DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: We will begin in 2 more minutes.
GLENDA SIMS: We're up to 18 people.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: And I think we should give it another 30 seconds.
We're in competition with some awfully interesting workshops. But for the conflict, I would be at myself.
All right. What do you think? Should we get started?
First of all, it is wonderful to see some old friends and colleagues in the audience. I've missed you greatly. It's great to be back at tenBroek.
For those who have not met me, my name is Daniel Goldstein. Among my identities, I am a cisgendered 73-year-old privileged white male who had the great opportunity to represent the National Federation of the Blind as an attorney from 1986 until I retired in 2017.
I represented the National Federation of the Blind of course with my colleagues.
I am now theoretically retired, and I'm speaking to you from my idyllic home on Lake Spofford in New Hampshire taken from the indigenous people.
I will leave my fellow speakers to introduce themselves, and I guess I should just add, for those of you who can't see me, that for the first time since 1968, thanks to COVID, I have hair going down my back.
Mary Rainer-Skala, who is going to speak after me, is going to discuss the role of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals in hosting the benchmarking tool that I compiled from discussions with disability rights organizations.
And Glenda Sims from Deque will discuss some of the details of the pieces of the tool that deal with digital inclusion.
What I want to talk to you about today is the idea of adding an additional avenue to approaching the issue of inclusion of people with disabilities in corporate America. It is far, though, from the only additional avenue that we need to be thinking about, the most important of which I believe would be a think tank devoted to educating the public on the true meaning of disability.
This is an hour and a half session. I seriously doubt that either I, Mary, or Glenda will speak for more than 15-20 minutes apiece. For one thing, as interesting as we are, we're not that interesting.
So we should have plenty of time for discussion. I will be happy, though, to take questions as we go on.
Inclusion is more than just opening the door and inviting people in, as I'm sure everyone here knows. That's true for whatever marginalized group we're talking about. Inclusion is also a matter of educating the institution from which we've been excluded that the marginalized group brings something new to the table that has value and that differs from what previously existed. One of the earliest examples that I encountered was when I was a young lawyer and women lawyers were still a rarity, there was much talk but not initially about changes to the profession that came from opening that door.
Inclusion and parity for women in law is still a work in progress, obviously. But regardless of the marginalized group, inclusion also requires the institution to change. Some of those changes may require expenditures, taking an all-male environment and adding women's restrooms is an obvious example. Accommodating breaks in the day for prayer may be another.
But interestingly, it is really primarily almost exclusively with persons with disabilities that we talk about those changes as accommodations, even though there is the equivalent of accommodations for marginalized groups and even though accommodations are really a majority concept. When I come to the NFB, they accommodate me and it's quite expensive, but they accommodate me by having the lights on.
We're now seeing what perhaps is the beginning of an effort by institutions, including corporate institutions, to understand what affirmative steps are needed to be more inclusive of various marginalized groups.
Now, put that thought aside for a minute, and I'm going to tell you how I came to the tool we're going to talk about today. 2017, my last year in practice, was a year of reflection for me on my career as a lawyer. While I had been practicing, I was very busy and I felt I was accomplishing a lot. I got a lot of wonderful recognition and support. But when I took a lawyerly eye and put it on the time from '86-2017, here's what I saw:
In 1986 when I began this work, unemployment among the employable blind was 75%. Flash forward to 2017, unemployment among the employable blind was 75%. I had not moved the needle.
In 1999, NFB instructed me to get the attention of digital technology developers, and in early 2000, I sued AOL. And for the years that followed, I went after many websites successfully to some degree. Amazon, eBay, Travelocity, etc., etc.
So what did I accomplish there? Well, in 2017, web aim announced that nearly 98% of the home pages of the 1 million most popular websites had significant accessibilities on average 60 per home page.
Oh, good job, Goldstein.
So there was joy and learning in what I had done, but any delusion that I had contributed to the repair of the world bubbled up top. And so I began to think very hard about what tools needed to be in addition to the litigation. Chris Law, do you have your hand up with a question?
CHRIS LAW: I shouldn't. If there is, it is a mistake.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: There is a hand up. That's why I was checking. But delighted to have you here.
