SNAP Prescreener Prototypes

Preamble

This is a sketchpad prototype built by 18F's Eligibility APIs Initiative to explore the financial factors of SNAP eligibility.

⚠️ None of the eligibility rules expressed in this repository should be considered official interpretations of SNAP rules or policy. This is a sketchpad prototyping repo only. ⚠️

What does this do?

This repo holds prototype prescreeners for SNAP benefits. A prescreener can help someone decide if it is worth their time and energy to submit a full application to SNAP by giving them an understanding of their likely eligibility and their estimated benefit amount.

Right now the repo holds a prototype for one state, Virginia.

What problems does this aim to solve?

• As a person who might be eligible for SNAP, I want to find out if I am likely eligible and what my monthly benefit amount might be.
• As an oragnization that assists clients who may be eligible for SNAP, I want to offer a resource that can give them an estimate of their SNAP eligibility.

Try it locally

Open va/va.html in the browser of your choice.

Development

Guides and more documentation

See the project wiki for guides and project documentation.

JS structure

• api.js: A JS library that accepts estimates SNAP eligibility and benefits given inputs about household income and expenses. This is the bundled form of 18F/snap-js-api-prototype.
• form-controls-va.js: JS for front-end form interactions. Sends data to the SnapAPI library exposed by api.js; formats and presents the results. Hard-coded as a Virginia-specific prescreener.

Commands

Build the form-controls Javascript into a minified, browser-ready bundled state:

npm run build

Run pa11y accessibility check against the HTML files (JS interactions not yet tested for accessibility):

npm run pa11y

See package.json for all developer commands.

Browser targeting

This prescreener targets Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Internet Explorer 11.

Developer notes

• This prescreener prototype is serverless and uses front-end Javascript only. It does not collect any PII.