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Governmentwide Findings: Maturity Dimension Key Findings

Assessment Indices and Reporting Entity Scatter Plot

This Assessment targets two key areas of analysis to determine performance with respect to digital accessibility: conformance and maturity. Organization maturity with respect to accessibility is also a key factor in success for agencies. This includes several elements, such as having correct accessibility policies and hiring practices, as well as setting up the entity’s IT accessibility program. If an entity is not mature, it will likely not be able to easily meet its target accessibility goals and create lasting, repeatable accessibility conformance results.

GSA combined the reporting entities’ self-reported responses to get one estimate of a reporting entity’s overall performance. Like last year, the maturity and conformance indices – based solely on the assessment responses – provide a comprehensive and quantitative assessment of Section 508 compliance across the federal government. The business function maturity index, referred to as “maturity” or “m-index,” quantified reporting entity responses to criteria across nine dimensions with equal weighting of each criteria. The operational conformance matrix, referred to as “conformance” or “c-index,” quantified 16 specific criteria in the Conformance dimension to assess how well reporting entities performed with respect to Section 508 implementation. The indices are on a 5-point scale, from zero to five. These indices are fully described in Appendix B: Methods, Descriptive Analysis

Scatter plot with trendline of all reporting entities' conformance and maturity index results. There is a concentration of reporting entities towards the center of the graph, with less towards the bottom left corner of the graph (the lower performers) and an even smaller number of reporting entities in the top right corner (the higher performers). The trendline shows a positive relationship between maturity and conformance. Please see Table 6 for a full description of where entities fell on the five by five scatter plot.
Figure 7. Scatter plot with trendline of all reporting entities' conformance and maturity index results

As depicted in Figure 7, there is a wide reach of performance on both the maturity and conformance indices across government. There is also a concentration of reporting entities towards the center of the graph, with less towards the bottom left corner of the graph (the lower performers) and an even smaller number of reporting entities in the top right corner (the higher performers). Finally, similar to last year, the trendline continues to show a positive relationship between maturity and conformance. That is, more mature reporting entities tended to have higher conformance rates and vice versa.18

Reporting Entity Heat Map

Another way to look at this data is to break down each index identified above into increments from one to five, in order to group these reporting entities together. These break down into Maturity and Conformance “brackets” with assigned names for each of these on a 5-point scale, ranging from Very low to Very High, as shown in Table 5 below.

Table 5. Index outcomes for m-index and c-index 
Bracket Index Outcome
Very Low 0 to <1
Low 1 to <2
Moderate 2 to <3
High 3 to <4
Very High 4-5

Given the above outcomes, reporting entities can therefore be put into five groups according to maturity and conformance; for instance, there will likely be those that are determined to have Very Low Maturity or Very High maturity, and the same is true for conformance. With the five groups in maturity and conformance, there are 25 total bracket categories that a reporting entity may fall into, ranging from Very Low Maturity-Very Low Conformance on the lower end of outcomes to Very High Maturity-Very High Conformance on the high end of outcomes. Not all categories may have reporting entities falling within them, in fact there were two such categories for the FY23 Assessment, this year there are actually four.19

Table 6. "Heat map" for where reporting entities fall within maturity and conformance brackets.
Very Low Maturity Low Maturity Moderate Maturity High Maturity Very High Maturity
Very High Conformance 0 0 2 6 5
High Conformance 0 4 9 11 4
Moderate Conformance 2 8 16 14 2
Low Conformance 7 15 36 24 3
Very Low Conformance 20 34 13 10 0

Similar to the FY23 Assessment, a majority of reporting entities fall in the bottom 9 categories. However, about 61% of reporting entities (or 151) fell in these categories, whereas roughly 76% of reporting entities fell in these nine lower categories in FY23.

This upward shift is due to the number of reporting entities in the High bracket for both maturity and conformance in FY24 compared to FY23, particularly those with high maturity. For maturity, approximately 27% fell into a high maturity category (High-Very Low, High-Low, etc.) versus only about 14% in FY23 (65 entities vs. 34). Conformance included 11% in FY24 versus only 9% in FY23 (28 entities vs. 22). Additionally, 14 entities fell into a very high maturity category (about 6%) vs. 9 in FY23 (or about 4%). Interestingly, the opposite is true for conformance with 13 entities falling in a Very High conformance category in FY24 versus 17 in FY23 (or approximately 5% vs. 7%).

