The VA's careers website violated the law by not providing accessibility for applicants with disabilities, an April 7 inspector general's report found.
The site, MyCareer@VA, provides potential applicants and current employees with job news career planning options within the department.
Related: Read the report
But following a 2014 redesign of the site, the OIG found that certain functionalities were in violation of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which governs how federal agencies make technology accessible to people with disabilities.
During testing of the website's VA Learning University, a feature that provided career development programs for users, the OIG noted that designers and compliance staff were aware of multiple Section 508 failures and rolled out the redesigned site without fixes.
"We found that MyCareer@VA project officials did not address nearly 200 known issues and did not seek certification of compliance prior to the deployment of the Web site," the report said.
The report said that VALU officials failed to address at least 173 high or medium-level issues, including not ensuring that valid labels for form fields that were disability accessible.
Another issue was the InterviewStream feature, which allowed users to record their answers to standard interview questions and review them for practice.
The feature did not provide closed captions, however, and a member of the VALU 508 support team said in 2014 that the feature would not be 508 compliant without an overhaul of its functionality. Knowing this, the OIG said officials did not seek a Section 508 exception and launched the site anyway.
The contractor hired to redesign the site also did not comply with contract requirements, the report found, mostly because VALU officials didn't provide adequate oversight and policies were not specific on dealing with Section 508.
As a result, VA added $34,011 in additional costs to fix the Section 508 problems, but shifted the scope of the work on the contract so no more funding would be needed.
The OIG offered four recommendations, including:
- The VA Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration should correct all Section 508 compliance issues with the site.
- The VA Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration should develop a process to ensure compliance on other products,
- The VA Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration should develop training on how to maintain Section 508 compliance.
- The VA Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology should develop policies to ensure all Electronic and Information Technology products are Section 508 compliant prior to launch.
The VA concurred with the recommendations and had plans for implementation.
