Full Accessibility & 508 Office Audit [T]VANotify - Email Template]

[miabecker]

Context:

VANotify is a new notifications platform at the VA whose mission is to improve the overall experience and quality of communications with veterans using modern digital technology, by building a centralized and self-service platform through which business lines and development teams can send communications to veterans.

Over the past few months, VANotify has been working with Trevor Pierce from an Accessibility perspective, Peggy Gannon from a content/language perspective as well as engaged in a Design Intent Collaboration Cycle with VSP in order to build an email template for the VA Notify platform.

For clarification, a template is global and will be used in 90% of the business lines and use cases that utilize the VANotify platform – which hopes to become the centralized platform at the VA. We currently have two use-cases in production. The first being the 526EZ Disability Application Confirmation Email and the second being a series of emails around the VA's Covid Response and Planning Updates.

We are super passionate about accessibility as a team and have been learning and doing as much as we can to make our email communication as up to code as possible. We look forward to engaging with your team.

Artifacts -

We would like to trigger/send an email to whoever is reviewing this ticket. We have attached a mock-up of the digital communication we want you to review so you know what it looks like. Also, have attached a list of our known defects that are currently in our backlog. bug-bash_accessibility_form526ez.xlsx

• Link to verification that accessibility checks are complete - staging review prep: Attached! Some of our repositories are private so attaching a PDF here.

• Foundational Accessibility Checklist.pdf

• List of known issues (with links to tickets when applicable) - Attached.

Additional Notes

Specifically from an accessibility perspective, we have reviewed and implemented many of the accessibility guidelines, have worked with screen readers as well as run extensive tests in Litmus for browser compatbility. Attached is a list of the known issues we are looking to remediate. Specifically, with Trevor we have also:

• Set up a live pairing with him to audit our HTML email template via the Litmus tool

• For extra foundational validation, we shared the HTML email template with him to facilitate his own foundational testing (HTML validator scanner, axe scanner). He gave us a green light on that front.

• [Validate/Debrief] Set up a separate, 1-hr debrief/clarification session with him after our team bug bashing. Prior to the call, we set about 2 weeks for manual testing with screen readers across devices we have access to. Bugs/questions were captured in the attached spreadsheet. When it came time for our debrief session with Trevor, we walked through the spreadsheet and chatted about anything that seemed ambiguous and/or needed validation (aka "is this a bug we need to address?").

[miabecker]

@shiragoodman just checking in and seeing if you need anything from us? Know the holidays and this week has been pretty crazy.

[shiragoodman]

thanks for reaching out @miabecker ! I met with our accessibility specialists yesterday. @noahgelman will be taking on this work. He has a 1 or 2 audits that are taking priority (they were requested earlier), but should be getting to this within the next week or 2. Noah might reach out with questions.

[miabecker]

No problem at all! This is a great and helpful update! Thank you.

On Fri, Jan 8, 2021 at 11:31 AM shiragoodman notifications@github.com wrote:

thanks for reaching out @miabecker https://github.com/miabecker ! I met with our accessibility specialists yesterday. @noahgelman https://github.com/noahgelman will be taking on this work. He has a 1 or 2 audits that are taking priority (they were requested earlier), but should be getting to this within the next week or 2. Noah might reach out with questions.

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[noahgelman]

@miabecker Hello, I'm ready to get started on this. Can a copy of this be sent to my email at noah.gelman@adhocteam.us

[noahgelman]

Audit for this has been completed.