We’re celebrating the release of our new benefits experience onUSA.gov and USAGov en Español. It features a redesigned benefit finder tool, offering a more streamlined way to find government benefits for health care, housing, food, unemployment, and more.

This major update came as a result of the closing of Benefits.gov, SSABest.Benefits.gov, and GovLoans.gov. It transitions the role of the government’s one-stop shop for federal benefits information to theUSAGov program.

Ensuring USA.gov and USAGov en Español are accessible to people with disabilities is one of our top priorities. And planning for accessibility begins before we create a single piece of code. Learn how developers from our Web Operations team and specialists from our Accessibility team work closely to create an inclusive digital experience.

Since its launch in 2016, vote.gov has been known as a trusted source for accurate, official voting information from the U.S. government. We recently gave the site a new look with improved accessibility features and expanded information based on questions we heard from voters. And vote.gov is now available in 19 languages — covering 96% of the American public — with more on the way.

It can be challenging for federal programs to recruit people to participate in user research. They need to follow the privacy and security regulations and paperwork reduction laws designed to protect the public, but that adds time and complexity to the process. And it can lead to teams doing less user research with the people their websites serve.

To create a solution to this challenge, USAGov and the 10x program, both part of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), partnered to develop a user research recruitment page at usa.gov/user-research.

The Public Experience Portfolio's User Experience (UX) team consistently conducts research to evaluate various aspects of the program. We generally try to recruit a broad audience but also use a prequalification process to ensure diversity. Despite these efforts, we found we weren’t reaching the disability community as thoroughly as we would like. We decided to conduct a dedicated study with individuals who use assistive technology to access USA.gov.

Federal laws protect voting rights for people with disabilities, but many people with disabilities experience barriers to voting, leading to lower voting rates. 

After the November 2022 midterm elections, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) estimated that if voters with disabilities had voted at the same rates as voters without disabilities, there would be around 2 million more votes cast. The EAC also found that people with disabilities voted at a 3.6 percent lower rate than people without disabilities, though that number narrowed to 1.5 percent after being adjusted with updated Census data. 

Accessibility matters both in person and online. As an official government source of voting information, vote.gov helps voters with disabilities know that their voting rights are protected by law. And it makes them aware of accommodations available to help them register and vote.

At USA.gov and USAGov en Español, we’re always striving to make our content more useful to the public. Meta descriptions are one way we help people quickly find the government information they’re looking for.

Search.gov connects the public with easy access to the government information and services they need, creating a unified search experience across over one-third of federal domains. Our program’s core mission and goals are the same every year, but how did the way people interact with government search change in 2023? 

Last fall, vote.gov and the USAGov program partnered on our first “social media takeover” for a day-long campaign encouraging people to register to vote. As key players connecting people to official government information and services, we rooted this effort in our mutual messaging and goals to help guide the public.

Empathy was one of the guiding principles we used when we created the new version of USAGov’s benefit finder. We believe that in addition to being a critical component of human-centered design, empathy is essential for our product. People who are applying for federal benefits may be going through a difficult life situation. If we can’t empathize and fail to offer a product that understands and meets people where they are, we might lose the opportunity to provide the practical support they need.