Access Granted

ast year, officials at the Social Security Administration needed to buy 100 high-speed copiers. They narrowed their choices to two types of machines. One was low enough to be operated by someone sitting in a wheelchair. It also had Braille labels on its buttons. The other machine had neither feature.

The officials chose the wheelchair- and blind-accessible type, even though it cost $695 more per copier.

Under a rule that is 1 year old this month, federal agencies purchasing technology products must pick the ones that are the most accessible to people with disabilities. Exceptions to the rule-known as Section 508, for the part of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act in which it appears-are few. The regulation forces federal technology buyers to think about people who are blind, deaf, paralyzed or have other disabilities before they buy software, computers, printers, copiers, fax machines, kiosks, telecommunications devices, or video and multimedia products. Federal Web site designers also have to make their sites accessible to disabled users, and anyone in government who develops or maintains technology products has to make sure those technologies are accessible.

Section 508 was added to the Rehabilitation Act in 1986, but lacked teeth until Congress pushed in 1998 for the executive branch to develop accessibility standards. Those standards were completed in December 2000, seven months before the purchasing rule took effect. The changes gave the law the same kind of impact as the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. Just as the ADA pushed construction firms to build ramps so that people in wheelchairs could get into buildings, the Section 508 rule pushes technology companies to build techno-ramps into their products so that people with disabilities can use them.

One year into its existence, the Section 508 rule is starting to have the effect that its authors intended: The technology industry is beginning to make more and more of its products accessible to people with disabilities, and federal Web sites are more accessible than they were 12 months ago. Since companies typically don't make separate versions of their products for government and everyone else, technology products are becoming more accessible to all Americans, not just government employees.

But the rule is reaching a pivotal turning point. As technology companies begin to roll out more accessible products this year, all eyes in the industry will be watching to see the full effect of the new standards on the federal market. The Social Security example aside, it's not clear yet whether federal buyers actually will make accessibility a deciding factor as they plunk down $45 billion each year for technology products and services.

MARKET PSYCHOLOGY

For example, the following four standards now apply to desktop and laptop computers:

• People with poor dexterity should be able to use mechanical controls and keys.
• People who can't use touch screens or touch-activated controls (such as blind people) should have other options.
• Computers should have slots so people with disabilities can plug in assistive devices.
• Biometric user identification tools shouldn't prevent people from logging on (someone who is mute can't use voice recognition, for example).

"Section 508 provides a marketplace incentive for competition based on accessibility," says Cynthia Waddell, a Silicon Valley-based accessibility expert with Ciber Inc. "We never had that before. Everyone who wants to participate in the federal market has to have a systemic approach to addressing 508, otherwise they will have gaps in their products and services that will make them vulnerable to bid protest or even failure to win a bid."

But for Section 508 to work, federal buyers must use accessibility as a deciding factor in technology purchases. To make that happen, officials at the General Services Administration have taken the lead in spreading the word across government about the rule's requirements. The agency set up a Web site, www.section508.gov, with a list of accessibility standards and a database in which technology companies can provide information about their products. GSA also oversees a network of Section 508 advocates from each major agency and coordinates meetings among government officials, industry representatives and advocates for people with disabilities.

"The government is a huge animal," says Terry Weaver, director of GSA's Center for IT Accommodation."Section 508 puts a requirement on more than just the people who do procurements. It puts a requirement on anyone who develops or maintains information technology. One of the challenges is that program people do their jobs in very program-specific ways. They don't consider themselves IT people. We're always looking for ways to get the message out to them."

GSA has sponsored accessibility seminars across the country, but much of the education effort falls to the Section 508 coordinator in each agency, most of whom work for their agencies' chief information officers. The coordinators have helped set up workshops, procurement guides and accessibility policies for their agencies. At the Social Security Administration, Section 508 coordinator Clare Bellus helped create accessibility checklists that technology buyers must fill out before they make purchases. Under Section 508, buyers can claim that buying the most accessible product would create an undue burden on the agency, which would usually mean that the most accessible products are too expensive. Buyers can also claim that certain accessibility features are not available in the marketplace. To date, no SSA buyers have tried to use the undue burden exemption, but some have said that features aren't available, Bellus says. "As the market changes, we'll see fewer of the noncommercial availability forms," she says.

