- Megan, one other question for you.
- Yeah
- As a large provider of technology,
how ready are you for the Section 508 refresh?
- I think that-
- And how ready is the industry from your perspective?
- Right. Right.
That's such a great question
and I think there's multiple ways to answer that which is
well, we've known it's been coming a while
(audience laughs)
I hope we're ready,
right?
Nobody's springing this on anybody, so
for heaven's sakes industry,
ya better be ready.
But to me, the question's really about process, so
I heard,
how is it ... making sure that accessibility
is built into procurement language.
Okay, they might hand you a VPAT,
but how did they go about testing the products
to product that VPAT.
So that's what I think the real question is.
Are you ready?
Okay, what's your process to show,
to prove to my government agency
that you actually are implementing these new guidelines
or standards, they're not guidelines.
They're both ... wait.
(Preety laughs)
- And from what I'm hearing from
John and Dominick,
that
GSA and other agencies are not going to be
letting the fox guard the chicken coop.
They're going to be doing some independent validation
like they are with the RFB procurement language itself.
- And I think that goes back to ...
we have worked with the Department of Homeland Security.
That idea of the trusted tester.
Really looking at that code based inspection to say,
is this thing meeting the accessibility standards
we need it to meet.
And we thought,
if the government thinks that's a good way to test product,
then Microsoft is going to test product that way, as well.
So we have worked to build
a trusted tester system that takes into consideration
508 and refresh standards,
we've already got it into our testing system.
We've got WCAG 2.0 and we also have the EN 3-0-1 5-4-9,
all built into our trusted tester system
in which a third party ... now,
I don't know if you have this experience, but
you know when you read that important document
or that important email
and you come back the next day and you're like,
oh my God, there was a typo in that.
How could there be a typo.
I read it so many times.
Because you get so close to your own work,
sometimes it's really difficult to see
some of the errors.
So that's why we use third party vendors
to go through that testing
of our products for us.
'Cause they have fresh eyes that we need
to really evaluate, not only what we're doing right,
but where we have room to grow.
- Can I just build upon one of the points Megan made about
creating that demand signal.
Government ... we are responsible for
sending clear signals to industry,
what we expect,
and that we expect it.
And that's what one of the reasons
we're looking at the tools like the SRT.
If 20% ... I'm not saying that's the actual number, but
if 20% of our solicitations have language requiring
what is already requirement to happen.
If I were industry, I'd read that as,
eh, it's nice to have, but they don't really care about it.
That's why we focus on the things we focus on.
Demand signals is an important part of my job,
but across all of my programs
and this is no exception.
- That's fantastic and
actually talking about being up close and personal,
I think
Robert,
you have been
in charge of implementing very successful
large accessibility programs of very public facing agencies,
and at the Department of Homeland Security
where the very innovative
solution of the trusted tester program came about,
I would love to hear from you,
since you have been doing this long enough to have some
battles scars, I'm sure.
I think you bring such a unique perspective.
Tell me about some of the key implementation challenges
that you've seen over the years.
- Thanks Preety.
Actually, I'm quite relieved to hear from John that
on January 17th we will magically be transitioned,
and my job is done.
The 18th, right.
We'll be morphing on the 17th.
- Yeah, by definition right?
It's great.
- Megan said that it does ...
when you get down to brass tax, it gets down to process.
And she spoke from a vendor's perspective.
How are you going to ensure that accessibility
is not just a goal or an objective or part of your vision,
but how are you going to incorporate accessibility
into
design,
development,
testing,
deployment,
support,
modifications to systems.
How do you evaluate strategic investments
when you're modernizing.
Where does accessibility fit?
And can you answer that question
in a way that's repeatable and simple so that
the people who need to make those decisions
understand the road map to what they need to do.
So
I've had the fortunate experience of
trying to address that.
For a roughly 150 different federal agencies
that have
anywhere from
30 people to
500,000 people
working for them,
vast IT budgets
and almost every single agency has
a different makeup,
a different technology approach,
a different technology
inventory and
view of how they want to modernize that technology
to provide digital services in the future.
And the significant challenge coming up with some
simple, easy understand guidelines for how to
enculturate section 508 compliance,
or I'll just say it better,
accessibility into the work that we do.
So we've been on a journey for several years.
It's most recently,
materialized in the form of a
government wide work group
that we've worked with GSA, the Access Board,
and the federal CIO council to lead
to develop that roadmap for the government.
And it's published and it's available online, right now.
And for all of you who are in government
who are looking for an answer,
what am I gonna do with this?
How do I go from where I am today,
to where I need to be to implement a new set of
accessibility standards?
There's a really great starting point available
and I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about that.
So the first thing that we did
was we developed a
resource to define,
what is an accessibility program?
If you go to a college or university
and say I want to major in accessibility,
there are very few that have an answer to that.
There is no training program
to be an accessibility specialist,
just like there aren't real training programs,
or are just beginning to be developed
to be a data scientist.
It's a very specialized field.
