va.gov - Sitewide Content, Accessibility and Information Architecture
Department of Veterans Affairs
Challenge
The CAIA (Sitewide Content, Accessibility, and Information Architecture) project team at the Department of Veterans Affairs enhances the digital experience for Veterans and their families by ensuring timely access to information, improving content accessibility, and refining information architecture
Role
The So Company’s role on the team is a Bilingual Content Editor who serves as coordinator of translated content on VA.gov and associated products and as the copy editor for Spanish content. This role involves managing the entire translation process, collaborating with translation partners, and ensuring quality assurance for all Spanish materials. The vision for the Bilingual Content Editor role is to help Veterans whose primary language is Spanish find core benefit information on Va.gov in their primary language.
What we did
The CAIA team's approach is as follows:
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Content-specific research: We anticipate greater research needs specific to content, including the need for regular comprehension testing.
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Multilingual content research: As we continue to build out more translated content and supporting functionality, we anticipate needing to engage in research around multilingual content.
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IA research: We anticipate executing more regular testing and measurement of the overall health of the IA of VA.gov, as well as more targeted IA research in support of content migration, product launches, and general experience optimization efforts.
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Accessibility research: When WCAG 2.2 is finalized and published, we must update the VA.gov testing procedures. Cognitive accessibility (in partnership with the content and IA teams) is an area we want to improve by measuring and testing.
The process of creating new Spanish pages from existing English pages on Va.gov involves several collaborative steps between the CAIA team and State Dept translators.
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Our Bilingual Content Editor prioritizes both new pages and any unfinished pages left by previous editors.
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Along with reviewing content, they confirm VA prioritization of webpages, they prepare the selected English page for translation by reviewing it for compliance ( VA.gov Style Guide, word count, live page links, and meta descriptions, and labeling headers, accordions, and alerts.
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Our Bilingual Content Editor then manages the workflow of completed Spanish transcription from their State Department collaborators.
Impact
The final process includes final review of the Spanish content, tracking any errors in the live page, and documentation. After the CAIA team reviews and comments for accessibility and information architecture, the Bilingual Content Editor facilitates web publishing into VA.gov. This streamlined approach ensures the accuracy and consistency of translated content on the website.