Staging Review finding: Missing punctuation could confuse screen reader users.

[shiragoodman]

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Product Information

Team: Benefits team 1
Product: Claim status tool
Feature: Claims process overview page

Findings details

VA.gov Experience Standard - issue: User encounters content that does not meet best practices.
VA.gov Experience Standard - category: Comprehension
Launch-blocking: No
Design System review: No
Collab Cycle Reviewer: @briandeconinck (Accessibility)

Description

On the Overview page (example) in steps 3 through 6, there's a line of text offset with a box that reads "Step may repeat if we need more information" followed by a paragraph of text that begins the description of that step, eg. "We'll review your claim and..."

The "Step may repeat if we need more information" line does not end with any punctuation. Screen readers often detect punctuation as a cue to pause briefly when reading text (like a human would when reaching the end of a sentence), but they do not reliably pause for a change in visual styling. For screen reader users, this is announced as a single flow: "Step may repeat if we need more information we’ll review your claim and make sure we have all the evidence and information we need."

Screen reader users are used to hearing a webpage be announced in a way that's not totally natural, but the specific wording of Step 3 is makes this a little harder to parse out what the content is supposed to be. Which one is it saying?

• "Step may repeat if we need more information. We’ll review your claim and make sure we have all the evidence and information we need."
• "Step may repeat. If we need more information, we’ll review your claim and make sure we have all the evidence and information we need."

Both could be valid at first listen. But if you initially interpreted it as the second option then you end up with a nonsense sentence that users may have trouble understanding (if we need information, we'll make sure we have the information we need).

Recommended action

Unless there's something in the style guide indicating otherwise, I think a period solves all of this: "Step may repeat if we need more information."

References

• Accessibility Defect Severity: 4: Low. Consider fixing or exploring in 2-4 sprints post-launch.
• WCAG Success Criteria: N/A
• Modality: Screen reader
• Design System Component: N/A
• Design System Pattern or Template: N/A
• Design System Foundation: N/A
• Content Style Guide: N/A
• Context: N/A

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