Welcome to the sixty-second episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
On this week's episode:
- Change of leadership at Vispero 0:00
- Join us for our Access On webinar about 1Password 1:41
- Sachin Pavithran and Kathy Eng from the US Access Board 4:33
- Ronza Othman from the National Association of Blind Government Employees 42:02
- Closing and contact info 1:04:19
Transcript
Intro:
Live the life you want.
Access on.
Jonathan Mosen:
Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. On the show this week, we look ahead to a webinar later this month on the popular 1Password app. The rest of the episode is devoted to a discussion about Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.
Executive Director Sachin Pavithran and Kathy Eng join us from the US Access Board, and Ronza Othman from the National Association of Blind Government Employees discusses poor 508 enforcement. Thank you for giving episode 62 of our podcast a listen.
We truly appreciate that. I'm Jonathan Mosen, Executive Director of Accessibility Excellence here at the National Federation of the Blind, and I'm coming to you from the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
This week the National Federation of the Blind learned that there has been a change in the position of chief executive officer of Vispero. The company has made an interim appointment to the role while they determine a suitable permanent replacement. We anticipate an executive level meeting with the interim CEO in the near future.
We are hopeful that we can continue the constructive and collaborative relationship between Vispero and the organized blind movement regarding products that have a significant impact on the education and employment of many blind people.
It is a critical time for screen-reader users, and we will continue to work to raise expectations among all the key companies serving this important market.
Now let’s look ahead to an upcoming webinar. This is an Access On webinar, and it's come about because of your requests. We've had a lot of requests to go deeper into this.
A short time ago, we did a webinar on security, and we touched on a range of things that you might consider in order to keep yourself safer online. One of the things that we touched on was using password managers such as Bitwarden and 1Password. And after that webinar was over, we got a tremendous amount of feedback from people who said, "This is really interesting. We would like to know more about 1Password.
We understand intrinsically why it's useful, but we want to know how to actually work with it, how to set it up." And it's because of all of those requests that we are going to be doing an Access On webinar exclusively on 1Password.
This is going to be happening on February the 24th, and it's a 90-minute webinar. It begins at 2:00 PM Eastern. If you're working during the day or that's just not a good time for you, if you register for the webinar, we will send you the complete recording of the webinar.
It's great if you can attend in person because we'll have a Q&A session where you may seek clarification on some of the things that we cover. But if you can't, it is still worth registering and getting that recording. So, that's a look at 1Password. We'll be predominantly looking at how to set it up and work with it on Windows, but we will briefly cover iOS as well.
Just to whet your appetite a little bit, 1Password allows you to create a unique password for every website that you visit. You don't even have to remember all those passwords because 1Password can fill them in for you, but there's a lot more you can do with 1Password as well. You can use it for two-factor authentication.
You can store your credit cards in there and just fill them in when you need to pay for something and not have to go fossicking around for credit card numbers. You can store secure notes, and you can also ditch the password altogether, which is what people are increasingly recommending and just use passkeys.
1Password supports that, and one of the beauties of working with 1Password as opposed to, say, the password management tool that might be built into your web browser is it is agnostic about the web browser that you use.
So, once you have this information in 1Password, you can use it on your phone in any browser. You can use it on your PC or Mac in any browser. So, if you sometimes work with Edge and sometimes with Chrome and sometimes with Firefox, all of your passwords can be accessible to you and your other notes as well through 1Password on all those browsers.
Definitely worth considering. So, if you'd like to know more, be sure to go to nfb.org/CENA. That stands for Center of Excellence in Nonvisual Accessibility. NFB.org/CENA. You'll find the events and training link there. Choose that, and you'll find the link to register for our 1Password webinar. I hope that you enjoy that. We look forward to seeing you there.
Dr. Sachin Pavithran serves as Executive Director of the US Access Board, a position he's held since January 2021. He is himself blind and brings over 25 years of access technology experience.
Before becoming Executive Director, he served as a presidentially appointed public member since 2012, chaired the ICT committee that developed the Section 508 Refresh and directed Utah's Assistive Technology Program. He holds a PhD in disability studies from Utah State University, and Kathy Eng is Senior ICT Disability Specialist at the Access Board, where she's worked since April 2018.
She co-leads the ICT test baseline portfolio, co-facilitates the W3C Accessibility Conformance Testing Task Force and chairs the best practice subcommittee in the Federal CIO Council's Accessibility Community of Practice. She advocates for HTML-first approaches to government content. Let me welcome you both to Access On. I really appreciate you making yourselves available.
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
Well, thank you for having us, Jonathan.
Kathy Eng:
Thank you. Great to be here.
Jonathan Mosen:
Sachin, let's start off with you. What types of accessibility standards or issues fall under the jurisdiction of the Access Board?
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
Sure. So, often when you hear about the Access Board, we've been in existence for 50 years now, little over 50 years. Early on, it was purely access to federal facilities. So, the access to federal buildings, federal lands, that was the primary reasons why we came into existence. It's evolved over the years. Now, under the Access Board umbrella, we have a built environment, which consists of building accessibility, your sidewalks, crosswalks, so all of your public right of way. We have public transit that we write standards for.
So, your buses, trains, passenger vessels, and ICT, which 508 falls under our ICT standard setting. So, we do cover pretty broad range of accessibility standards and guides depending upon the areas that individuals are interested in. They tend to hone into those areas, but we did come into existence with the built environment side of things, which is a huge part of our portfolio.
