11 minutes

Four checks that find different things

Accessibility, plain language, cultural responsiveness and stakeholder impact overlap, and none of them substitutes for the others. Each becomes useful only when it is a question someone can answer with evidence.

What you’ll be able to do

Turn accessibility, plain language, cultural responsiveness and stakeholder impact into four questions a reviewer can answer with evidence, and identify which check would find a given problem in a draft.
Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: Which finding is this review most likely to miss, and why does it matter?
Document a next step for Four checks that find different things: Take one page of something your team wrote and answer all four questions against it in writing. Note which question you could not answer without asking someone else, and name that someone.

Four checks, because they see different things

It is tempting to collapse these into one question about fairness and trust people to apply it. In practice that produces reviews where everyone agrees the draft seems fine, and the findings depend entirely on who happened to be in the room. Four separate checks work better because each one has a different instrument and finds a different class of problem.

Accessibility asks whether a person using a screen reader, magnification, captions, a keyboard alone or a slower processing pace can get through the document and the procedure. Plain language asks whether the requirement can be understood on a first read: what the reader must do, find, prove or wait for, and by when, counted from what. Cultural responsiveness asks what the draft assumes the reader already has — a household shape, a schedule, an account, a document, a language, a level of trust in a state agency. Stakeholder impact asks who is helped, burdened, excluded or misunderstood by the requirement, in what numbers, and what the division already knows about that.

The last of the four is the one most likely to be dropped, and it is often the only one that needs anything the drafting team does not already hold. It requires a look at completion figures, a conversation with the people who answer the phone afterward, and a draft read by someone the requirement will land on, invited and paid for that work. That is more effort than the other three. It is also where the surprises are.

The question behind each check

Accessibility

Can a person get through this document and this procedure using a screen reader, magnification, captions, a keyboard alone, or at a slower pace? The procedure counts: hours, channels, windows, signatures and formats are all part of the answer.

Plain language

State the requirement in one sentence: what the reader must do, find, prove or wait for, by when, counted from what. If you cannot do that, the problem is usually the requirement rather than the wording.

Cultural responsiveness

What does this draft assume the reader already has? A parent or spouse, a stable address, an account in their own name, an email inbox, a weekday morning, a reason to trust the return address on the envelope.

Stakeholder impact

Who is helped, burdened, excluded or misunderstood by this requirement, in what numbers, and what does the division already know? Who read the draft from outside the drafting team, and were they paid for that time?

Why four and not one

Because a draft can pass three and fail the fourth without anyone noticing. Tagged, readable and clear is not the same as possible. Four questions give four different chances to catch it.

What each check actually looks at

Accessibility: the document and the procedure

In the document: heading structure that matches the reading order, real text rather than a scan, tables with row and column labels, links that say where they go, text alternatives that carry the information the image carries, captions on anything recorded, and color that is never the only way a deadline or a status is shown. In the procedure: whether the response window allows for mail delay, whether the only correction channel is a phone line with narrow hours, whether an in-person signature is genuinely necessary or simply traditional, and whether the format someone needs exists on the day the document is released rather than weeks later.

Plain language: one sentence, no hiding places

Write the requirement in one sentence and see what breaks. Promptly, appropriate documentation, as needed, may be required and in a timely manner are all places where a decision was not made. Each of them will be settled later by whoever answers the phone, which means the same requirement will be applied differently across the state. Name the days, name the start date, name who decides, and say what counts as proof.

Cultural responsiveness: what is assumed, not what is stated

This check reads for the unstated. A signature line that assumes a nuclear household. A comparison to a private insurance plan the reader may never have held. A schedule that assumes daytime availability. An instruction to bring the person who makes decisions for you, in a division whose own commitments are built around supported decision-making. A request for documents that people who have moved between countries, shelters or care settings frequently do not hold. The national standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services are a useful reference here, and their governance and written-communication standards are aimed at precisely this step.

