California DMV
Project Specifications
- Role: Frontend Engineering Lead and Accessibility Specialist
- Accessibility Compliance: WCAG 2.1 Level AA
- Content management: WordPress with Gutenberg
- Application engineering: React
- Automated Testing: Jest
Project Details
The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) serves more than 28 million licensed drivers with 35 million registered vehicles, utilizing DMV.CA.GOV as the primary online communications and service channel.
Previous to this project, the DMV website was recognized by visitors and staff alike as being confusing, burdened with a user experience that hinders rather than helps DMV customers in need of important information, and ineffective at guiding customers toward greater utilization of services available online, by phone, and mail. With the impending compliance deadline for the Federal REAL ID Act, the DMV expected demand on field offices to grow to as many as 700,000 visits per month, further impacting customer wait times that are already deemed unacceptable during peak periods.
In addition to solving the customer service challenges posed from the current website and the growing demand from the upcoming REAL ID deadline, the DMV plans to adhere to California’s accessibility guidelines, outlined in AB-434, to create a new site that is WCAG 2.1 AA compliant, expanding its online services to a greater audience with differing levels of abilities.
In addition to strict accessibility compliance the front-end team also rebuilt a full appointment booking system in React.