EOTSS ACCESS Team
To provide ongoing support to Secretariats, a central accessibility team has been formed within EOTSS, known as the Accessibility Center for Consulting, Education, and Support Services or ACCESS. The team is led by the CIAO and comprises six staff, with four hires made this year. An Accessibility Engineer focuses on the software development lifecycle activities including testing and also performs basic audits to assist internal development teams on coding best practices, and the remediation of accessibility issues. An Accessibility Training Coordinator focuses on the creation of an accessibility training program to augment and build upon the digital accessibility mandatory training for all Commonwealth employees. A Documents and Communications Accessibility Coordinator has been hired to provide expertise on creating accessible documents, emails, newsletters and social media posts and explore tools to assist with document and communications testing and remediation. An Accessibility Procurement and Policy Strategist has been hired to embed accessibility into each stage of the procurement and contract lifecycle process and to support and advise on IT solution purchases.
The team is planning to expand as gaps are identified and needs change. Strategic planning efforts, as well as future programmatic requirements, will also dictate the need to create new positions within both the ACCESS team and directly within Secretariats to support the SIAOs. Business planning efforts at EOTSS are underway and immediate and long-term team positions to serve critical functions have been identified and included in plans for future growth opportunities.
Strategic Plan Work
Executive Order 614 stipulates the creation of a statewide Digital Accessibility and Equity Strategic Plan to serve as the foundation of a statewide program led by the CIAO and for Secretariat-specific adoption plans. To commence the planning effort, accessibility consulting firms were identified to support in the plan development process and serve as a partner to assist with creating accessibility processes, procedures, key performance indicators, program goals and objectives and identifying and selecting a maturity model framework. The Digital Accessibility Transformation Index created by the accessibility firm, Deque, was selected to cover multiple accessibility areas including software development lifecycle, procurement, human resources, documents, governance, communications, and additional areas needing to be addressed. The maturity model framework has provided a big-picture representation to identify where the Commonwealth is on the accessibility journey and where the maturity level currently stands and aims to be within specified time periods leading to programmatic maturity and inclusion and implementation of accessibility across all areas.
EOTSS completed the strategic plan development with a primary contractor consulting firm, Nava PBC, to partner with the selected accessibility firm to serve as a subcontractor. Deque was the subcontractor accessibility firm that was selected by EOTSS and Nava PBC. Deque has provided accessibility consulting for government and additional sectors for 20 plus years and has employed accessibility consultants with and without disabilities to provide accessibility services and support to organizations large and small.
As of June 2025, the following work has been completed resulting in a plan deliverable for internal use and an external template document to publish on Mass.gov. Nava and Deque have met with internal stakeholders across all secretariats, independent offices and external agencies to provide feedback from multiple constituencies. External constituent groups were also identified and participated in the research phase to provide their feedback for plan development and inclusions. Several drafts of the plan were created with stakeholder reviews including EOTSS and the Board. Feedback was collected and analyzed to be incorporated into the plan for the final deliverable. The research and feedback yielded insights to create six goals related to the areas of software and digital asset creation and procurement, training, program staffing and funding, community engagement, and digital accessibility governance with corresponding strategies and action steps. The strategic plan includes specific deliverables related to accessibility, including the creation of needed IT accessibility standards, contract language, and associated testing and remediation approaches along with associated timelines.
The completion of the accessibility strategic plan will assist all secretariats with building their own custom plans specific to their Secretariat needs. Secretariat Chief Information Officers and SIAOs will receive implementation plan templates based on the accessibility strategic plan to provide additional guidance, standards and strategies toward the creation and delivery of digital content. Secretariat leadership and staff will be engaged in the development of Secretariat and agency implementation plans in FY26 to commence and continue program development efforts. Secretariat staff also indicated that alignment with the Commonwealth Digital Roadmap is underway for consistency and accountability. Accessibility for products and services and integrating diverse perspectives in service design and delivery is a core tenet of the Commonwealth Digital Roadmap, providing further alignment with the digital accessibility strategic planning efforts.