Jonathan Mosen:
Would you describe the board fundamentally as an advisory body or is it also an enforcement body?
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
We have a very small role when it comes to enforcement. So, as I mentioned earlier, the reason we came into existence is the accessibility of federal spaces. So, federal facilities leased or owned by the federal government. Often when we talk about legislation, we talk about the Americans with Disabilities Act. Way before the ADA, there was the Architectural Barriers Act, which was passed in 1968 to ensure the accessibility of federal facilities.
That is the instigation behind the creation of the Access Board. So, in '68, the Architecture Barriers Act got passed. In 1973, under the Rehabilitation Act, we were created to write the standards for the Architectural Barriers Act, and that is the only enforcement authority we have is to ensure all federal facilities, leased or owned by the federal government, is accessible. That includes national parks, post offices, anything under the federal government umbrella.
So, enforcement authority, that's where it starts, federal facilities. Everything else, we write the standards. We set the minimum standards, but we do not do the enforcement. Other federal agencies that sit on our boards such as Department of Justice, Department of Transportation, HUD, they adopt our standards, which is the minimum standards that they adopt, and they do the enforcement after they go through their rulemaking process.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, is that a potential source of frustration that sometimes you've worked hard, you've consulted on these standards, and then you are not responsible for enforcing them and there might be times where you feel like those who are may not be enforcing them as meticulously as you would like?
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
So, there's often this confusion because we write the standards. So, the assumption is we have some level of enforcement authority, and then there's also the frustration from the general public because we finalize standards, but then the public is waiting to see why it has not been implemented or it's not being enforced, because a lot of times, those standards have not been adopted by the enforcement agency.
So, yes, there is some frustration both in the public side of things and also from our staff point of view, because there are standards that we have finalized probably over a decade ago that certain agencies have not adopted, but they should have adopted. So, the government moves slowly, but it is hard at times. We find ourself explaining the same thing again and again because of lack of enforcement.
Jonathan Mosen:
You've served as executive director and on the board for some time under both red and blue administrations and the current administration, of course, has made it clear it wants to deprioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, and sometimes accessibility gets appended to that list. Has that changed the way that you work and the way that you are taken seriously?
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
So, in regards to the conversation around DEI, we have not seen any direct targeting to the work that we are doing. Obviously, there's been a federal government-wide conversation on DEI related, which has been primarily focused on diversity-related issues.
At least the work that the Access Board has been involved, we have not been asked to do anything differently other than the executive order that has asked all federal agencies to stop regulatory work unless there's support from the administration.
So, there's an executive order that requires for every regulation that you issue, you have to repeal or give up 10 existing regulation, which makes it impossible for most federal agencies to do regulatory work. That's the only difference that we have experienced as far as the work that we are doing. That's not targeting accessibility, that's targeting all federal agencies at large who do regulations.
Now, I can't speak for other agencies what they are experiencing when it comes to internal accessibility issues that they might be experiencing, whether it's employees or others, but the work that we are doing has continued.
And in fact, since we slow down on the regulatory side of things, we have expanded doing more technical assistance and more training. As I said earlier, there's a lot of standards that we have finalized over the years that doesn't mean all the cities and towns have implemented all those standards.
So, now we have shifted going directly to cities and towns and other entities that should be implementing some of our existing standards and working with those communities, or those entities, to make sure they understand what our standards are. So, we're not waiting for them to come support.
So, when we go to other cities, so for example, when we were in New Orleans last year, along the same time, the NFB convention was going on, we were meeting with a lot of the city planners, the mayor's office and other groups within New Orleans, helping them understand what can they do to improve accessibility in their city.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right, and we'll come back to enforcement issues or compliance issues when we do a deeper dive into 508, but I want to talk a bit more about that public engagement component because obviously public engagement and feedback are important in shaping accessibility policy. How can blind people who are affected by or have an interest in these issues monitor what the Access Board is working on and even provide input into what you're working on?
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
First, I would say sign up for our newsletters, follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, the different social media platforms. So, do sign up for our different outlets that we have. That's one way to get to know what's coming, whether it's public hearing, whether it's public common period that we have for any regulation that we are working on, and when we are actively working on regulations, that's where the public has a role to play because every regulation that we work on, there is a public comment period where individuals or organizations can weigh in and share their perspective on what's being considered for the regulation, which is a critical component in the whole process because without that step, we would not know what the public at large would... what the reaction would be to some of those regulations that we are proposing. So, that is where the general public, including blind individuals, can play a role by participating.
I know NFB has played a significant role in our past regulations weighing in, but it doesn't have to be NFB organization as a whole. It can be individuals within the blindness community that can weigh in on the different regulations.
They're giving their perspective because we do take those comments seriously, and we have to respond to see, and we have to look for those comments and decide why we are accepting and why we are not accepting some of the comments.
Jonathan Mosen:
And one of the things I've noticed being now closer to the action here than ever is just the respect with which the National Federation of the Blind is held. The fact that people from all over this country can have input through collective action into a high quality, detailed submission that goes into these things and then there's followup. There is often dialogue that takes place, and that's one of the benefits of collective advocacy.
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
I agree.
Jonathan Mosen:
Turning then to the main focus of our conversation today, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. I know you both have considerable experience with this, but Kathy, this is a chance to bring you into the conversation. Could we start in plain language describing for those who may not be fully aware, what is Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act? What does it provide for?
