Quality Assurance Analyst - Remote

This is Us

The State of Connecticut is leading a new digital transformation to uplift the lives and well-being of our residents, businesses, and employees. Our goal is to improve access to our programs and services, making interaction with government easier. When you join the Connecticut Digital Service, you’ll be part of a team creating simple experiences personalized for everyone. If you enjoy solving complex problems with a curious, supportive, high-performing team, then the State of Connecticut is the place for you.

Is This You?

Problem Solver. You are comfortable navigating bureaucracy to address wicked problems.

Iterative. You understand and accept the value of incremental improvement.

Service-Oriented. You are passionate about government innovation and improving services for your fellow residents.

About the Role

The State of Connecticut (CT) is seeking a Digital Accessibility Tester who has strong experience in the manual testing of complex digital assets. These assets include websites, applications, documents, enterprise platforms, mobile apps, chatbots, digital forms, authenticated user systems, CMS integrations, and various legacy technologies. You will develop test cases, maintain test libraries, manually test assets and identify accessibility issues, manage issue inventories, document solutions, and guide multiple state and vendor teams in remediating problems to help them reach compliance with state accessibility standards.

You will work across several verticals including health, business, education, transportation, employment, judicial, housing, agriculture and many more. This role demands a deep familiarity with the requirements and processes for complying with current and future accessibility standards as documented in WCAG, ADA, and Section 508. You will also support cross-functional teams who have responsibilities in the application of remediation efforts connected to your testing work. These teams include website administrators, content developers, platform engineers, and digital asset managers. You will be responsible for clearly communicating testing results to stakeholders as needed and be able to intelligently answer questions about your testing processes and results.   

This role requires strong QA practices, proactive problem-solving, and an ability to meet consistent project deadlines. Your work will help open up access to critical state services and change lives.

Main Responsibilities

NOTE: This is a testing-heavy role. Manual testing of digital assets is the primary responsibility of this position.

·       Conduct testing of digital products, services, and technologies, to ensure the State can meet the highest standards of accessibility

·       Maintain and organize testing data to allow for focused application of remediation efforts

·       Assist with code review and remediation, helping developers and engineers quickly apply best practice solutions for critical usability issues

This role will support the State’s enterprise initiative for accessibility optimization. To better understand the needs, we broke down additional responsibilities into seven main areas.

Assessment

•         Audit current State systems and customer-facing assets to find accessibility issues. Assemble and deliver test data to show commonalities as well as unique areas of need

•         Develop test cases and improve testing protocols, to allow for the deepest discovery of issues

•         Clearly summarize accessibility findings and provide recommendations for remediation, including code-level and role-based recommendations and solutions

•         Evaluate new vendor products for compliance with accessibility standards, and help improve the State procurement process for technology and digital services

Documentation

•         Collect and document testing data to allow for clear benchmarking, gap analysis, and risk assessment aligned to platform, service domain, asset type, and customer journey

•         Support performance scoring, compliance tracking, and analysis reports

•         Align with State Accessibility leadership to help support the roadmap, vision, and strategy for enterprise accessibility improvements

Testing/QA

•         Execute and iterate manual accessibility testing for all state digital assets, before and after remediation

•         Integrate testing policies and perform quality checks on audit processes to validate results and support best practices for testing, for both state and vendor work

Communication

•         Clearly communicate testing outcomes and provide expertise to help stakeholders understand results

•         Keep Accessibility leadership apprised of progress, challenges, and outcomes related to the enterprise testing efforts

•         Establish and maintain effective relationships across multiple teams to help support accessibility work at the State.

Maintaining

•         Maintain test libraries, testing standards, tool configurations, data repositories, and reporting frameworks to help support the state’s ongoing governance of accessibility standards

•         Mentor internal team members and agency staff on accessibility standards and testing approaches to promote sustainability and skills transfer

•         Stay on top of the latest changes in WCAG, ADA, and Section 508 standards, and document and apply adjustments to testing practices to accommodate these changes

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Ability

•         Bachelor’s degree is required, preferably in the field of Computer Science, Software Engineering, IT, Web Development, Library or Informational Science, or Human Computer Interaction

•         3+ years of hands-on digital accessibility testing experience, including experience with assistive technologies, WCAG compliance, and manual testing methods

•         2+ years of experience on a digital product team, either working as a project owner or individual contributor, working collaboratively with internal and external teams to improve products and services using digital accessibility technologies, policies, and best practices

•         Strong proficiency in manual testing with assistive tech: NVDA, JAWS, Dragon, Fusion, Deque, Wave, ZoomText, VoiceOver, TalkBack. Also expertise with built-in device features such as speech-to-text, text-to-speech, magnifiers, onscreen keyboards, eye gaze tech, and alternative input devices including keyboards

•         Strong proficiency in HTML, ARIA, and semantic markup knowledge

•         Expertise in auditing common and legacy systems and products to find accessibility issues, providing guidance for mitigating issues, and improving accessibility knowledge and practices within internal teams

•         Demonstrated understanding of user-centered design (UCD) methodologies and how to use testing data to support accessibility design problems

•         Strong understanding of responsive web design principles, techniques, and frameworks