transcript  Digital Accessibility and Equity Governance Board FY25 Annual Report Part 9: EOTSS ACCESS Team Activities

EOTSS ACCESS Team Activities

Digital Accessibility Training Provisions

Reaching compliance with Title II of the ADA requires an all-hands-on-deck approach when it comes to Commonwealth employees that create digital content. Training in how to make that content accessible for our constituents is paramount.

ACCESS team training goals include the following:

1. Raise awareness and buy-in of executive leadership to ensure they sponsor the change and training need.
2. Create awareness and ability in individual contributors to deliver accessible content.
3. Support Secretariats before and during content creation to reduce post-deployment remediation.
4. Support remediation of existing content to streamline and reduce time and effort.

The ACCESS team offers self-paced guides available on Mass.gov, regular live training webinars, and twice a week Accessibility Office Hours that invite individuals and agencies to get help on their strategies and content development.

The ACCESS team FY26 training plans include the following:

1. Expand training offerings both in topics and audience and integrating accessibility considerations into existing required trainings for Commonwealth employees.
2. Work with Human Resources Division colleagues to finalize and include a training course on digital accessibility basics as part of the mandatory annual trainings.
3. Create a dedicated training site including interactive practice examples and interactive step-by-step checklists.
4. Expand training and office hours to Municipalities and Schools.

Design and Development Accessibility Work

To strengthen the accessibility of Commonwealth applications and the Mass.gov platform, a unified accessible design system and development best practices are needed. These measures will lead to a more proactive approach to shift accessibility left into the software development process and expedite development time while reducing discovered issues during the testing process. Plans for FY25-26 include the following:

1. Partner with the Massachusetts Digital Service experience design and research team to embed accessibility into the current and future Massachusetts design system and pattern asset library.
2. Further define and implement accessibility requirements for planning and software development project phases.
3. Explore and implement tools to test designs, conduct design reviews, and test code.
4. Partner with the experience design and research team to ensure that studies are accessible and include individuals with disabilities using assistive technology into constituent participant pools.
5. Create and publish an interactive searchable online knowledge base to allow designers, developers, testers, and third-party vendors to learn about accessibility requirements, remediation techniques, and design and coding best practices.

Testing and remediation of discovered accessibility issues is essential to further increase accessibility of digital asset deliverables. The ACCESS team has assisted with several testing projects covering multiple Secretariats and will continue providing testing services in FY26. Plans to structure and hire an EOTSS accessibility testing services team are in progress. This team will bring testing in-house for greater control, quality, speed and cost efficiency.