Kathy Eng:
Well, Section 508 is part of the Rehabilitation Act, and it is a requirement for federal government agencies whenever they're developing or using or maintaining or procuring IT or communication IT products that they meet specific technical standards for accessibility.
So, the types of ICT that we cover, we have specific requirements for electronic content, which includes websites and documents and then there's also requirements for software and hardware so that depending on the type of IT or ICT that the federal government is using, they have to meet specific technical requirements, and it deals with accessibility for users with various disabilities, including vision disabilities, hearing, cognitive, and mobility issues.
Jonathan Mosen:
We get word a lot at the National Federation of the Blind from federal government employees who have trouble with all sorts of technology, sure, software and hardware they use on the job, but also everything from getting the coffee machine to work because it's not accessible to the photo copier. What's actually covered under 508?
Kathy Eng:
It's definitely computer technology, but also hardware-like photocopiers. IT that has data-related transmission functionality would be covered. So, coffee maker might, depending on how it's used or what the functionality includes, might not be covered by Section 508, but certainly photocopiers and computers and anything that you would use computer or laptop or a tablet to access would likely be covered as long as it's federal government information technology.
Jonathan Mosen:
We've seen a recent study that found that nearly 48% of tested federal website pages had accessibility issues. Are things actually getting better, do you think, and what can be done to speed all of this up?
Kathy Eng:
That is something that we have recently been reporting on along with GSA, the General Services Administration and OMB, the Office of Management and Budget. We at the Access Board collaborate with both of those agencies to do an assessment of Section 508 compliance within the federal government. Those statistics that you just cited are about where we're at.
I think there's certainly some agencies that do very well with accessible websites and accessible documents, but then other agencies may not be doing that well with software and hardware because of resource challenges. So, across the federal government, it's inconsistent and the level of compliance will vary and the challenges are generally that there aren't enough resources available to dedicate to ICT accessibility.
Some of the ideas that our partners at OMB and GSA have made recommendations within our annual assessment include improving enforcement and dedicating more resources and increasing priority and integration of accessibility in procurement and development of the ICT products. I hope to see it improve year over year, but there are definitely challenges at the agency level that make it difficult to make everything Section 508 compliant.
Jonathan Mosen:
Some suggested remediations are, "Well, we'll give you a reader or we'll give you access to a visual interpretation service." Do you think that is an acceptable way to resolve an accessibility problem?
Kathy Eng:
That would not be Section 508 compliance. Those would be considered alternative means or workarounds for non-compliance. So, accommodations can be very successful or providing information for people with disabilities, but it really relies on the ICT to be accessible and meet the requirements that Section 508 specifies in our technical requirements.
So, if you're going to provide an accommodation like a screen reader to access web content, that web content has to meet specific technical requirements in order for that accommodation to be successful. Providing a human reader to provide information because the website is not Section 508 compliant is a compliance issue. That would be considered a workaround.
So, I would say that the original content should be made accessible so that it wouldn't be necessary to provide that type of accommodation, and they could rely on their assistive technology to independently access the information.
Jonathan Mosen:
Sure. Yeah. I think that independence is the key, isn't it? Because when somebody is reading it to you, whether it's over an app or sitting next to you, that's not the same as you absorbing the information yourself. In fact, depending on how you process information, you may not process it as effectively as if you're able to read it yourself and review it in real time.
Kathy Eng:
Yeah, I agree entirely. I think it gives the user more ability to control what information they want as well, because they could navigate to a certain part of the content using their assistive technology and skip over parts that they don't want to hear and have more control over the speed at which they access the information, the content that they want to hear, and they could access it at all hours. They don't have to rely on the hours of the reader to be available.
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
I'll jump in real quick. So, Jonathan, going back to what you mentioned about providing a reader, one thing I have seen often is using a reasonable accommodation as a way to not coming into compliance. That is unfortunately happens a lot more than we like. Reasonable accommodation is not an answer to compliance. Those are two different things.
Now, you can provide reasonable accommodation as a transition while you're getting your ICT into compliance, but that should not be a way to say that now they're in compliance because they provide some accommodation. As far as how enforcement works, which that is the, at least in my opinion, one of the big issue that we have. There's the enforcement is self-enforcement. Each federal agency enforces their own agency, which is not the best approach when it comes to enforcement.
So, that is something that has been in the discussions quite a bit among advocacy groups, also in Congress and also within federal agencies on how enforcement can change to have better enforcement in the future because the way it's been working right now for the last couple of decades, it's not effective.
So, that needs to change as far as enforcement is considered because not all agencies do enforcement the way it should be done and not only that 508 programs sometimes sit isolated in larger agencies where the CIO office is not talking to the 508 office. So, there's this breakdown on how accessibility should be handled, especially in a larger department, so larger federal agencies. So, that breakdown of communication between the CIO office and the 508 office is a huge problem.
Jonathan Mosen:
It's probably hard to attribute motive, I suppose, but I have to ask, do you think it's people who just don't understand the law making bad procurement decisions or has it all just been flagrantly ignored repeatedly?
Kathy Eng:
I think it's a little bit of education at the agency level, but it's also a challenge when they're buying commercial products that some vendors aren't as up to speed on the accessibility requirements.
So, it's areas where I think both can improve. I think agencies would benefit from more accurate and honest accessibility reports about the products and also within agencies to be more aware of how to proceed and what the process is to identify which products are the most accessible.
