[a11y Project] CAIA team to take ownership of Accessibility Champs product

Changed from Governance Ticket to CAIA Ticket on 10/13/2023

Problem Statement

In a couple of sentences, describe the Who, What, Why, and Where of the challenge / pain point you seek to address.

Follow your problem description up with a "How might we... ___" statement re-framing that challenge as an opportunity. Don't hint too much at what the solution might be, you should have enough of a focal point here to guide your ideas, but plenty of freedom to think laterally and innovatively as you experiment and prototype later.

Earlier in 2023, Josh Kim (with support from Martha Wilkes and contributions from other accessibility specialists) led an effort to reboot an accessibility champions program for people working in the VA.gov space. Jennifer Strickland and Trevor Pierce had previously started a similar effort in 2020, which eventually fell by the wayside.

The goal of the accessibility champions program is to provide self-paced learning resources and exercises to build knowledge around accessibility. After some brainstorming in the accessibility specialist Slack channel, we imagined structuring this curriculum in five levels.

Community Member - Learn what accessibility is, get comfortable asking for help, and join our community; Get started with your first screen reader
Tester - Learn how to run a foundational accessibility test; Get used to some screen reader shortcuts
Advocate - Observe your first assistive technology research session; Learn the difference between the medical and social model of disability; Become familiar with design justice, co-design, and accessibility beyond compliance
Apprentice - Choose a specialty path between design, research, engineering, product, or QA; Shadow an a11y specialist and learn from each other through relational mentoring
Champion - Complete tasks typically completed by an accessibility specialist, like conduct a full product audit or facilitate a research session with assistive technology users

Level 1 has an MVP complete. Level 2 has a draft that's mostly complete. Levels 3 through 5 are pretty much undeveloped.

With the benefit of hindsight, some of the details here might need to be reimagined. There was a lot of ambition in there without a lot of time to commit to it. But the core direction of the levels is still sound: start with the basics, then progressively build a skillset to become more and more self-sufficient.

As of now, there are 15 VFS team members who have completed the Level 1 materials and are "on the books" as being part of the champions program.

Josh's departure forces some reckoning around the future of the champs program. How might we help VFS team members to build their accessibility competencies? And how might we do it in a sustainable way?

Hypothesis or Bet

How will this initiative impact the quality of VFS or Platform teams' work? How will this initiative be easy for VFS or Platform teams? Or how will it be easier than what they did before?

Primary bet:

VFS teams with at least one accessibility champion on them will have trips through the Collaboration Cycle that result in fewer launch-blocking issues. As teams become more self-sufficient, they will "shift left" on accessibility and avoid/detect barriers before they're identified by Governance team.

Secondary bets:

It's possible to build a solid MVP champions program mainly using existing guidance from trusted sources. Minimal original documentation writing will be required, just documentation curation. This will make both the initial launch and ongoing maintenance for the program much more manageable than what was originally imagined by Josh.
If successful, a Platform-owned champions program may be a model for extending our education efforts beyond a one-time orientation, with potential to repeat across all practice areas.
If successful, a Platform-owned champions program could be used as a factor in determining team maturity, eg. for a hypothetical streamlined Collab Cycle, skipping staging reviews and auditing in production, etc.

We will know we're done when... ("Definition of Done")

What requirements does this project need to meet for you to finish this initiative?

The accessibility champions curriculum is appropriately scoped and outlined.
Resources and exercises are published for all supported champion levels.
An ongoing maintenance plan is in place.

Known Blockers/Dependencies

List any blockers or dependencies for this work to be completed

Projected Launch Date

When do you expect to be completed rolling out this initiative*

Launch Checklist

Guidance (delete before posting)

This checklist is intended to be used to help answer, "is my Platform initiative ready for launch?". All of the items in this checklist should be completed, with artifacts linked---or have a brief explanation of why they've been skipped---before launching a given Platforminitiative. All links or explanations can be provided in Required Artifacts sections. The items that can be skipped are marked as such.

Keep in mind the distinction between Product and Initiative --- each Product needs specific supporting documentation, but Initiatives to improve existing Products should reuse existing documentation for that Product. VSP Product Terminology for details.

Is this service / tool / feature...

... tested?

[ ] Usability test (TODO: link) has been performed, to validate that new changes enable users to do what was intended and that these changes don't worsen quality elsewhere. If usability test isn't relevant for this change, document the reason for skipping it.
- [ ] ... and issues discovered in usability testing have been addressed.
- Note on skipping: metrics that show the impact of before/after can be a substitute for usability testing.
[ ] End-to-end manual QA or UAT is complete, to validate there are no high-severity issues before launching
[ ] (if applicable) New functionality has thorough, automated tests running in CI/CD

... documented?

[ ] New documentation is written pursuant to our documentation style guide
[ ] Product is included in the List of VSP Products
- List the existing product that this initiative fits within, or add a new product to this list.
[ ] Internal-facing: there's a Product Outline
[ ] External-facing: a User Guide on Platform Website exists for this product/feature tool
[ ] (if applicable) Post to #vsp-service-design for external communication about this change (e.g. customer-facing meetings)

... measurable

[ ] (if applicable) This change has clearly-defined success metrics, with instrumentation of those analytics where possible, or a reason documented for skipping it.
- For help, see: Analytics team
[ ] This change has an accompanying Platform Release Plan.

When you're ready to launch...

[ ] Configure your communication to teams about your work using the Change Communication Guide
[ ] Conduct a go/no-go when you're almost ready to launch.

Required Artifacts

Documentation

PRODUCT_NAME: directory name used for your product documentation
Product Outline: link to Product Outline
User Guide: link to User Guide

Testing

Usability test: link to GitHub issue, or provide reason for skipping
Manual QA: link to GitHub issue or documented results
Automated tests: link to tests, or "N/A"

Measurement

Success metrics: link to where success metrics are measured, or where they're defined (Product Outline is OK), or provide reason for skipping
Release plan: link to Release Plan ticket

TODOs

[ ] Convert this issue to an epic
[ ] Add your team's label to this epic
[ ] Add this initiative to the Digital Experience Product Board using these instructions

### a11ys Tasks
- [x] Inquire with the CAIA team [re: participation in this ticket and interest 10/17/2023 via Slack] (https://oddball.slack.com/archives/C05LB36ATAQ/p1697571258580959) **(@sara-amanda )**
- [ ] Finalize project lead and contributors for this project with **~@coforma-terry~** Martha
- [ ] https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team/issues/83204
- [x] Move ticket to `icebox` status and keep as a `chipper` per Martha convo on `8/13/2024`, during OCTO/a11y refinement call

department-of-veterans-affairs / va.gov-team