11 minutes
The whole path, not the page Everything an online process quietly asks for before it gives anything back: a device, a connection, an account, a readable screen, private time, and a way to ask a question that is not itself online.
What you’ll be able to do Trace the whole path a person travels through one DSD digital service, from learning it exists to keeping a confirmation, and name the link most likely to stop someone. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should the team look at first? Document a next step for The whole path, not the page: Pick one digital service your work touches. Write its six links on one line each, in the order a person meets them, and mark the link you have never actually tested yourself. A chain, and a standard that covers one link When a process moves onto a screen, it stops being one thing a person does and becomes a chain of separate requirements. They have to learn the service exists. They need a device that runs current software. They need a connection that holds long enough to finish. They usually have to create an account and be able to get back into it later. They have to read the screen, understand what is being asked, and produce whatever it asks for, often a document photographed or scanned. Then they need a confirmation they can keep and a way to ask a question when something goes wrong.
Accessibility standards describe one of those links very well. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set out what has to be true of the page itself. Minnesota's accessibility standard for state digital content follows them, and the U.S. Department of Justice requirement for state and local government web content and mobile applications points to the same guidelines, with compliance dates that vary by the size of the government entity. Meeting that standard matters and is not optional. It also says nothing about whether the person has a device, a connection, a private place to sit, or the hours the process assumes.
This is how a service can be certified and still be unreachable. The division tests the link it can see. The chain breaks at the links nobody looked at: the notice that only reached people already on an email list, the upload that rejects a photograph taken on an older phone, the help line answered only during the hours a person is at work.
Six links, and the question each one asks Finding out: does the person learn the service exists, in a language and format they use, from a source they already trust, or only by searching for a phrase they would have to know in advance?
Getting on: do they have a device that runs what the page needs, a connection that holds for the length of the task, and enough data left in the month to finish it?
Getting in: can they create an account and get back into it later, including after changing a phone number, losing a device or forgetting a password?
Reading the screen: does it work with the settings and tools they use — enlarged text, a screen reader, captions, speech input, keyboard only, a small phone screen?
Finishing: can they produce what is asked for, in the time allowed, somewhere private enough to enter personal information?
Afterward: do they keep a confirmation they can read later, and is there a way to ask a question that is not itself online?
Four ways the chain breaks in Minnesota The device is not theirs The connection comes and goes The screen does not fit the person There is no way through that is not online
A shared family laptop. A phone that belongs to a spouse. A library computer with a forty-five minute limit. A device in a residential setting that staff control. The person may be perfectly able to use the service and still have no private, unhurried time on a screen. A process that asks for personal information, a long form and a saved password has assumed a private device that many people do not have.
Service quality is not spread evenly across Minnesota. In parts of the state a household may have one option, or rely on a mobile connection with a monthly limit. A long form with no save-and-return, an instruction given only as video, or a large upload turns an ordinary task into an expensive one. Minnesota's Office of Broadband Development publishes where service is and is not available; that map rarely matches the assumption inside the design.
Text that cannot be enlarged without pieces disappearing. A form whose labels are not attached to their fields. A control that responds only to a mouse. A color that is the only signal that something is wrong. Each of these is invisible to the person who built it and absolute for the person who meets it.
The paper form is discontinued, the phone line has a long wait during working hours, and the office visit needs an appointment made online. The service has not become optional. It has become conditional on being able to use one channel. Any process that moves online needs a route that does not, published in the same place, with the same weight, and staffed well enough to be a real option.
Count who is missing, not only who finished What you can change You control which number goes into the report. Completions, average time and satisfaction all describe the people who got through.
What to watch for Do not let a rising completion count stand as evidence that a change worked. It cannot see anyone who stopped at the first link, and it never will.
Your next step In your next report on a digital service, add one line naming who the count cannot see, and one thing you will do to find out.
Private reflection, kept by you and not collected anywhere: the last time I described a process as easy, whose device, connection, reading speed and free hours was I picturing, and how close were they to my own?
Carry this forward A digital service is a chain of separate requirements: learning it exists, having a device that runs it, a connection that holds, an account you can get back into, a screen you can read, private time to finish, and a confirmation you can keep. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weak link is rarely the one that was tested.
Accessibility standards describe one link very well. They say what must be true of the page. They say nothing about whether a person owns a device, has coverage where they live, has a private place to use it, or has the hours the process assumes.
Moving a process online moves work; it does not remove it. Somebody absorbs the scanning, the printing, the trip to a library, the borrowed phone, the call during working hours. Digital equity asks who that somebody is and whether anyone decided it on purpose.
“One online form for everyone” sounds fair and is not. Treating identical treatment as equal access is the minimization pattern this program exists to move past: sameness in the process, unevenness in who can actually use it.
A scenario about an online comment form that met the technical standard, a knowledge check on what a rising completion count can and cannot show, and a walk of the six links in a service of your own.
Pick one digital service your work touches. Write its six links on one line each, in the order a person meets them, and mark the link you have never actually tested yourself.
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Course overview Next lesson Carry this into practice Every online process is a set of requirements about devices, connections, sign-ins, privacy and reading speed. Four lessons on seeing the whole path a person travels, ending with a review you run on one real service.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
