526 Accessibility Improvements

[pacerwow]

Issue Description

As a T-REX team member, I want a full accessibility audit of the online 21-526ez form so that I know more about how accessible our product is and I am able to identify future opportunities for accessibility improvements.

This work will help further the related OCTO objective "Our digital experiences are the best way to access VA health care and benefits."

Evaluation methods

• automated accessibility checkers & manual testing by accessibility specialists

Environments evaluated

• web & mobile
• latest versions of supported browsers - Safari, Edge, Chrome, Firefox
• screenreaders - VoiceOver, NVDA, JAWS, Talkback, Narrator
• other AT - Zoomtext

Bugs/violations will be recorded in an Google Sheets spreadsheet with specific WCAG violation, severity level and an general estimated "level of effort"

Note: VPAT could be split out into its own ticket
Final result will be an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) using the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)

VPAT will show conformance against the following standards

• WCAG 2.0
• WCAG 2.1
• WCAG 2.2
• Section 508

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Tasks

• Complete each subtask in this epic

Acceptance Criteria

• Accessibility audit of 526 is completed
• The results (ACR) are shared with DBEX teams and OCTO
• For identified issues, create tickets for future implementation
• Areas where 526 meets accessibility standards are also communicated and shared

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Outstanding questions

• Scope - What pages count as part of the 526 experience? Does this include post-submission / emails the veteran receives as well (like in Timely Truthful design?)
• If we don't have the resources to audit every page what would be considered a representative sample of pages (based on format of the page, elements used)?
• Which pages have the highest traffic?

[pacerwow]

Hey @bacitracin responding to the questions above:

Scope: I broke up the tickets by form section.
Representative sample: Not sure how to answer this one.
Page traffic: I prioritized the subtasks by page traffic, focusing on the most heavily used pages first
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#/analysis/p419143770/edit/BtqeUqzLR3y7cFsUETgZwQ

[mayacarrolluxa6]

Adding more context to this ticket that Rueben shared in DSVA slack. It helps sum up the future opportunities for shaping the 5103 work beyond what is scoped for Sprint 10.

https://dsva.slack.com/archives/C04KW0B46N5/p1730925565594719?thread_ts=1730825152.852169&cid=C04KW0B46N5