Markets, of course, are driven by supply and demand. If buyers demand accessibility, makers will supply it. Observers say that some agencies-Social Security, Education, Treasury, the Environmental Protection Agency and even Defense-are establishing procedures that will accelerate the demand for accessibility. But technology salespeople are also running into federal buyers who either have never heard of Section 508 or simply choose not to ask suppliers about accessibility. The effects of supply and demand are largely psychological. If a firm thinks that many customers want a feature, or that a few important customers want it, or that the firm's competitors will gain an edge by offering it, and that in the end it will lose business if it does nothing, then the firm will install the feature in its products. If a feature won't affect the bottom line, then a firm will be less likely to offer it. Some vendors still haven't seen any advantage to accessibility and haven't even checked how their products stack up against the Section 508 standards.

SUPPLY-SIDE ACCESSIBILITY

Adobe, a San Jose, Calif., software firm, revamped its Acrobat document design program with a feature that helps people design pages so that a blind person's screen-reading software can read them. Xerox adjusted its DocuShare document management software so that screen readers would work better with it. Compaq and Microsoft have teamed up with other technology companies to make sure accessibility improvements in software are compatible with changes in hardware.

"Section 508 brings a whole new round of energy to the product groups about accessible design, because they realize part of the reason for making things accessible now has to do with competition," says Laura Ruby, Microsoft's regulatory and industry affairs program manager. Microsoft has had an accessibility program for 12 years. "Having to do the paperwork and fill out [checklists] have helped some of our product groups realize where they have gaps."

Doug Wakefield, an accessibility specialist with the Access Board, has traveled to numerous technology firms, including IBM, Xerox, Sun Microsystems, Apple and Novell, to meet with designers about how to make their products more accessible. Industry officials regularly meet with Section 508 representatives in Washington to discuss concerns with how the rule is playing out.

Many vendors have even taken on the role of educators. Xerox executives led a Section 508 seminar at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington last summer, during which federal buyers grilled the company more about the meaning of certain Section 508 provisions than about the accessibility of its copiers. Xerox officials found themselves correcting myths about the rule, such as the then-prevalent notion that federal agencies could not buy products if they didn't meet all of the Section 508 standards.

Industry observers see the coming year as a bellwether for accessibility in technology. Because design cycles for technology products often fall in the range of 18 to 24 months, many of the accessibility features that companies have incorporated into their products will appear on the market between now and next summer.

SECTION 508 CHALLENGES

Government, industry and representatives of people with disabilities say the three sides have collaborated well so far on making the rule work. "People have put in a lot of effort to make it as smooth a transition as possible," says Olga Grkavac, executive vice president of the Information Technology Association of America. In fact, "508 has been like a lovefest," adds David Capozzi, director of technical and information services at the Access Board.

But several challenges may strain the good vibes that have accompanied Section 508 so far. One is concern among vendors that federal buyers are passing the buck on to them for a government mandate. Not only must companies spend money upgrading their products, but some agencies also require them to fill out lengthy checklists and verification forms. Companies are also worried that agencies will require third-party validation of Section 508 compliance without paying for it or start forcing companies to sign statements that would shift the blame for inaccessibility from the government to contractors. "Such requirements are not only contrary to federal policy relative to accessible technology, but also a misinterpretation of Section 508 itself," wrote Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., in a Feb. 20 letter to GSA Administrator Stephen Perry. "Alone and in combination, they serve to discourage vendors from developing accessible products and competing for federal business."

