For more than 165 million users, ID.me is how they prove who they are online to access VA benefits, file taxes with the IRS, claim Social Security, and more. When identity systems fail, the impact is not merely an inconvenience. It can mean losing access to critical services and benefits that people have earned and depend on.
For people with disabilities—or anyone using assistive technology or navigating temporary or situational limitations—the stakes are even higher. For them, an accessible, seamless, and secure identity verification experience is mission-critical.
The CSUN Assistive Technology Conference is the longest-running event focused on assistive technology and digital accessibility. It connects practitioners, researchers, and vendors with the people who rely on these systems every day. CSUN covers a range of issues, but digital access is among the most important.
This year, ID.me brought a team of designers, researchers, member support specialists, and recruiters to CSUN. We were on the stage sharing our accessibility journey with our accessibility partner, Level Access. We also spent time in the exhibit hall connecting with accessibility practitioners, advocates, engineers, designers, and others with lived experience of disability—sharing our mission and exploring how we can grow a team that reflects the communities we serve.
We also conducted usability sessions with blind and low vision participants, observing how they navigate the ID.me Wallet App using their own assistive technology—screen readers, Braille keyboards, and refreshable Braille displays. Watching people use our product in ways that reflect their everyday lives gave us invaluable insight into how accessibility shapes the experience of technology at its most personal.
Sighted users understand the interface through visual cues such as transitions, layout changes, and loading indicators. People using screen readers need access to the same information, communicated clearly and at the right time. When that information is missing, even simple tasks become difficult. These sessions showed where our product did not provide enough context and where we needed to improve. This is a well-established principle in accessible design. Seeing it during live sessions with participants using your product makes the impact clear—which is why this research matters.
Behind every research session is a reminder of what’s at stake. To date, 13 million people have verified their identity through ID.me’s live video chat—among them veterans, Social Security applicants, and people with disabilities for whom a human-assisted verification pathway made the difference between accessing a benefit and going without. Read more about how ID.me Video Chat expands access for all.
The reason ID.me attended CSUN is simple: It aligns with our purpose—Leave No Identity Behind. CSUN is one of the few spaces where practitioners, researchers, advocates, and the people who rely on these technologies come together—and being in that room matters. That purpose isn’t simply an abstraction. ID.me’s accessibility program is woven into how we design and build our products. It’s embedded in our design systems, engineering workflows, and governance processes, and supported by role-based training completed by 823 employees to date.
Accessibility testing is a continuous part of our development cycle. Automated checks help us catch common issues early, while bi-annual manual audits conducted by our accessibility partner Level Access provide rigorous, hands-on reviews of our products against WCAG 2.2 standards, Section 508, and Title II of the ADA. Level Access’s experts and ours test with real assistive technologies to ensure our products don’t just meet the baseline functional performance criteria that Section 508 requires—but are genuinely usable and pleasant for all users. That distinction matters. Technical testing tells you whether something works. Testing with real people tells you whether it works well.
With that said, we know technical testing only tells part of the story. It doesn’t replace the judgment that comes from careful design and engineering decisions, or the insights that come from testing with real people.
Being at CSUN is a critical part of that work. It’s a space to connect with other organizations focused on accessibility and share learnings through conversations, research, and implementation.
Improving accessibility requires ongoing effort, direct input from people who use assistive technology, and a commitment to building better systems over time.
