Sitewide Content, Accessibility, and Information Architecture (CAIA) intake request
Did we recommend that your team submit a Sitewide content, accessibility, and information architecture (CAIA) intake request in the Collaboration Cycle Request ticket? If yes, follow these guidelines to get started.
Owner
Sitewide CAIA team
What is the difference between Governance and CAIA?
Timing
Submit this request as soon as you have early user flows or designs. This is usually around the time of the Design Intent meeting and should be done well before usability testing. You can also submit your request when you have a product brief to connect with the team early and understand the existing content landscape on a topic area. The Sitewide CAIA team guides partners on content across product teams and the broader VA.
Format
Collaborative and ongoing with a mix of working formats (office hours, regular product- or topic-specific meetings, and asynchronous collaboration) depending on project needs and team capacity. The Sitewide CAIA team provides ongoing collaboration, guidance, and support throughout the design and development of your product. The team will also advise on whether your product needs supporting unauthenticated content, such as a landing page, and will create any needed unauthenticated content.
Objective
To ensure your product design meets these standards:
Accurate, consistent, accessible, and equitable content that Veterans and beneficiaries can easily find, understand, and use (in alignment with the http://VA.gov content style guide)
Optimal user flows that are findable and properly placed within VA’s IA (in alignment with http://VA.gov navigation standards)
A fully accessible product experience for all, including Veterans using assistive devices (in alignment with VA accessibility requirements)
Request
VFS Product Manager submits a Sitewide Content, Accessibility, and IA intake form ticket in GitHub. The Sitewide CAIA team will follow up to schedule a kickoff call to fully understand the needed support.
Artifacts
In the intake ticket, the VFS team provides the following:
Product outline
User flows (if available)
Low-fi wires, designs, or prototypes (if available)
Outcome
Outcomes may vary according to the specific practice area support provided.
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)
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 usability research, you'll share 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
Content design and editing for plain language and VA.gov content standards (as team capacity allows). The team will also work with you to incorporate any content-specific research findings into the content style guide and related documentation.
Guidance in advocating for plain language with SMEs (as needed)
Creation of new unauthenticated content or updates to existing unauthenticated pages in VA.gov benefit hubs or the resources and support section. This includes tool landing pages. The Sitewide CAIA team directly manages and publishes all unauthenticated content housed in our Drupal CMS. New tool landing pages should be brought to the Staging Review with the tool itself. If your product requires a new static landing page, your team must coordinate the timing of the Staging Review with the Sitewide CAIA team. Learn more about the difference between static and dynamic pages on VA.gov.
Implementation of entry points, crosslinking, and search best bets (once the product is in production)
Content for react widgets as an entry point on an unauthenticated page if needed. You'll create the widget with approved content and provide a widget-type code for the Sitewide CAIA team to add to the unauthenticated page in our Drupal CMS.
Redirects (as needed, coordinated with Public Websites team)
Help and feedback
Get help from the Platform Support Team in Slack.
Submit a feature idea to the Platform.