Improving How Veterans Move Through VA's Disability Benefits Application

Summary

For Veterans applying for disability compensation, VA Form 21-526EZ is the gateway to benefits that can mean access to health care, financial support, and formal recognition of service-connected injuries.

The form is also one of the longest on VA.gov, spanning 130-plus pages depending on the information they add or select, with no way to jump between sections, preview what's ahead, or easily return to a previous answer without repeatedly clicking the “back” button.

We worked with VA's Disability Benefits Crew (DBC) to tackle this problem head-on. Through early discovery, agile prototyping, and usability testing with Veterans, we designed and validated two navigation components for the form, providing Veterans with an easier, more efficient way to move through it. Usability testing found that Veterans rated both approaches highly for helpfulness and effectiveness, with average scores of 3.7 and 3.9 out of 4. (1)

The Challenge

Veterans use VA Form 21-526EZ to apply for disability compensation, documenting conditions that may have developed or worsened during their time in service. Monthly compensation, health care priority, and the effective date for retroactive pay all ride on getting it submitted. It’s personal, too: filling it out means describing parts of service a person may not want to revisit.

When navigating the form, Veterans moved through it one page at a time, with a progress bar marking their position and a review page at the end for corrections. The flow didn't offer a way to jump directly to a section mid-form, so a Veteran who remembered a detail from an earlier page had to click back through each screen or hold onto it until final review.

When the only way through a form that can run 100+ pages is one page at a time, in-form navigation becomes an ongoing point of friction. Navigation friction adds to the time and cognitive burden of filing and creates opportunities for easy-to-miss mistakes. For Veterans who are already navigating a complex, emotionally taxing process, losing one's place or struggling to course-correct can erode trust in VA's systems.

Part of what made this difficult to solve was that, while VA's design system had recently released a side navigation component, it had never been implemented within a form. 

Implementing a side navigation feature was far more complex than simply dropping in a newly available component. It required mapping out how to handle complex branching logic and clear error-handling patterns within the navigation itself so the user's journey remained clear.

Our Approach

Aquia Nava II LLC, our joint venture with Nava Public Benefit Corporation, structured our work around two parallel tracks: a minimum viable product (MVP) ready for implementation, and a second concept designed to explore more ambitious navigation enhancements.

Discovery came first. The designers began by auditing and consolidating what the VA already knew: prior usability research, documented pain points from earlier releases, and established VA.gov patterns for long, multi-step forms. The team’s developers set technical requirements, accessibility considerations, and data management implications. This upfront alignment helped us avoid downstream rework and provided a shared foundation for making trade-offs as the project evolved.

Prototyping ran in parallel. Three designers worked in tandem, building interactive prototypes for both the MVP and version two (V2) concepts while engineering implemented the MVP component in a staging environment. Working side by side let us adapt quickly as implementation surfaced new constraints.

Veterans validated the direction. We conducted usability testing with eight Veteran participants in January 2026, focusing on how well each concept helped Veterans navigate between sections, understand their progress, and return to previous answers to make edits.

We iterated on what existed. We implemented a modified version of VA’s existing side navigation component to quickly introduce navigation within the form. In parallel, the team designed the form progress indicator (V2) as a net-new component built from scratch to provide richer visual indicators of progress. Once validated, it will be contributed back to VA's design system, making it available for adoption to other forms on VA.gov.

Outcomes

Usability testing validated both navigation approaches and built a clear evidence base for moving forward with implementation. Key findings include:

• All eight Veteran participants successfully understood and used both navigation components without assistance.

• Average helpfulness scores of 3.7/4 (side navigation) and 3.9/4 (form progress indicator) across measures of progress clarity, location awareness, and ability to navigate back and edit answers.

• A unanimous preference for the form progress indicator (V2), which supported the team’s hypothesis that we should continue designing and implementing a navigation component tailored to our form.

The MVP has been shipped to production and now serves every Veteran who applies for disability compensation through VA.gov. V2 enhancements are being prioritized based on platform feedback, usability testing results with assistive technology users, and the success of the initial rollout. Once validated, it will be contributed back to VA's design system for adoption across VA.gov. 

Conclusion

Filing for disability compensation is one of the most significant interactions a Veteran will have with VA. Until now, moving through that form has meant advancing one page at a time, which left the Veteran to keep track of where they were in a long and complex process. By pairing early discovery with rigorous usability research and a phased delivery strategy, we are helping VA deliver a more transparent experience and laying the groundwork for a net-new, reusable navigation component that other forms on VA.gov can adopt.

Navigation is what lets a Veteran move through this form with confidence: knowing where they are, what's ahead, and that a correction is always within reach. By introducing this side navigation component, we're giving Veterans a clearer view of where they are in their application and a direct path to any section of the form.

Aquia partnered with VA's Disability Benefits Crew on this initiative alongside Nava, Verdance, and Coforma.

(1) Usability testing conducted for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, January 2026, n=8.