Not Lost in Translation
Accessibility is vital for reaching families from all walks of life. In addition to developing with browser compatibility, mobile-friendliness, and users without reliable internet access in mind, we also develop our technology for non-English speakers. Currently, we offer our end-to-end SNAP enrollment process in English and Spanish.
It was important for us to tackle Spanish translation to start. 29% of residents in California speak Spanish, making Spanish the 2nd most widely spoken language in the state. Of the 29% of Spanish-speaking residents in California, 42% of them are not fluent in English. By not providing SNAP enrollment in Spanish, we were not reaching about 15% of residents in California. Considering that more than 20% of Californians are in poverty, that estimates to 876,000 people.
Using a content management system (CMS) called Contentful, we set up the infrastructure to easily add new languages to mRelief’s platform. When new English copy is entered into the Contentful interface, as shown below, a translator can sign into Contentful and add the translation.
There are two ways a user can select their language. One way is by texting the keyword “Español” to our chatbot and the other is by clicking the “Español” button on our website. Once a client specifies their language, we save their preferred language in our database. For every text message sent after that, the code pulls the text message copy in the correct language for that client.
Though we currently offer only English and Spanish, with this framework through Contentful, we can seamlessly add at least 10 more languages to expand the reach of our work.