Another concern is ignorance about Section 508 in the federal workforce and among technology companies. Even many people who know about Section 508's basic rules don't understand all of its intricacies, such as how a claim for undue burden works or how some of the exceptions to the rule apply. That lack of knowledge will become more of a problem in January 2003, when an exception for small purchases expires.

Starting in January, all purchases, even those worth less than $2,500, will have to comply with Section 508. That means the 400,000 federal employees who carry government purchase cards will need to know and follow the accessibility rules. Federal buyers already have numerous other rules and regulations to keep in mind when they make purchases. The addition of the 508 rules-and their potential costs-may annoy some buyers. Most companies say they are designing accessibility features into their products at no charge to customers, but some of the features must be purchased as add-ons, such as the Braille labels and lower displays on the copiers that Social Security bought.

Section 508 advocates say the benefits of making technology accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere make the added burden of the new requirements worthwhile.

At numerous sites in Washington-such as the Center for IT Accommodation at GSA, or the Computer/Electronics accommodations program at the Pentagon (where President Bush appeared last summer to endorse Section 508)-federal buyers can check out the latest in accessible technology. They can hear blind people speeding through documents using screen readers or Braille display keyboard attachments, see how teletypewriter, or TTY, devices help deaf people use phones, and touch special keyboards and screens that make work easier for people with physical disabilities.

Federal buyers might also find that they enjoy having some of the accessible features themselves. Jennifer Sheehy, a senior policy adviser for the Presidential Task Force on the Employment of People With Disabilities, says she types 150 words per minute by speaking into her voice recognition software. Before a spinal injury prevented her from typing with her hands, Sheehy clocked in at just 28 words per minute. A screen magnifier, usually used by people with very poor vision, came in handy for a colleague of GSA Section 508 Specialist Helen Chamberlain, who had left his glasses at home one day. "People realize this stuff really works," Chamberlain says. Craig Luigart, CIO at the Education Department, points out that more and more Americans will have functional limitations as they get older, with one in three people facing at least one limitation by the time they reach 55 to 64 years of age. The accessible technologies that today's able-bodied federal workers buy may be the same ones they use in the future.

"If you break your arm tomorrow, you may want to be able to get into Microsoft Office and do some voice input into a Word document, rather than inputting text with one hand," Microsoft's Ruby says.

Blind users are the primary concern for webmasters. Sites need special coding so that screen readers-software that reads the words on a screen to blind people-can follow the text and the links on a site.

Federal webmasters "are definitely paying attention" to blind users' needs, says Janina Sajka, director of technical research and development for the American Foundation for the Blind. "There is a noticeable and substantial difference today as compared to last summer."

Sajka says Firstgov.gov, the central portal for federal information on the Web, had been hard to use because its links were not clearly labeled. Her screen reader would simply say, "Link. Link. Link. Link. Link," as it read the page, leaving Sajka wondering where a link would take her. "Is that the women's room or the men's room?" Sajka jokes. Now when she speeds through the front page of Firstgov.gov, with the voice of the screen reader zipping through the text on the page at a rate only understandable to the trained ear, she knows where the links lead. "I know what's here," she says. She gives a quick appraisal of other federal sites: "Justice is nice. Commerce is not bad," Sajka says. "The White House does a nice job, but Capitol Hill is a mixed bag. Some of the sites are very uninformative."

Sajka and other Web watchers say blind users still run into frequent obstacles on federal sites, such as documents in Portable Document Format-a printer-ready format that agencies commonly use-that are not set up properly for screen readers. When they run into roadblocks, blind users can send complaints to webmasters asking for help. Webmasters often find other ways to get people key documents when their Web versions are inaccessible, though the goal of Section 508 is to make special treatment unnecessary.

In fact, Sajka notes that the Web-when properly formatted-can be a great enabler for the blind. Paper documents are inaccessible, forcing blind people to get sighted helpers to read to them. The Web, on the other hand, allows blind people to obtain information on their own. "If you have an e-option, no one has to know you are blind," Sajka says.