Documents Accessibility Work
With over 298,000 documents attached to Mass.gov and over 4,000 new documents added each month on average, the importance of ensuring the accessibility and usability of these documents cannot be understated. Internal documents increase that number even more, along with the thousands of daily emails, hundreds of newsletters, and dozens of Commonwealth-related social media accounts that regularly post and require review, testing, and remediation to ensure accessibility. With this scope in mind, our work centered around three goals:
- Initiate training to help all Commonwealth employees create more accessible documents and communications.
- Begin assessing the accessibility of existing documents and communications.
- Assess tooling to support large scale document remediation.
Each Commonwealth employee is responsible for providing documents and communications that are accessible to constituents as well as fellow employees. Through a multi-prong training and outreach approach, including individual and group consultations, self-paced resources, live training opportunities, and Office Hours events, the central accessibility team has started to expose Commonwealth employees to best practices in accessible document creation and supported others in upskilling their accessibility practices. Those responsible for shaping the content on Mass.gov or intranet sites are also beginning to incorporate these practices into their training for content authors, as well, which is another strategy for bringing accessibility into employees’ everyday work routines.
Through tooling explorations, potential systems for identifying inaccessible documents along with the most common accessibility errors within those documents are being explored and identified. A system will emerge through exploration and pilots to begin categorizing existing documents. The goal of these initiatives is to provide a baseline of document and communication accessibility that is regularly monitored, supported through training and consultation, and provides transparency when issues arise for constituents or employees.
Artificial Intelligence and Accessibility
The proliferation of artificial intelligence is increasing leading to wide-spread adoption across the Commonwealth. There have been multiple initiatives and committees to identify the risks, strengths, and opportunities concerning the use of artificial intelligence. Digital accessibility must not be omitted from these initiatives, committees and discussions as usage increases and the impact on internal and external constituents broadens. The ACCESS team participates in the Artificial Intelligence Risk Committee as part of the AI Center of Excellence to evaluate project submissions and incorporate accessibility into the consideration factors for approvals. The ACCESS team has created the Artificial intelligence (AI) and Accessibility web page on Mass.gov to provide a resource for InnovateMA student cohort teams, project planners, and developers to gain knowledge and understand the requirements necessary to increase accessibility into the deliverable in conjunction with the integration of artificial intelligence. Training for student cohorts has also been produced to provide a digital accessibility baseline requirements list and expectations for the use and implementation of artificial intelligence. ACCESS team participation and the provision of evolving resources will increase and expand as artificial intelligence usage increases across the Commonwealth digital services and deliverables.