I still believe that litigation is a critical tool. It's one of the few exercises of power by the powerless that we can employ, but it was clear to me we needed something more, and I began to think hard about what it might be.
Now let's go back to the conclusion I started to talk about. Section 504 in the Americans with Disabilities Act, for the most part, tell institutions what not to do. They have that in common with most civil rights laws: Don't discriminate.
But except for the ADA architectural guidelines and the often-ignored 508 refresh, there really are no affirmative guidance from the laws about what to do to be truly inclusive.
At the same time, we see that the reactive accommodations approach that is embodied in Title I is both ineffective and expensive. Ineffective because a training video that's captioned after the training is not much good. A graph made accessible after the class in which it was discussed is not terribly helpful. Not to mention the accommodations that never happen because the AI software that's used by HR may screen out the people with disabilities before they even get in the door.
So I found myself thinking, where would a corporation that wanted to do the right thing turn? I mean, if the CEO wants to build a green headquarters, new headquarters building, they say to the architect, what do I need to do? And the architect says, there's something called the League Standard with silver, gold, and platinum and tells you steps you can take.
But if one of you out there that I'm so glad to see here, if one of you was asked by a corporate CEO, what changes do I need to make to be inclusive of persons with disabilities as customers, as employees, as job applicants, what would you tell them? And what changes would you tell the company they need to make to the infrastructure to make sure that the changes that are made will stick and be sustainable?
So I took that question to the National Federation of the Blind, the National Association of the Deaf, the Association of Late-Deafened Adults, the Arc, the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, to the National Council on Independent Living, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the World Institute on Disability, the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, and an advocate for persons with allergies and asked those questions.
And then I did my best to put those inserts in a binary format that could be audited and verified. For example, the AI used by HR either does or doesn't include people with disabilities. Accessibility either is or is not a design specification for native apps developed by the company.
This benchmarking tool, by the way, also includes the requirements for disability inclusive emergency planning and disaster resilience programs. Some of the goals in the benchmarking tool are silver, some gold, some platinum, and the tool clearly is going to continue to evolve. I am certain that holes in it will emerge as we beta test it with a couple of corporations.
I'm also sure that it will change as both the technology and the culture change. And it's to be hoped in a way that moves this further down the road.
The power to change the benchmarking tool as we learn from it will rest with the organizations I just listed. This is not my tool, and it's not IAAP's tool. This is the tool of the disability rights community. My role was to compile.
Now, when I began speaking about this idea, IAAP suggested that it could be a home for the standards, and we talked. And they explained they could certify the consultants who guide and audit the benchmarking tool, and they could market the tool. And we reached an agreement and then began to collect feedback on top of that which we had received from the organizations from built environment and digital accessibility vendors, from HR professionals who work for corporations, and I expected push back on items. I was delighted to discover that they were suggesting new ideas.
I see. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought I saw another hand up, and then I realized it was my cursor over one of the squares. Sorry about that. Distracted me for a minute.
Anyway, what I got instead was, no, you need to add more, the scope of the training you're proposing is not broad enough.
So Mary Rainer-Skala, as I said, is going to talk about IAAP's role, but among the many things that IAAP is working on is to create an app that will link to resources, allow measurement of progress linking to maturity model, and I thought I would give you a few examples from the current version of the benchmarking tool so that you could see what it is we're trying to do, but a big part of the effort is to get to such a minute level of detail over such a broad range of corporate activities, that disability will become part of the DNA of the corporation. It will just become part of the reflective thinking about any topic.
So, for example, in the governance part of the tool, the part that deals with making sure that the effort doesn't fall apart when one person leaves, we have I think it's nine requirements. Disability inclusion and accessibility are regular agenda items for meetings at the C or executive level. For those of you who, like me, are not educated about corporations, C level is not how much above the Atlantic the corporation is but refers to chief executive officer, chief financial officer, all the chiefs.