Of the 230 reporting entities that reported both years, data shows:

  • 86 entities improved in both indices YOY.

  • 53 entities declined in both indices YOY.

  • 61 entities improved in m-index but declined in c-index.

  • 29 entities declined in m-index but improved in c-index.

Table 7 below shows the total number of entities that changed YOY for each index. Most represent incremental change, though some are more significant at 0.5 or more on a 5-point scale.  

Table 7: YOY Changes in M-Index and C-Index
M-Index Improvement YOY M-Index Decline YOY M-Index No Change YOY C-Index Improvement YOY C-Index Decline YOY C-Index No Change YOY
148 entities 8 entities 0 entities 115 entities 114 entities 1 entity

This increase in maturity, particularly in some areas such as training, as shown below, reflect entity investments in accessibility efforts across the enterprise. While data does not yet reflect improvement, one would expect these investments to lead to more conformant ICT at the respondent level and across government.

Maturity Dimension Outcomes


The average of all respondent maturity scores (all dimensions, all reporting entities) improved in FY24 but stayed Moderate at 2.37 out of 5, up from 2.17 in FY23.


The Assessment measures accessibility maturity within an organization through 38 questions. These questions are broken down into nine key dimensions listed below:

  • IT Accessibility Program Office

  • Policies, Procedures, and Practices

  • Communications

  • Content Creation

  • Human Capital, Culture, and Leadership

  • Technology Lifecycle Activities

  • Testing and Validation

  • Acquisition and Procurement

  • Training

In FY23, the two lowest performing dimensions, governmentwide, were the Human Capital, Culture, and Leadership dimension and the Training dimension. For this year, they are the same but switched. Last year Training was the lowest Dimension at 1.57 with Human Capital, Culture, and Leadership at 1.63. In 2024, these scores are 2.06 and 1.93, respectively. This represents a 31% improvement in the average Training maturity outcomes across government. Human Capital also saw an improvement of about 18% across the government.

Overall, approximately 28% of entities (68) had Human Capital, Culture, and Leadership as their worst dimension (or one of their worst), and 63 (or approximately 26%) had Training as their worst dimension. So, while these dimensions saw an improvement year over year, they are still the areas of most needed development or investment going forward to improve average reporting entity maturity outcomes.

The highest performing maturity outcome was Content Creation at 2.69, followed by Communications at 2.63 and the IT Accessibility Program dimension at 2.55. Overall, approximately 28% (69) had Content Creation as their best maturity outcome, while 55 or about 22% had Communications as their best outcome. See the full list of maturity outcomes in Table 8.

Table 8. Average Maturity Dimension Outcomes Across Government
Dimension Average FY24 Federal Outcome Average FY23 Federal Outcome
IT Accessibility Program Outcome 2.55 2.27
Policies, Procedures, and Practices 2.35 2.54
Communications 2.63 2.10
Content Creation 2.69 2.34
Human Capital, Culture, and Leadership 1.93 1.63
Technology Lifecycle Activities 2.38 2.57
Testing and Validation 2.38 2.04
Acquisition and Procurement 2.53 2.44
Training 2.06 1.57

Below, the FY 24 outcomes are depicted in the chart:

Comparison bar chart showing average dimension outcomes YOY. Please see Table 8 for a table view of this data.
Figure 8. Average FY24 Maturity Dimension Outcomes with FY23 for Comparison

The figure below demonstrates year over year (YOY) change:

  • +31%

    Training

  • +15%

    Content Creation

  • +25%

    Communications

  • +12%

    IT Accessibility Program Management

  • +18%

    Human Capital, Culture, and Leadership

  • +4%

    Acquisition and Procurement

  • +17%

    Testing and Validation


  • -7%

    Policies, Procedures, and Practices

  • -7%

    Technology Lifecycle Activities

Figure 9. Percent Change YOY of Maturity Dimensions

  1. The contrapositive is also true. That is, less conforming entities also tended to be less mature.
  2. The maturity-conformance categories Very Low-Very High, Low-Very High, Very High-Very Low, and Very High-Low; all do not have any reporting entities that fall in them for this assessment cycle.

Reviewed/Updated: December 2024

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