There's several areas that can improve, and we're working to address how agencies do their evaluation, but also we're working with the IT community as well to try and educate and improve their reports to be more accurate and honestly reflect the accessibility of their products.
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
One thing I'll add is most procurement offices when they're working on contracts usually do have some language to ensure accessibility. It's what happens once the product is procured or acquired, who does that assessment to make... Are we taking the word of the vendor and just assuming it's accessible?
Even though it says in the contract it has to be accessible, often you don't find that evaluation being done. And until someone who's using it, whether it's an employee or someone else who runs into the accessibility barrier, that's when it comes to light that it was not accurate when the vendor said it's supposed to be accessible, or it's just overlooked.
Jonathan Mosen:
Knowledge and expertise in accessibility can be lost when key staff leave and as we know over the last year, reductions and force have taken a significant personal toll on those affected, but has also resulted in a tragic loss of institutional knowledge.
Has that affected blind federal employees' ability to get the accessible technology or accommodations that they need to get the job done? And is there a way back from that? I mean, it's hard to imagine a mass rehiring at sometime in the future.
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
Obviously, there's been a lot of changes that has happened over the last year in the federal government with hiring and people transitioning off either through retirement or other reasons. We do not have any specific data as far as the impact so far when it comes to 508 programs or 508 coordinators.
I am sure there is going to be an effect or impact with some of the changes, primarily with people leaving, but also with all those federal employees that has transitioned out, there are people being moved to different responsibilities and not sure the 508 portion is still being covered in some agencies or not. Like I said, we do not have a clear idea what the impact is so far. I know every year, we have an evaluation, an assessment that comes out on how the federal government is doing at large, and we're still in that process. Kathy, anything more you want to add?
Kathy Eng:
We are aware that at some agencies that the 508 program was affected by some staffing changes last year. But as Sachin has said, we don't know the direct impact of that yet. I will say over the years, and just my career within the federal government, we've had some significant accessibility leaders retire, and we had to recover from those folks leaving and other people have been able to step up and take over some leadership in the accessibility community, but it does take time.
So, I'm hoping that we'll be able to provide the technical assistance that other agencies may need due to the change in their resources. GSA and the Access Board, we work together very closely to provide some technical assistance to agencies and also develop guidance and best practices for other agencies to adopt and implement at their agency. So, hopefully we'll be able to work together to collaborate and offer any assistance that we can to work through any of these changes.
Jonathan Mosen:
Suppose a blind federal employee finds that a software package that they're required to use on the job isn't accessible or a blind member of the public for that matter can't use a federal website because it's not compliant. What can they do in that situation? What are the remedial avenues that they have?
Kathy Eng:
Well, first, I would suggest that they get in touch with the government agency that is providing that public website that they're having problems with, or if they're a federal employee, to make it known that there's an accessibility issue with an IT that the agency is using, and that would initiate some discussion at least to assess the IT product at the agency, test and see where the issues may be.
Is it in fact a problem with Section 508 conformance and compliance of that product to really understand what is the cause of the issue? The agency should communicate with the end user to understand what the issues are, where in the IT product are they encountering problems, and the conversation should continue to determine what's the best approach to remediate the issue.
We have developed some best practice guidance for agencies to develop a complaint process for 508, and that's available on section508.gov.
Almost everything that the Access Board and GSA develops for Section 508 conformance guidance is on the website, section 508.gov, and people can do a search for the complaints best practice guidance that we developed last year or the year before, I think, but yeah, that's where I would start. Definitely, let the agency know that there is an accessibility issue so that they can look into it, do some investigation and remediate as needed.
Jonathan Mosen:
And of course, if that doesn't bear fruit, I should point out that the National Federation of the Blind does have a governmental employees division and people are welcome to contact that division and become active in it and there is a lot of strength to be gained from that collective action and solidarity.
Do any benefits of 508, do you think, cascade to the private sector? I mean, presumably if technology companies have to make 508 compliant technology, then even people working in the private sector or using this technology at home should benefit from this legislation.
Kathy Eng:
I think absolutely. There's definitely some of our larger IT vendors that the government buys from that have ensured that their products meet Section 508 conformance requirements and make the same accessibility improvements in other products that they market.
I should also mention that there are other international accessibility regulations that the vendors may also need to meet, and we would benefit in the federal government from them improving their accessibility to meet international requirements. So, generally, I think our IT products over the years, since Section 508 has been a requirement, they have improved in accessibility, especially our larger IT vendors who dedicated more effort towards meeting the requirements so that government could procure their products.
You also see that accessibility has been built into recent technologies, including our mobile phones and providing all sorts of apps that can improve productivity for people, including those who do not have a disability.
And those apps were sometimes developed for improving the access for people with disability. So, generally, the general population can benefit from improved accessibility and many vendors have recognized that and provide those features within their tools.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes. It's fascinating to watch the European Accessibility Act rolling out and how companies are changing some practices so that they can be compliant with that and continue to do business in Europe. So, that is certainly a positive.
When I was researching your work, Kathy, and congratulations on all that you have done, I was really intrigued by your campaign, as it were, for government to embrace good, old HTML for disseminating documents, which is a university accessible format, nothing extra to install. How are you getting on with that?
Kathy Eng:
Well, thanks for noticing that. I did a presentation with our partners at GSA and also FDIC. Forgive me, I don't know the entire acronym for that, but our presentation was that doesn't need to be a PDF, and it really was to convey the message that if you're posting content on your website, that you should really just post it as HTML and don't make it into another document format that could be less accessible and is definitely more difficult to make accessible than HTML.
