Content, Accessibility, and Information Architecture support - Sitewide CAIA
Last Updated:
Who is CAIA?
The Sitewide Content, Accessibility, and Information Architecture (CAIA) team is made up of content, accessibility, and information architecture experts who work with many product teams and partners across VA. The team also responds to urgent work (such as public health emergencies like COVID-19, new laws, Congressional mandates, and Executive Orders). CAIA's work aims to improve the customer experience of Veterans and their family members and help VA deliver digital services more equitably and effectively, especially for those who have been historically under-served.
CAIA is an integral part of the Collaboration Cycle and may partner with your team’s journey by providing guidance and support in the areas outlined below.
Content
The CAIA content team provides content support to product teams as much as our capacity allows. The level of support we can provide varies depending on our current workload and OCTO priorities.
Content for your product
Content collaboration on the tool or form itself may include:
High-level content design and strategy
Content creation or edits to existing content for plain language and style guide standards
Content on the rest of VA.gov
The CAIA content team manages all unauthenticated VA.gov webpages in the benefit hubs and the resources and support section. Product-related work in this category may include:
Updating to static pages related to the product or creating new static pages to serve as entry points to products
Working with the product team on react widgets for incremental releases
Advocating for plain language and style guide standards with SMEs
Content migration from legacy products and websites
Incorporating research findings into content design for pages and products
Information Architecture
The CAIA Information Architecture team helps you create wayfinding mechanisms within your product and helps situate your product within the larger information architecture of VA.gov.
User journeys, entry points, and important relationships: What triggers a veteran or user's need for this product, and how will they know it exists and find it? What areas on the site will link to this product? What other products or pages should crosslink to this product?
Page placement: Where will the page live in our VA.gov sitemap and why?
Connections within VA.gov: Implementation of entry points, crosslinking, and search best bets (once the product is in production)
URLs and breadcrumbs: What should the URL be and why?
Redirects: Is this product replacing a page that we need to redirect? If we are redirecting content or tools from legacy pages (e.g. eBenefits, the “old” VA websites), a lot of stakeholder coordination is needed. Connect with those stakeholders early!
Best Bets: If you go to VA.gov Search and type in 'pension,' you’ll see 2 results under “our top recommendations.” We can help set up which URLs appear under top recommendations for different keywords, making your page more findable in search results.
Accessibility
The Accessibility team's goal is to empower teams to deliver the most accessible products possible for Veterans. We do this by providing teams with insights, training, and support as accessibility subject matter experts.
Research Support and guidance, including pilot sessions
Audits and health checks
Staging review audit
Support for design discovery
Wireframe and prototype reviews
What is the difference between Governance and CAIA?
The Governance Team owns the Collaboration Cycle, ensuring that teams meet VA.gov's Experience Standards and QA Standards. They check the VFS team's product adherence to these Experience and QA Standards during 3 separate touchpoint meetings: the Design Intent, the Midpoint review, and the Staging review. During these checkpoints, Platform Governance ensures that VFS teams are on course and following VA.gov Experience and QA Standards in specific practice areas: Design, Information Architecture (IA), Content, Accessibility, and Quality Assurance (QA). After reviewing a product or feature, the Governance Team makes recommendations that align with those standards.
Sitewide CAIA partners with the VFS team throughout the product lifecycle process to provide them with the information, guidance, and resources needed to build exceptional Veteran-facing products. There are no strict touchpoints. Rather, CAIA will collaborate through a mix of working formats, such as office hours, regular product- or topic-specific meetings, and asynchronous collaboration, depending on project needs and team capacity.
When to start work with CAIA
Reaching out to CAIA early in your development process will increase the likelihood that we can support your work and establish a collaboration timeline. The Sitewide CAIA team works on nearly every OCTO product and manages all unauthenticated content on VA.gov. We prioritize intake requests based on capacity and VA and OCTO priorities.
Our goals
To ensure your product design meets these standards:
Content should be in alignment with the VA.gov Style Guide. Content should be accurate, consistent, accessible, equitable, and easily found, understood, and used by Veterans and beneficiaries.
Optimal user flows that are findable and properly placed within VA’s IA (in alignment with VA.gov navigation standards)
A fully accessible product experience for all, including Veterans using assistive devices (in alignment with VA accessibility requirements)
What we help with
Outcomes may vary according to the specific practice area support provided.
Before research
Before you take your product through usability research, the Sitewide CAIA team will work with you to provide the following:
Content and IA strategy, based on complexity and size of effort
IA design, including user flows, site placement, navigation components, primary entry points, and any crosslinking needs
Editing for plain language and VA.gov content standards, as team capacity allows
Guidance in advocating for plain language with SMEs, as needed
Planning/doing research
Before and during usability research, the Sitewide CAIA team will work with you to provide the following:
Guidance on content- or IA-focused research
Support for assistive technology users during research sessions
After research
After usability research, you'll share your research findings with the Sitewide CAIA team. The team will work with you on related recommendations and provide the following:
Content and IA strategy guidance (as needed)
Finalized IA design, including URLs
Contact us
Reach out to CAIA through their #sitewide-content-accessibility-ia Slack channel, or tag them in your channel, using any of the following Slack handles:
@sitewide-caia (all CAIA team members)
@sidewide-ia (CAIA's information architects)
@sitewide-caia-content (CAIA's content specialists)
@sitewide-caia-accessibility (CAIA's accessibility specialists)
To start formally working with CAIA, submit a Sitewide Content, Accessibility, and IA intake form ticket in GitHub.
Help and feedback
Get help from the Platform Support Team in Slack.
Submit a feature idea to the Platform.