companion app for keeping the things every owner loses track of, health records, vaccine and medication reminders, weight over time, in one place you can actually share with your vet instead of digging through a shoebox of paperwork.

It’s being built the way we build for clients: mobile-first, accessible from day one, and offline-friendly, because the moment you need a rabies certificate is rarely the moment you have good signal. Core records and reminders are working today; vet-sharing is next on the bench.

Our quality assurance department, Noki and Moggy, are the first registered patients. Beta news will land here first.

Kitchen exhaust cleaning is regulated, photographic, and scheduled in the middle of the night, and most crews are still running it on paper and text messages. We’re building a field-service app shaped around how these jobs actually run.

What’s in it: job scheduling that understands recurring service intervals, on-site before/after photo capture tied to each system, service reports generated on the spot (the kind inspectors and insurers ask for, in the spirit of NFPA 96 documentation), and a clean handoff to invoicing, so the paperwork is done when the truck door closes, not three days later.

Status: a working prototype, being shaped against real routes and real 2 a.m. jobs. If you run a field crew of any kind and your “system” is a group chat, this is the kind of app we build.

We’ve used these tools daily since they got genuinely useful, and we’ve watched too many businesses get sold “AI transformation” that’s really a chatbot and an invoice. So we’re making it official: SunRiver now offers an AI practice, run with the same honesty as everything else, including telling you where AI won’t help.

The lineup: adoption strategy with realistic ROI, custom assistants grounded in your own data, workflow automation with a human in the loop, hands-on training for teams and individuals, private/self-hosted setups for sensitive data, and audits for the AI you’ve already deployed.

Start here: AI Solutions.

With the current project slate moving into steady rhythm, we have room for a handful of new engagements this season. The work we’re best at, and most want more of:

  • 508 / WCAG 2.2 audits for agencies, universities, and anyone selling to them
  • Reporting and database migrations, legacy stacks onto maintainable ground
  • HubSpot CMS & CRM builds, sites editors can run and pipelines that reflect reality
  • Practical AI adoption, assistants, automation, and training that earn their keep

Fixed fees, senior hands, Montana honesty. If one of those sounds like your year: get a quick estimate or grab thirty minutes.

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The blog goes deeper: patterns, post-mortems, and honest opinions from the bench.