It's also more mobile-friendly so that regardless of what device you're looking at, the content HTML is going to reformat and resize and provide more accessibility than a PDF format. You asked how it's going, and we had a good reception to that presentation. We really want to emphasize that it's more of a workflow change to how content gets posted on your website.
We're not asking that the authors of the content suddenly learn HTML rather than default to creating a PDF and sending it onto your web team to post that you just provide the content and the web team can post it as HTML, and what we generally find is that web teams already know that they need to make their content accessible.
So, they know how to add accessibility to the content. Whereas the authors of content haven't had the training or maybe have the necessary skills to make PDF accessible, especially when it comes to more complex content.
So, generally the idea is that give the content over to the folks who know how to make it accessible, and it's much easier for them to create accessible HTML than to have to deal with a PDF and just post it as accessible HTML from the start. We're making some progress.
It's hard to change habits that have been in existence for years, but I think many in the audience have responded and say, "Yeah, this makes so much sense," and it's just a matter of changing from the automatic, "Let's just PDF it," to keep it as HTML and make it accessible from the start.
Jonathan Mosen:
I guess you are both sounding a little more upbeat than I was expecting. So, as we start to wrap, let me ask you this question. Given all that has taken place in the last little while, would you say the state of accessibility within the federal government is improving, declining, or it's around about the same?
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
I'll say that we have a very long way to go. It is improving in certain agencies. It's hard to say government as a whole, because depending upon who's leading the effort within a particular department or federal agency, you see changes happening and sometimes it's happening in silos, which is not the best approach, but it is better than nothing, but the improvement is very slow. Wish it was a lot faster than what we are seeing, but it's not going backwards. That's one thing I can say.
Jonathan Mosen:
Do you agree with that, Kathy? I guess you got to agree with the boss, right?
Kathy Eng:
Of course, I do. But I will say that over the years, I think we're seeing more policy of having accessibility integrated within development and procurement, some improvements from the IT vendor community as they also have the requirement to meet Section 508 due to contract language.
So, from the start, I think web was the focus for Section 508 compliance, and it continues to be the area where most agencies are doing better of all of the ICT types. So, that's good news. That hasn't declined. I think we're seeing that software and hardware are getting some attention and definitely could improve in Section 508 conformance and also from the agency perspective, we're seeing that the accessibility language is part of the contracts, but as Sachin mentioned earlier, we would like to see agencies do a little bit more of testing and actually understanding the impact of non-conformance when they make their IT decisions. So, slight improvements over the years, but definitely room to do better.
Jonathan Mosen:
Because there's no punitive action taken, right? I mean, if a company actually represents a piece of technology as being accessible, and then that is demonstrably proven not to be the case, they're not fined or anything like that for essentially selling something to the federal government. That was not what they said it was.
Kathy Eng:
That is not what I've seen. Yeah. That's an area where I think agencies can define more what happens if the contract language is actually not met.
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
When you do contracting with the federal government and the vendor does not deliver, it is a breach of contract, but does the accessibility component of the breach of contract get the attention it deserves unlike the other components within the contract? That's where the problem lies is often the accessibility piece doesn't get the spotlight or the attention that it needs, even if the vendor did not deliver what they're supposed to.
Jonathan Mosen:
Many ways to approach this issue. I want to thank you both so much for coming on the podcast and Sachin, I know that members of the National Federation of the Blind at our last national convention in New Orleans really appreciated the opportunity to have input into the Access Board's work when you held a forum in conjunction with that convention. So, we look forward to staying in touch and talking about these really important issues as they evolve further.
Dr. Sachin Pavithran:
Well, thank you for having us once again, and we always... NFB has played a significant role in a lot of our regulations in the past by informing during a public card period, which is vehicle for everyone. So, appreciate the relationship we have with the National Federation of the Blind.
Jonathan Mosen:
And we in turn appreciate Executive Director Sachin Pavithran and Kathy Eng from the US Access Board making themselves available on Access On and answering those questions. What's it like at the coalface? Well, to give us a perspective on that after the break, we're joined by Ronza Othman, who is president of the National Association of Blind Government Employees. That's next, as Access On continues.
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Speaker 6:
Walking Alone and Marching Together is a podcast series that brings to life the history of the National Federation of the Blind from 1940 to 1990. Based on the comprehensive book of the same name, this podcast is designed to make the rich and complex story of our movement more accessible, engaging, and immediate.
Speaker 7:
The book Walking Alone and Marching Together has been available in nearly every format imaginable, but its sheer size and depth can make it daunting to approach. That's why we're bringing it to you in a multi-episode podcast, breaking it down into manageable, compelling chapters that allow you to experience the history in a way that fits into your life. Instead of simply looking back on events that happened decades ago, our goal is to immerse you in the times, challenges, and triumphs of the organized blind movement as they unfolded.
Speaker 6:
Episodes are coming out fall of 2025. Subscribe and follow now.
Speaker 5:
National Federation of the Blind. Live the life you want.
Jonathan Mosen:
To offer the perspective of blind people who work in the federal government, I'm joined by Ronza Othman, who is the president of the National Association of Blind Government Employees, a division of the National Federation of the Blind. Ronza, it's really great to have you on Access On. Thank you for doing this.
Ronza Othman:
I'm delighted to be here. Thank you, Jonathan.