And for all of you who are here who are involved,
you know what I'm saying.
So we define something called the IT Accessibility Playbook.
It has 12 plays that defines
what an accessibility program does,
what a mature accessibility program can do,
and what are the major components.
So that gives us a foundation.
From that foundation,
we ask the question,
how do I transition to the new standards
in a way that supports the
development and growth of a mature program.
So we first need to develop a roadmap of
what are the core elements that you start with,
and then how do you evolve what's the next step.
So created something called the Section 508 roadmap,
and it ties to the playbook
and it also identifies specific parts of the new standards
that are different from what was required before
and additional steps that we need to
figure out how to address in the government.
One of the first things that we've had to do
is answer the question again,
is this
covered by the new standards and how?
I remember when I first started in this industry
14 years ago,
I went to a conference that Helen had set up for us
and I noticed that for two hours,
people who were accessibility program majors
would sit around the table and ask the question,
is it IT
and what standards apply?
And we actually have to go back to that again,
because the federal government is not used to looking
at WCAG,
and not used to looking at the new standards in determining
what they have to do.
How has the minimum bar moved,
and then what can you do that's beyond
what the minimum bar is based on best practices
that we've learned over the past 18 years.
We put together a guideline that's written for people who
don't have a technology background
to answer those questions.
Why is that important?
Most people who are involved in IT procurement
don't know much
about
the technology workings of the products that they're
trying to buy.
They know that they have a technical staff
that put together some requirements,
but they're responsible for putting together
contract language and managing the acquisition process,
which is a separate discipline.
Those are the folks who are writing contract language.
So we have to figure out a way to help
the actual people who are involved with
government IT procurement
to determine what were the accurate
listing of standards
that apply to what they were purchasing.
That's at the beginning of the process.
We also wanted to help development managers for projects
that were being done inside the government
to go through that same process.
That is the foundation that John was talking about
that he's automating in the
accessibility requirements tool.
So we first created a logic pathway,
tested it out,
and now we're moving to automateds.
It'll be easier and easier to implement over time.
Next thing that we had to ask ourselves is,
how are we going to collect information from industry
once we tell them what we want
in the form of 508 language in contracts.
So the government does not own
the conformance reporting tool for 508.
A group called the ITIC does.
It's an industry trade group.
And separately they recognize that this
was going to be a challenge
reporting a WCAG,
reporting on the EU standards
are both very different than the reporting that
we've used previously, so
they were working on
coming up with a new reporting template,
and we had the opportunity to partner with industry
to come up with what's called now the "VPAT 2",
Voluntary Product Accessibility Template.
Ignore the word voluntary,
because if the federal government asks for it
and an industry provider doesn't offer it,
the government does not need to consider that proposal
if the vendor does not provide us the information
to make a conformance determination when we've required it,
but they can be set aside.
The title of the conformance report is just that now,
an Accessibility Conformance Report.
The government won't see VPATs anymore.
The VPAT is a name of a template used to create
an Accessibility Conformance Report.
So hopefully we can change the dialogue with industry
both through process and through proper labeling,
but also improve our awareness
of the conformance of products by having
better conformance reporting.
- So rest in peace the VPAT, huh?
(Preety laughs)
Okay.
Robert,
I
want to
round up what we've done so far,
because I think we have promised a break
and I see a lot of people wanting to take a quick break, so
before we take a break,
I'm going to just summarize what we've covered thus far.
Deborah gave us a really fantastic perspective on
why the Section 508 refresh is important
from user perspective as well
as from the government perspective.
So thank you for that.
I think then we dove into,
what are the new Section 508 refresh requirements?
What are the new requirements that
we are going to have to meet?
What's the delta,
in terms of the old and the new.
We talked about
innovation and the tools the GSA is providing
to government,
especially, as well as to the community,
and how
really taking accessibility very seriously,
because you're not just saying
that it's okay to have 20% of the procurement,
or whatever that number is Dominick.
To say that that's okay,
that procurement can neglect accessibility requirements,
though you're taking that seriously and you're providing
resources to help, as well,
and validate including innovative solutions.
So the requirements are clear,
why it's important is clear,
the resources being provided by the government
is very clear.
Industry, what are you guys doing
both from a culture perspective as well as
a pragmatic perspective of
using third party to validate,
because you're up close and personal to your own products,
and you can't call your own children ugly and
it's difficult to do that,
and stupid, right?
So you do need third party validation.
And then Robert,
the playbook.
The roadmap and the playbook were those missing components
from a programmatic perspective
that I think a lot of federal agencies are really going to
appreciate having the resource for.
So we've covered the requirements,
we've covered the resources,
and
in terms of the impact, right,
I think Katie, you looked ... you did a survey of
the
top 20
federal
webpages,
frequently visited webpages,
and you have
some date to share as well as
just key recommendations.
And after we do that,
we'll take a break.
Five minute break and come back and open it up to questions
from the audience, alright.
We'll do the break before
and then we will come back and you can get into that.
Alright, perfect.