Good afternoon everyone, my name is Brian Landrigan and I am the Director of Operations for The Paciello Group. Mike Paciello is the founder of the Paciello Group a consultancy specializing in helping our clients design, build, and manage accessible software and web content. Mike is also the co-chairperson of TEITAC, the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee. Mike will be giving you some details about what TEITAC's charter is during the presentation. The Paciello Group is proud to present Mike Paciello speaking on "Dealing with The Section 508 Accessibility Mandate, Today and Tomorrow." Mike.
Hello everybody and thank you again for joining us today. We're very happy to be here with you to talk a little bit about Section 508. More particularly to talk to you about the TEITAC and the future of Section 508 and Section 255. On the screen I have a slide titled Section 508 and what it looks today. I think most of you are aware that Section 508 is an accessibility mandate. It's a standard that mandates federal agencies and particularly mandates federal agencies and their procurement of Electronic and Information Technology. That technology includes a number of different things including software, web, web sites, Internet, intranets. Telecommunications, both devices and services associated with them. Video and multimedia. Self-contained, closed products. Things along the lines of fax machines and copiers for example. Computers, computer systems and the hardware associated with them. And the documentation and support services that are part of the full product offering or product development, product life cycle of an electronic and information technology.
Now because Section 508 is a procurement mandate it has implied roles associated with it. More specifically it has roles that involve federal agencies and industry. So let's take a brief look at what it means for federal agencies. By and large, Section 508 requires that federal agencies procure information technologies that are accessible and usable by people with disabilities. This means that an agency or department like the IRS, Department of Defense, the Social Security Administration, goes out to send out and RFP or procurement paperwork for Electronic and Information technology, they have to make sure with the vendor that it meets those 508 standards as it relates to those areas that we just talked about previously. It also means there's responsibility on the agency regarding 508 compliance. So that responsibility has been primarily put on the shoulders of individuals who are called "508 Coordinators". There are a number of different 508 coordinators amongst the agencies. There's no fixed number; there's no minimum number, except that each agency is required to have at least one at that level. And the agencies have some leeway when it comes time to negotiate a contract when it comes to 508 because they are the ones really who are charged with the responsibility that federal employees with disabilities that work for the agency have access to the technology that they work with in their everyday lives. So that's really where the responsibility of 508 lies on their shoulders.
Now it (508) also carries a weight of responsibility on Industry because, quite obviously, when it comes to E&IT, industry is providing the E&IT by and large and they are the ones who are selling it to the federal agencies. So they too within the procurement process will see in the RFP or the contracting officers procurement paperwork information as it relates to 508 compliance, and where the technology lies within the realm of that standard.
So everybody has a little responsibility here. And the primary motive is that individuals with disabilities who work for federal agencies can work with the technology that is accessible and usable to them. And it also means that citizens with disabilities in the US who have interactions with federal agencies in a public facing manner for example individuals who are working with SS SA or perhaps USPS the United States Postal Service, the IRS and there are electronic and information technology interfaces say a common one would be a web site and it's associated forms, then that agency is required to ensure that the technology is accessible to the citizens of the United States.
So, when you look at it from that perspective, I've titled the next slide, "Welcome to Your World" because whether you're a federal agency like USDA or an industry partner or vendor like Microsoft, IBM, even a small business, you have a number of things you have to deal with in the procurement process to ensure 508 compliance. It's not exactly the easiest experience one has to go through. There are a number of different sub parts as provisions that are in the standard. And the provisions are not necessarily as clear as the original advisory committee or the Access Board who is chartered with the Section 508 responsibility thought that they (the provisions) were. So by and large the Section 508 provisions are broken out in a number of sections that include Software Applications and Operating Systems. It includes Web-based Intranet and Internet Information systems. It also includes, like I said earlier, Information, Documentation and Support. And Functional Performance Criteria is part of the mandate in a standard that the agencies are looking to comply with. But it also brings about other questions like "VPATs" the Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates that are basically a paper tool. They are voluntary in nature. A vendor isn't required to submit them but they work well when a vendor is trying to provide information about it's product to the various agencies and organizations.
It's not uncommon for them to wonder how accessible these web sites and applications that are being created for agencies. Do they have to comply with, for example, the W3C "WAI" or Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines. How does the new TEITAC fit into all of this and what is it going to do? What are the exceptions? How do we deal with technologies like PDF and FLASH? Are we required to make them accessible and usable to people with disabilities? Those are often the questions that are asked and frequented by people both from the procurement side by the agency and on the vendor side.
I might note now that a little later on I'll put up a slide that will provide you with some useful and helpful resources, including FAQs as it relates to the procurement process, both for vendors and the agencies. But for right now, you can assume that these are the questions that often make 508 a little bit difficult to work with and understand fully.
So, with that in mind, the Access Board has it's natural charter to oversee accessibility and disability mandates for the federal government. And as part of that charter they formed what we call a "refresh" (sort for revision, I guess) for the Sexton 508 requirements. However, this new refresh resulted in an advisory committee that includes not just the Section 508 requirements but also includes the requirements as they are contained in Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act. Thus, the name of the new committee is "TEITAC" which is short for Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee. It's a robust committee. It's made up of a number of different constituencies including federal agencies, the SSA has a representative there, as well as the Department of Homeland Security who also has a member. It includes industry so we have companies like Adobe, Apple, AT&T, Microsoft, and Sun are well represented on this particular committee. It certainly includes disability organizations and constituencies, for example the National Federation of the Blind gas a member. The Assistive Technology Industries Association (ATIA) has it's president, Randy Marsden as one of the members of this committee. And for the first time where an advisory committee where it relates to accessibility and disability law in the United States, we have international representation which is really crucial and important to the whole committee. So we have representatives from the European Union, from the Asian area, specifically Japan. Also representatives from Australia and Canada who are official members of this committee and are integral to the standards we are working with.