Jonathan Mosen:
I want to begin by recognizing that it's been a very tough year for blind government employees with many blind people losing their jobs because of reductions in force and each of those situations represents a considerable disruption and stress for the individuals involved. For those who remain, how well is 508 working in practice right now?
Ronza Othman:
Well, first, I want to address the folks that did leave, and while many of them left through reduction in force, others felt forced into the deferred resignation program and other types of programs, retirement, et cetera, because of the wholesale criticism and attacks on people with disabilities, but also because frankly, in the federal space, 508 compliance has really gone backwards a tremendous amount.
So, there are a number of federal employees that felt compelled to leave because they were no longer able to perform their job functions due to the administration's policies around accessibility specifically.
But for those who remain, many of our members have reported how much they struggle to perform their jobs, how much they try to stay under the radar and frankly are not asking for things that they need or not requesting accessible and information communication technology be remediated, or if something's procured that does not work, they just don't bring it up and try to find workarounds.
Even though by law, these systems and technology should be 508 compliant, they just don't want to have a target on them like so much of the rest of the federal workforce and the public with disabilities has had.
So, they try to find other ways to do the work, but it's suffering in terms of their productivity, their suffering in terms of the satisfaction they get at work. It's taking them longer to do things. Some work they can't do at all. Some of them are requesting to be transferred into other positions.
So, it's the productivity itself, it's the output, it's their attitude about their work and frankly, it's also their ability to serve the public as a result because these are people who've been doing whatever work they've been doing for years and decades. So, we are losing a tremendous asset by virtue of the fact that accessibility is not only an afterthought, but now a bad word in the federal government.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm sure there are multiple reasons for the breakdown, but when you look at the number of people who've left the federal government for whatever reason, a good number of those were in the 508 compliance area for whatever government entity they worked in. That must result in a loss of institutional knowledge.
Ronza Othman:
Absolutely. It was not accidental that the administration decided to target 508 offices, reasonable accommodation offices, equal employment opportunity offices, the functions that receive, process, and adjudicate 508 complaints. In the federal government, each individual agency is its own enforcement body.
So, when you eliminate those functions in those offices, there's nowhere for anyone to complain to and even the workaround, reasonable accommodations are a workaround. They are not a solution, but employees are not even able to go to the reasonable accommodation offices to try to get those workarounds anymore.
You have huge backlogs. I've been talking with some colleagues of mine at some of the larger federal agencies, and they're talking about a 9 to 12-month backlog on reasonable accommodations related to procuring technology like JAWS for Windows or CCTVs, very simple things that used to take days, if not shorter, and now they can't even get their accessible technology.
They can't even get the things that they need to be able to operate their computer, let alone to be able to go to whatever the body is at their particular agency that handles concerns, complaints, remediation, procurement, fixes when something goes wrong in terms of 508 compliance.
Jonathan Mosen:
Are you seeing any evidence at this stage that there's a catch-22 situation developing where people aren't being given the equipment to do their job correctly, so they're not doing their job correctly, or in a minimal way, and then there's a performance issue that emerges because of that, because they haven't got the equipment they need?
Ronza Othman:
Absolutely. I'll give you two specific examples. One federal agency was using Zoom as its meeting platform, and the administration came in and said, "Nope, we're moving to a different platform." Well, that other platform was not 508 compliant, so everybody got pushed. Literally, they turned it off overnight. So, then you had a number of employees who all of a sudden could not go to meetings. They couldn't have the chat function work with their supervisors.
Their human readers who were providing them reasonable accommodations who would remote in to assist them with inaccessible websites and applications using Zoom couldn't do that anymore. So, there was a cascading effect and a number of them were then told, "Well, you're not meeting performance standards." "Well, of course they're not meeting performance standards. You took away the tools that would enable them to meet performance standards."
Another really important example that I've seen in many federal agencies is around Adobe Professional. So, the administration, well, DOJ, came in and decided that it was going to cut the contracts to Adobe Professional. Now, as an aside, some folks are familiar with the consequences of the administration's elimination of Adobe Professional because of the Epstein files.
So, a lot of the redactions were not properly done because the Department of Justice then had to use other methods besides Adobe, which is the gold standard for how lawyers and others redact material and keep things accessible, but also keep privacy at the forefront and ensure that documents are properly sanitized and can't be hacked, and so forth.
What folks don't know besides what happened with the Epstein files in terms of the Adobe platform being gone is that many employees with disabilities, particularly blind and low vision employees, use Adobe to basically, what we used to call OCR, run optical character recognition to make something that maybe wasn't readable by a screen reader now readable by a screen reader, to make it editable so they can take the content and move it to a different... maybe a word processing document or do something else that they need to do with it. But when many federal agencies stopped being able to use Adobe, they stopped being able to convert inaccessible content into accessible content, which meant that they were now unable to do large parts of their jobs.
I'll give you an example at OPM, Office of Personnel Management, that has caused some of the folks there to really slow down their processing of paperwork, and it's now contributing to a huge backlog and the catch 22 is that their supervisors come down on them because they're not seeing them meeting the same level of production.
They're slower at their work if they can do it at all, which the boss is mad about, appropriately so. But the reason they can't do their work is because the government took away the tool that they need to be able to accessibly and independently do their work because they didn't care about accessibility.
