Government IT 'accessibility' effort begins

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By Jennifer Jones

(IDG) -- A broad government initiative to drive the development of more IT products and services for people with disabilities kicked into full gear Thursday.

All vendors selling to the federal government must now have equivalents for the products and services they offer that allow agencies to accommodate people with disabilities.

A byproduct of the new regulations is an increased industry focus on accessibility, which is being built more and more into standard product offerings.

As the largest single customer of many vendors, the federal government is using its muscle to highlight the importance of including all users when designing technology, said Olga Grkvac, executive vice president of the enterprise solutions division of Arlington, Va.-based ITAA (Information Technology Association of America.)

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"Because of other federal procurement laws in place, this will really change commercial products," Grkvac said.

Specifically, government agencies must adhere to a set of laws and regulations designed to discourage vendors from coming up with one set of products for the government (called non-commercial items) and another for private sector customers.

"The impact will really be on the entire population, but you won't see that until well after [new regulations] go into effect," Grkvac said.

Hewlett-Packard's Denice Gant, program director of Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP's Accessibility Group, echoed that belief. "Industry is responding very positively to this initiative, which has crystalized the market demand for accessible technology," she said.

The immediate goal among vendors, however, is to hang onto federal business.

"It is a big hit in the pocketbook for companies that want to sell to the federal government, if they are not compliant," said Joy Relton, an engineer at the Unisys Assistive Devices Lab.

In pointing out the merits of the initiative, Relton -- who is blind -- also underscored the fact that there is a 70 percent unemployment rate among the disabled population.

"There are a lot of people not getting gainful employment because they don't have access to the latest versions of technology," she said.

Others who say that more thought should be given to people with disabilities during the product design phase also allude to the fact that an estimated 54 percent of the disabled population is likely shut out of most e-commerce transactions.

"That is a significant percentage of the marketplace, and we are seeing more companies looking to appeal to that community," said Louis Hutchinson, CEO and founder of Crunchy Technologies in Arlington, Va.

Companies such as Crunchy Technologies are lining up government contracts designed to ensure Web site compliance with the new regulations. Crunchy has come up with PageScreamer, a development tool that combs through Web sites to turn up images or graphics that must have a text substitute to meet Section 508 requirements. Once a particular image is identified and tagged with corresponding text, PageScreamer's Image Control File can automatically make corrections.

"Think about an image such as a company logo, which is on hundreds of pages. There may be 10 to 15 developers working on a site [to make it accessible], and each is giving their own text description to attach to the logo," Hutchinson explained.

The new government regulations were passed by Congress several years ago as an Amendment to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

Called simply 'Section 508,' the regulations force agencies to offer federal employees use of information and data that is comparable to that used by other agency personnel unless undue burden is placed on the agency in doing so. Also, there are exceptions for technology used in systems considered part of the national security efforts.

Starting June 21, federal employees with disabilities are able to file complaints if not properly accommodated. Accessibility standards developed by government-chartered Access Board, however, will not take effect as regulations until Monday, June 25.

On that date, government buying officials must take into consideration the extent to which products meet criteria spelled out in Access Board standards for each purchase.

Right now, however, most vendors are some ways off from full compliance with Section 508, many sources said.

And at least initially, there is expected to be some variation among agencies on the interpretation of the "undue burden" clause of the regulations, Grkvac said.