State Digital Accessibility Officer Role Charter Template
You don't need a new line item to name an owner. You need the job written down clearly enough that someone can actually do it.
NASCIO's national portrait of this role found the same pattern across states: the job gets named before the headcount does. Most agencies assign it to an existing title. This charter is what to hand that person on day one.
1Four Core Responsibilities
Policy ownership
Draft, maintain, and annually review the agency accessibility policy. One document, one owner, one review date.
Procurement integration
Review RFP and contract language for accessibility clauses before it posts. See our vendor contract clause toolkit for the actual language.
Training program
Run or commission accessibility training for content editors, developers, and procurement staff, and keep the attendance records.
Testing and QA pipeline
Own the scanning cadence, the remediation log, and the complaint response process end to end.
2RACI: Who's Actually Responsible
| Task | Responsible | Accountable | Consulted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Policy drafting | Accessibility Officer | IT Director | Legal |
| RFP review | Accessibility Officer | Procurement Lead | Accessibility Officer |
| New page/PDF review | Content Editors | Accessibility Officer | none |
| Complaint response | Accessibility Officer | Legal | IT Director |
3Where This Role Should Report
NASCIO's guidance doesn't prescribe one universal reporting line, and your agency's structure will decide this more than any template can. What matters more than the org chart box is authority: this person needs enough standing to pause a non-compliant launch or flag a procurement issue without needing to escalate every time. If the role reports three levels down with no actual authority, the charter becomes a title without teeth.
4Performance Metrics for the Role
A role with no way to measure it tends to lose budget and attention within a year. Track these four numbers and report them quarterly.
Backlog size
Number of open accessibility violations across pages and PDFs, trending down
Time to fix
Average days from a violation being found to it being remediated
Training coverage
Percentage of content-publishing staff trained in the last 12 months
RFPs reviewed
Percentage of procurement actions that included an accessibility clause review
5The First 90 Days
Days 1-30: Inventory and policy review
Scan every site and PDF archive under this role's scope. Read the existing policy, or write a first draft if none exists.
Days 31-60: Fix the highest-impact gaps
Target the documents and pages residents actually use for services, not the easiest fixes or the oldest files.
Days 61-90: Put the ongoing process in place
Set the scanning cadence, the training calendar, and the procurement review step so the work doesn't depend on this person remembering to do it manually every time.
6Budget and Tooling This Role Actually Needs
This role fails quietly when it's handed a title and a spreadsheet. At minimum, it needs an automated scanning tool that covers both pages and PDFs, a platform or CMS layer that enforces rules at publish time rather than catching violations after the fact, and standing time on the training calendar, not a single annual session competing with every other mandatory training an agency runs. Without tooling, this person manually checks what software should be checking, and the backlog metric above only ever moves in one direction.
Related Reading
Give This Role a Platform, Not Just a Checklist
WPPersona handles the testing and QA pipeline at the platform level, so whoever holds this title isn't manually chasing every violation by hand.
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