Ensuring USA.gov and USAGov en Español are accessible to people with disabilities is one of our top priorities. And planning for accessibility begins before we create a single piece of code. Learn how developers from our Web Operations team and specialists from our Accessibility team work closely to create an inclusive digital experience.
Partnering from the start
Our developers and accessibility specialists learned that it’s best to work together from the beginning on projects, instead of conducting accessibility reviews after websites and features have been developed. This partnership from the start reduces rework and avoids potential delays in releasing our products to the public.
Understanding requirements and standards
Accessibility specialists help developers understand how to implement new and established accessibility standards that federal websites need to meet. These include the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the international standard for web content accessibility, and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires federal websites and electronic resources to be accessible.
Creating and testing accessible design and code
Members of the two teams use shared tools and processes to develop accessible design and code. During regular reviews and feedback sessions, a specialist evaluates the accessibility of web design elements like color contrast, font sizes, and heading hierarchy, as well as code. We manually test with screen readers and keyboard navigation, and do automated testing with tools like WAVE and ANDI to highlight accessibility issues and suggest fixes. By doing this testing on a local environment, accessibility experts and developers catch coding errors before they’re pushed to the development, stage, and production environments. This ensures all content, design elements, and interactive features are accessible and creates an inclusive and frustration-free experience for users.
Planning and communication
We do our work in sprints. Each sprint begins with developers refining the backlog of tasks in our project management tool. Tasks are prioritized by a team that includes a product manager, lead engineer, and team manager. Task assignments and communication happen, while task updates are staged and approved in the software development platform to integrate fixes into the development, stage, and production environments. We conduct tests in each environment to verify that we’ve resolved issues. During sprints, we meet twice a week to go over weekly tasks and address any issues that have come up. Accessibility team members answer questions the developers may have about a function or tool they’re building. At the end of the sprint, the developer and accessibility teams conduct a retrospective to discuss things that did or didn’t work and how to improve the process.
Ongoing collaboration
Our teams continue to look for ways to improve our accessibility development process by reviewing the work we’ve done together and planning our next steps. And by keeping communication flowing, we’re building good relationships and a strong collaborative partnership as we’re making government information accessible for everyone.
