CDHS Digital Accessibility Plan

Our journey toward a digitally accessible Colorado

The Colorado Department of Human Services is actively moving from the digital accessibility planning phase to the implementation phase in order to provide Coloradans with access and a user-friendly experience to all of our services, resources and communication.

As such, CDHS continues to do our part to make sure our digital content and communication technologies are accessible to individuals with disabilities. This includes webpages, mobile applications, social media and electronic documents. For more information about House Bill 21-1110 and what the State of Colorado is doing to make services accessible, read the Governor's Office of Information Technology accessibility FAQs.

With a commitment to meet members of our community where they are, we carefully ensure all CDHS materials and technology such as web pages, mobile applications, social media and electronic or printed material are understandable and easily navigated by all users — including those with sensory, cognitive, motor and mobility challenges, regardless of ability. 

By keeping digital accessibility at the forefront of our work, we’re able to successfully integrate universal design, inclusivity and digital accessibility principles into CDHS operations, allowing us to serve all Coloradans to the greatest extent possible. We partner with departments and agencies across the state to make sure cross-functional information sharing is current, compliant and consistent. CDHS prioritizes and proactively communicates valuable updates on digital accessibility, legislative rule adoptions, policy and procedure changes, recommendations and available training options to our staff, affiliated partners and the public.

Training our team

CDHS has championed digital accessibility awareness across the agency, and prides itself on providing flexible digital accessibility training and education opportunities to all CDHS employees on why digital accessibility matters, and how their role contributes to its success. We have developed an intranet page to ensure valuable information and resources are provided to leadership and staff. This includes live training dates, free resources, how-to-guides and on-demand training for digital accessibility remediation at the department level, and software/program access requests. CDHS also offers open-hours Q&A sessions, as well as working group meetings centered on digital accessibility topics, news and updates. CDHS is on a mission to integrate digital accessibility into all areas of our operations, and we have included the following to support our agency staff and Coloradans across the state:

• Develop a comprehensive digital accessibility training plan to equip leadership and staff with the knowledge, skills and abilities. We do this by providing flexible training and education opportunities to all CDHS employees for maximum attendance (currently in the final stages of review and user-experience testing, before release). These opportunities include:
  • Scheduled-live and/or small group-training environments
  • Convenient pre-developed on-demand courses, modules, videos, demonstrations and digital accessibility self-service guides
• Provide CDHS staff with a digital accessibility toolkit containing several pre-built, digitally accessible and compliant document templates. These tools help each employee create material/content that meets compliance standards:
  • Meeting minutes
  • Agendas
  • After action reports
  • Emails
  • Slide decks
• Host digital accessibility open office hours for CDHS leadership and staff, dedicated to specific employee roles, titles and responsibilities to review governmental and legislative updates, rule changes, best practices, and topic-specific Q&As.

Testing

To maintain the latest compliance standards, CDHS employees continuously review, update and make improvements to our digital content, electronic and printed materials throughout the year to proactively identify and remediate (fix) areas of non-compliance or misalignment.

• We regularly utilize tools such as the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) and Contrast Checker by WebAIM by WebAIM to conduct recurring automated, manual, end-user and user-experience testing. 
• We partner with industry-recognized digital accessibility vendors to perform automated and manual testing of our websites and applications to ensure compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1, levels A and AA criteria.

Commitment to accessible technology

CDHS demonstrates a strong commitment to ensuring all digitally accessible contracts, technology procurements and purchases are transparent and meet compliance standards. As such, we have developed systems and enacted processes to ensure all legally binding contracts and the materials we procure meet or exceed the established technical standards by including mandatory digital accessibility assurances and language referencing standards (e.g., WCAG 2.1 AA) in all RFPs and vendor contracts.  

• We require vendors to complete Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPATs) or Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs) for our review.
• We evaluate vendors' commitment to digital accessibility through their policies, processes and a willingness to provide digital accessibility demonstrations.
• We embed specific language/contractual obligations and clauses requiring vendors to identify and fix digital accessibility issues, in addition to providing roadmaps for future improvements.