Jonathan Mosen:
Where is the system breaking down? It sounds like there might be multiple breakage points, but going back to your example of the inaccessible meeting platform that replaced Zoom, was the vendor claiming that they're 508-compliant and nobody checked, or is it that nobody particularly cares whether they're procuring 508 compliance software or not?
Ronza Othman:
I think it's hit or miss depending on which federal agency you're talking about. There is a document that vendors are supposed to complete called the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template or VPAT. They're supposed to submit it when they submit a bid or a proposal. Some contracting officers will take a look at the VPAT or some of the procurement offices will take a look at the VPAT and say, "This is completely empty. It doesn't tell me anything."
Some of them don't ever look at it, so they don't know that it doesn't actually say anything about what types of compliance there is or isn't or what remediation. Some agencies are really good or were, before last year, really good at saying, "Okay, we're going to go ahead and test it. We're going to test your VPAT. We're going to test your application before we put it into production." That's very rare.
That almost never happened and frankly, the two or three agencies I'm aware of who actually tested a product before they put it in production did so because of a consent decree, a settlement agreement or some sort of lawsuit they lost or settled. But when they did that, at least they knew what they were getting, and they would create a remediation plan.
Most though, frankly, the contracting personnel don't know what they're looking for. So, they're just using this VPAT, and they're checking the box to say, "All right, I got it." So, some vendors are outright lying.
They're being deceptive and saying something is accessible and 508 compliant that isn't, but many of them don't even bother to claim it is, and they're getting away with it because the people that are in charge of procurement don't know and don't care. Now, we did make some progress before 2025, particularly with the General Services Administration, which has done an abysmal job of leading this work.
It makes me sick to my stomach every time I hear somebody talk about how GSA has done a great job. No, GSA has actually done a horrible job with leading the work on 508 procurement.
GSA is responsible for contract management overall, and since 2025 has taken even a larger role, they cut most of their contracts that deal with 508 compliance, testing, remediation, et cetera and because there's just been so many different alligators, few people have noticed to comment on it, but nonetheless, did make some progress in the early 2020s up until last year in terms of putting out some guidance documents and recommending federal agencies engage in some more uniformity in terms of the procurement, and frankly, giving federal agencies the autonomy they needed to procure what the individual federal agency needed to procure for its particular workforce or its particular mission.
The VA, for example, the Veterans Administration, needs to really think about accessibility very early in the process and has gotten some criticism from Congress when it didn't.
So, they started making some significant moves as did subsections of the Department of Health and Human Services, not everybody and certainly not headquarters, but when the changes in 2025, when the Department of Government Efficiency came in, all of those improvements were essentially erased, eradicated, and frankly sent us back decades.
Jonathan Mosen:
How do we fix this?
Ronza Othman:
I think that there are a number of different ways. It's going to have to be a multi-pronged approach. First of all, advocacy is really important. Federal employees need to speak up, but they're scared to speak up.
They're afraid to speak up because they don't want to target on them, which makes sense, which is I think frankly why some of the folks from the Access Board spin a very positive outlook on what's happening because they need that perspective to shield them, and I'm going to be very frank about that, but I think that those who have a willingness to speak up in the federal space should speak up.
But I also think the public has a huge, huge role to play here. Federal employees are not the only beneficiaries of Section 508. Every member of the public who experiences or interacts with a federal agency's technology, whether it's a website or a kiosk or engaging with them through one of their systems where you're transmitting data and information, there are just so many different ways you don't even think about, whether it's paying your taxes or whether it's visiting the Social Security Administration or whether it's receiving an electronic version of your Medicare summary notice or picking health insurance on the marketplace or visiting a national park and wanting to buy your ticket.
There's so many different ways we interact with the federal government as members of the public and the federal government's electronic and information communications. So, the public, we're taxpayers. We should be the ones speaking up. So, contact your congressmen, contact your representatives and say, "This is a problem." Contact the agencies. File 508 complaints.
Even if there is not a space because the 508 offices have largely been decimated through reduction in force and other separations, contact the CIO of the particular agency, contact the Head of IT and say, "I want to file a 508 complaint." Use those words and tell them specifically why. Notify advocacy organizations like the National Federation of the Blind of your specific incidents so that we can track those experiences as well.
I think the next part is really around making sure that state and local governments are still working to implement accessibility standards comparable to the 508 standards. So, hold your local governments accountable because when the federal government fails, it's the state and local entities that are going to step in and fill that breach.
So, talk to your council people or talk to your local state representatives, state delegates and state senators, and so forth. Then continue pounding on entities like Microsoft and Google. Where's the money? The federal government's greatest strength is the power of the purse. It buys a lot of things. It spends a lot of money and these big, big companies are often the ones they're buying them from.
So, if you get a place like Microsoft to build into what they're selling, accessibility baked in like Apple, for example, with the voiceover platform, then you won't have to have so many barriers when you're working for the federal government or when you're a member of the public trying to access their systems and websites and information because it'll already be something they bought and frankly didn't have to ask for as an extra or didn't have to enforce as an extra.
There are good models out there. Unfortunately, we are seeing some diminution of good models in some of the bigger companies because of other priorities and the cultural discussion around DEI has really caused significant harm in this space.
People don't understand that the law is the basic minimum standard of what needs to be met. DEI was the ceiling whereas the law is the floor. So, they're lumping them all in together and now these entities aren't even meeting the standard at the floor, let alone trying to raise the ceiling to a higher level than what it was before.