The TEITAC committee has a number of different goals and themes and we are working on since we were formed last July 2006, so we've been in business, so to speak, for about a year and one half. Our scheduled delivery date of the draft documentation of the new provisions is scheduled for delivery in early January of 2007. We are on target to make that date. We are in the heavy throws of pulling that final draft together. That draft is built around the key themes and goals that you see listed on the power point slide. And they include topics like Harmonization, AT/IT Interoperability, Testability, Cognition, Emerging Technologies and Economic Impact. Let me just got a few of those so that you get some sense of the issues and themes that the TEITAC committee is working with.
For example, Harmonization. Over the past couple of years you probably have noticed the emergence of industry standards as regards disabilities and technology. We seen for example the ISO get involve, the JTC standards, the ANSI and Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) involved in their standards. IEEE and their standards. The EU has it's set of standards. Canada has it's own set of standards. So we're seeing a number of different standards -- the W3C standards for web sites and web apps they are in the middle, well actually, they're just getting ready to conclude with the WCAG 2.0 standards. So all of those suggested an important theme for the TEITAC advisory committee around harmonization. We really wanted to build a very rich, robust set of standards that would serve as as model for standards process going forward. And that these standards would be linked to other government standards and international standards that are available to us today. I think we've done a really good job with doing that. We have a little more work to do with this topic but harmonization is a key goal for this committee.
Another issue that we've been dealing with is Assistive Technology and Information Technology interoperability. There are a number of challenges on both sides of the equation here to ensure that that the user has a good user experience. I'm sure that those of you who have been at the fore font of this issue and have been trying to figure out how you get your application to work out with a screen reader like JAWS, or a screen magnifier or speech recognition application like Dragon Naturally Speaking. Those things present a number of different challenges. Maybe it's something as simple as making your application keyboard accessible so your not disrupting key features within the assistive technology application. Or keyboard bindings that are automatically available through the operating system environment. That whole theme is an important goal and agenda item for the TEITAC committee. We have a number of members who are working on it to try and bang out the standards that work well, and work well primarily for the user, but also make it workable for the agency and industry.
We found over the years that testability is a key theme. Different organizations are wondering how they can test for certain provisions. That is being dealt with.
Cognition is a very important theme and goal for this set of 508 and telecommunications standards. We have dealt with this topic before but we have found that we did not have enough quantifiable data or enough research around the information technology associated with the cognition disability such that we could put together a reasonable set of standards that could be achieved by the technology vendors and agencies themselves. This time around we have much better data that has been very helpful and we are working that data into the provisions.
Now I want to make sure that I caution everyone as to the current revisions, particularly if you have not seen the provisions. What you see right now and what we are working on are purely drafts. The typical process for a particular advisory committee is to create language around a set of provisions and recommendations. Those recommendations are then handed off to the Access Board. It's the Access Board that goes through the process of putting real language, that is "governments" if you will, and make the recommendations coming in from the TEITAC into provisions that are then sent out for public comment and eventually become the official law and standards. So, we're looking at approximately another 18 months from now -- might be a little longer, could be a little shorter before the current TEITAC draft actually becomes law. What that looks like is any body's guess. You'll get a lot of information up on the TEITAC web site that should be useful, but there's still a lot more time to go before it actually becomes official law.
There are emerging technologies that we are dealing with. So we've had conversations around immersive interfaces, Second Life, AJAX, even new technologies as they relate to people with disabilities.
And of course we're very concerned about the Economic impact. How it affects the user, how it affects the agency, and how it affects the vendor. All of these themes are part of the process and content that we've been working on for the past couple of years.
In the end, as we go on to the next slide, is Collaboration and Harmonization. Collaboration amongst the agencies, amongst the vendors (industry), the global initiatives, that is the international initiatives we are dealing with, and also individuals with disabilities. So we are looking for strong collaboration, we see it in the TEITAC working groups and the TEITAC subcommittee groups. We're very glad that things are working out well.
Important too is Harmonization as well so that there is a very clean sense of standardization, not just here in the US, but throughout the world.
The last slide that we have here lists a number of resources that we hope you'll be able to take advantage of. There is the Section 508 web page and home page. There's a like to the 508 Frequently Asked Questions, the "FAQ's". We also have a link to the Information technology Council Voluntary Product Accessibility Template web page. We often find her at TPG that a number of folks are not quite sure or clear on what they are supposed to do with the VPAT. How it's supposed to be completed and filled out. What certain provisions and requirements mean, and the IITC has done a very good job of helping to understand that. So we included a link to their web site on the slide.
The TEITAC home page, the Wiki page and the refresh page are there. I would highly recommend that you go up to the Wiki page because all the provisions and drafts are up there for public viewing.
Finally we have a couple of other resources including TPG's home page and the home page for the Access Board. And our partner, Adobe, and their Accessibility Resource Center where you can find an awful lot of information about PDF, FLASH, Cold Fusion, and web accessibility.