U.S. government issues rules for universal accessibility

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by Margret Johnston

(IDG) -- Rules issued by the U.S. government require IT companies that sell their products to the federal government to include accessibility features so that handicapped federal employees can use them.

The rules, released by the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, also say government Web sites must be accessible to handicapped people.

The final accessibility rules spell out the technical and functional performance necessary for the technology to be in compliance with the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998. The act says federal employees with disabilities must have access and use of information "that is comparable to" the access and use of information that people without disabilities have.

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Web site access also has to be provided in a way that is "comparable to" access enjoyed by people without disabilities, according to the act. Federal agencies have six months to incorporate the rules into their procurement policies, however, in both cases the rules include a loophole that says agencies don't have to comply if the rules impose an "undue burden" on the agency.

Of the 2.5 million federal employees, 160,000 reported having a disability in 1997, said Doug Wakefield, accessibility specialist with the board. However, federal employees are not required to report a disability, so the actual number of disabled federal workers might be higher.

Ensuring the interoperability of the software bought by the federal government is a key part of the rules, Wakefield said.

"Nobody expects that all of a sudden all the software purchased by the government is on its own going to produce speech or large print," he said. "What is required is that the software packages provide that appropriate interfaces so individual software interoperates with assistive technology."

Representatives of Washington-based technology associations said the IT industry's commitment to making products that meet accessibility requirements goes back years, and the industry worked closely with the access board, an independent federal agency established by the 1998 act.

"This is something that we support very strongly," said Lauren Hall, executive vice president of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIAA). "It's a good business decision to make sure the products we develop are not only usable by those with different types of abilities, but also reaches as broad a market as possible."

In the process of writing the rules, IT companies expressed concern about interoperability, Hall said. For example, they asked whether a software developer would be responsible for the interoperability of a product's accessibility features with different platforms and other applications.

The IT industry also wanted to ensure that the rules didn't favor one technology over another, and that appears to be the result, said Bartlett Cleland, vice president of software for the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA).

"All along we wanted performance specifications, not design specifications, Cleland said. "In general, that's what they did."

The rules also do not appear to apply to back office software running at the core of federal agencies, rather only to software running on all desktops, Cleland said.

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Does the disabilities act apply to cyberspace?
(Network World Fusion)
Create a barrier-free Web site
(Macworld)
Users with disabilities push high-tech limits
(InfoWorld.com)
The disability divide
(The Industry Standard)
Technology levels the playing field for disabled workers
(PCWorld.com)

Information Technology Association of America (ITAA)
Software and Information Industry Association (SIAA)

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