So, there's a lot to do. And also, I would say to those who are federal employees who are displaced, "Don't give up. You have amazing talents that are needed. Find a place where you're going to be able to contribute, whether it's in these bigger companies or whether it's in a small business or whether it's with state or local government. Just talk about it."
Talk about how it's important and why it's important and keep contributing meaningfully with your talents and your interests, because at some point, I think the federal government is going to wake up and say, "Uh-oh, what did we do?"
And they're going to want you back, and then it's going to be your decision whether you decide you're going to come back in that way or whether you're going to contribute meaningfully in other ways.
Jonathan Mosen:
And the benefits of 508 are enormous. You mentioned a couple of examples, but if a company in good faith, for instance, develops hardware or software that's fully accessible in order to be 508-compliant, then people using that in the private sector or in study benefit from that as well. So, it's very far-reaching.
Ronza Othman:
It is. I'll tell you that there are a couple of states, Maryland being one of them, where advocacy groups like the National Federation of the Blind, and in fact in Maryland, it was the National Federation of the Blind in Maryland, went to the state legislature and said, "We need you as a state to establish a legal standard for procurement of electronic and communication technology."
So, now in Maryland, anything that the executive branch buys has to meet essentially what is the 508 compliance standard and there're also language for an actual civil penalty when a company puts itself out as being compliant and isn't.
So, they have some time to remediate because we want to give them the benefit of the doubt first, and if they don't within that period of time, then they have to pay the state for the harm that they have caused by selling them essentially something that doesn't conform to what was required in the procurement.
So, one other way that advocates and individuals can really help in this space is to go to their state legislatures and get laws passed to establish a minimum accessibility standard equivalent to section 508 because the Access Board's already done the work. WICAG's already been defined.
We know What that is, and it's consistent with international standards for the most part, and the more states that do this, the better off we'll all be because now companies are going to say, "I don't want to meet a standard for Maryland that's different from Michigan's, that's different from Minnesota's. Let me meet the highest standard, and that's what I will sell to everyone." So, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Jonathan Mosen:
I guess you, like me, receive feedback from time to time that says, "Well, in this age where we can all be social media warriors and that kind of thing, there's no need for a collective advocacy organization anymore." And I think what you're illustrating is that when you feel that you're in an unsafe environment to raise issues around the tools that you need to do your job in the workplace, you're very vulnerable, and that's where security comes from collective action.
Ronza Othman:
100%. Collective action is a bunch of loud voices. Collective action means that we together are coming as a group, as a constituency to tell whoever it is who we're trying to get their attention, "This is what we want. This is what we need. This is what we put you here to do as taxpayers, but it also shields the most vulnerable of us."
I will tell you, having worked in the advocacy space for quite some time, keyboard warriors who just send off messages through whatever platform they choose to use, they're not taken as seriously as people who actually show up and do the work in a collective action-minded way because anybody can just send a tweet. Anybody could post anything. That doesn't mean you're going to come vote.
If you actually show up, whether it's with your phone calls or whether it's with your email as an organization, whether you're actually coming in person with a group of people or representing an entity that has some good cache in that space, the leaders, the elected legislatures and other leaders are going to take you a lot more seriously than somebody who just randomly puts something out in social media because it's very easy to just discredit that.
And frankly, there's a lot of noise. So, they need the opportunity to be able to call out the actual people who are working to make things better from the keyboard warriors that are just making noise for noise's sake.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I think the response that we got from legislators when we turned up in such inclement weather is a testimony to exactly that, you get rewarded for actually turning up.
Ronza Othman:
I think that's true. I think that's true. I had one member of Congress who many of ours did... Their offices asked to go virtually. We had one at the last minute who called and said, "Well, we realize the sidewalks haven't been shoveled. So, if you want to go virtual, we're happy to go virtual." We said, "Nope, we've been sitting in the cafeteria waiting for you for an hour.
We're here," and we were the only meeting of the whole week that actually showed up in person. They said, "Everybody else canceled." So, they were just so impressed that we decided to bring our collective activism to Congress and showed up anyway in spite of the inclement weather, and that really did net us some great results. So, it's really important not to do dangerous things because if it's not safe, stay home. Of course, we met virtually with who we needed to meet virtually with.
But for the people that were already there prior to the storm, we did get some FaceTime we wouldn't have otherwise gotten, and we were worthwhile and proved that we were hardy, and that this was really, really important to us, and that message was well received.
Jonathan Mosen:
So, as we wrap, the National Association of Blind Government Employees is always looking for and welcoming new members, right?
Ronza Othman:
Absolutely. You do not have to be a federal employee. You can be an employee of a state or local government or a pseudo government agency like the United States Postal Service or federal contractors.
We also welcome individuals that are interested in working for the government, so you don't actually have to be a current employee. And of course, we have many members and welcome others who are retirees of government spaces.
Jonathan Mosen:
Thanks, Ronza Othman, for sharing that perspective with us, and if you have any comments on the episode, you're welcome to be in touch. The information is in the outro we're about to play. We do have a lot of listener feedback banking up, and in a couple of weeks, we'll get to an episode where it's all about your comments. So, do keep sending them in.
That concludes this episode of Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. To send in a contribution for a future episode, email us, attach an audio clip or just write it down and send it to [email protected]. That's [email protected].
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That's [email protected]. To learn more about the National Federation of the Blind, visit our website, nfb.org, or phone us, 410-659-9314. That's 410-659-9314. And be sure to check out the Nation's Blind Podcast right from where you heard this podcast.