Stakeholder impact: who, how many, and how would we know

Start with what the division already has: completion and denial figures for this step, appeals, complaints, the questions that reach the help line, the patterns lead agencies report. Then ask the question the figures cannot answer, which is why. That part requires people who have met the process, invited as compensated advisors and reviewers rather than as an audience, and told afterward what happened to what they said.

Which check would find this?

The published procedure is a scanned image, so a screen reader finds no text on the page.

The deadline appears only inside a color-coded table, and nowhere in the text.

The notice says documentation must be submitted promptly, without saying how many days or counted from what.

One sentence carries three separate requirements and two exceptions.

The form has a signature line for a parent or spouse and no line for anyone else who supports the person.

The letter explains a benefit by comparing it to a private insurance plan the reader may never have held.

Division figures show that one group of applicants completes this step far less often than others, and nobody has asked why.

Nobody who has actually been through this process has read the draft.

Make every check answerable

What you can change

You control the wording of the criteria. A criterion is a question with an answer and a piece of evidence behind it, not a value the reviewer is asked to affirm.

What to watch for

Do not write criteria like considers cultural context or is accessible to all users. Nobody can fail them, which means nobody can pass them either, and the record will show a stage that never found anything.

Your next step

Rewrite one of your current review criteria so it can be answered yes, no or not yet, and name the single piece of evidence that settles it.

A draft procedure is tagged for screen readers, written at a low reading level, and states every deadline in days with a start date. It also requires an original document that is issued only by an office open on weekday mornings. Which statement is best supported?

The draft is ready. Accessibility and plain language are the two checks that carry the substance, and both are satisfied.

The draft passes the accessibility and plain language checks and has an unresolved finding that belongs to the cultural responsiveness and stakeholder impact checks, because a clearly written requirement can still be one many people cannot meet.

The finding belongs to the accessibility check, because anything a person cannot do is by definition an accessibility barrier.

Try a situation

A DSD workgroup is finishing a redesigned request form for a support service. The document is tagged and works with a screen reader. The headings are descriptive, every deadline is stated in days with a start date, and no sentence carries more than one requirement. The form has one signature block, labeled for a parent, spouse or legal guardian, and asks the applicant to attach a recent utility bill in their own name as proof of address.

Which finding is this review most likely to miss, and why does it matter?

Nothing significant. The form is accessible and plainly written, and between them those two checks cover the substance of a document review.

The signature block and the proof of address. The form assumes a household shape and an account in the applicant's own name, and both assumptions exclude people supported by someone other than a parent or spouse, people living with extended family, and people who do not hold the utility account.

The reading level. A form like this should be written for the widest possible audience, and that is the central equity question in any document review.

Carry this forward

A document can be tagged, readable and plainly written and still assume a household, a schedule, an account or a document the reader does not have. That is the check the first two cannot perform.
A check is usable only if it can be answered yes, no or not yet, with something a reviewer can point at. Is this culturally responsive is not answerable. What does this draft assume the reader already has is.
Accessibility applies to the procedure, not only to the document. A ten-day window, a weekday-morning phone line and an in-person signature are access questions even when the wording is perfectly clear.
Stakeholder impact is the check skipped most often, because it is the one that asks what the division already knows about who completes this process and who does not, and who read the draft from outside the drafting team.

A sorting exercise that assigns real findings to the check that would catch them, flashcards with the question behind each check, and a scenario about a form that passes three checks cleanly and fails the fourth.

Take one page of something your team wrote and answer all four questions against it in writing. Note which question you could not answer without asking someone else, and name that someone.

Your next step

Which of the four questions can your team currently answer without leaving the room?

Ask each of the four questions against one draft you are working on now.

Mark which ones your team can answer from what it already has in front of it.

Mark which ones need someone outside the drafting team, and name who that is.

Write down what a drafter would have to bring so each question could be answered at the review rather than weeks after it.

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Mark this lesson complete

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.