Then another thing in the governance factors is the creation of a role we refer to either as the inclusivity coordinator or the chief inclusivity officer, who is responsible for overseeing and implementing this benchmarking tool. We list 12 responsibilities for that person. Not all of which are silver. Some of them are higher. But is a C level executive of the company, has a disability, reports to senior management in writing on a quarterly basis, or whenever a significant problem is encountered, develops and updates a long-range inclusivity plan developed with buy in from all segments of the company, and approved by senior management with specific goals and time table that is available to employees. Is responsible for ensuring that the company has a system for staying current on regulations and standards relating to accessibility, oversees an annual internal inclusivity audit. And by the way, if I'm talking too fast for the interpreters, tell me. Ensures that acquisition inclusivity, compliance plans are prepared and followed. Receives all customer and employee accessibility complaint reports and their resolution. Prepares an annual inclusivity report that is circulated to all senior management, detail progress and setbacks. Establishes procedures for maintaining accessibility of all facilities, equipment, and vehicles owned, operated, leased by or leased to company in accordance with applicable regulatory standards. Supervisors the maintenance of the accessibility of the website in accordance with WCAG 2.1A and AA or any applicable success or standard. And receives all incident reports involving customers or employees with disabilities. And recommends what changes, if any, in the built environment, signage, practices, or procedures may be warranted.
I'm going to stop there and just say, I apologize for reading so fast. I should know better. My first trial, jury trial, the court reporter interrupted me and said, "If you don't slow down and stop dropping your voice at the end of your sentences, I'm going to pick up this machine and throw it at you."
I finished my closing argument with a very red face.
[Laughter]
A couple of other examples on the customer facing. Company has a training program addressing physical and transportation access for all employees or contractors who routinely alter and maintain fiscal spaces or vehicles or order or install or maintain fixtures, equipments, and vehicles. And another one, relieving areas for guide dogs and other service animals are identified and easily available.
That one came from George Kersher. I had reached out to him and said, what do we need to do to reach out to accessible corporations. He looked at the tool and he said, well, I think you have it, but you don't have a provision for guide dog relief.
As I said, I'm sure there are still undiscovered gaps in the standards.
In terms of external communications to customers, we have many. But I will give you the example of two. Company has policies outlining company's commitment to equally effective communication to customers with disabilities, including accessible ways to request and receive tech support. Company prominently posts on websites and public physical spaces that it will provide CART, ASL interpreters, and assisted listening devices upon nonverbal request for sales transactions or other verbal interactions with customers.
From the point of view of internal—excuse me. Applying standards. In terms of prospective employees, company has accessible job applications, recruitment material, and job testing including upon request large print, electronic, or hard copy Braille. That is one of numerous standards dealing with job applicants, including company includes disability in all metrics used to ensure nondiscrimination in hiring, retention, and promotion practices. And company has a formal liaison with local disability consumer groups, e.g. local chapters of NFB, NAD, and CIL, ASAN, etc., and state or provincial vocational rehabilitation.
For those of you who didn't see the announcement from NFB of its extraordinary agreement with Amazon for employees with disabilities, kudos. I mean, I'm sure all of you know that Amazon is only a friend when we're more powerful than they are. And that has proven itself to be true over and over again, whether it was the website, Kindle, or many, many other issues. They are becoming our friend only because as we walk off into the sunset with them, we've handcuffed them to us.
I just think it's a fabulous win.
Going back to the standards, after that, public service announcement. Here is what we do say about reasonable accommodations, although the whole idea of this is to try to reduce that which has to be done in response. This is for employees: Company public posts and includes in the employee handbook policies and procedures for handling requests for reasonable accommodations that allow direct supervisors to grant but not deny reasonable accommodations and that automatically escalate ungranted requests for reasonable accommodations through the inclusivity coordinator. So the onus is not on the disabled employee to have to take the request up. If the answer isn't yes, it goes up on its own.
Here's another. Company requires company-wide disability awareness training on disability bias and stereotypes and concrete suggestions for interacting with people with disabilities.
So I mentioned before that we also have included the issue of emergency planning and disaster resilience that's disability inclusive. And I'll just offer you one or two examples of what's in the benchmarking tool on that, including my favorite on sustainability: Company has an internal audit process to review continuing compliance with this document and to evaluate the efficacies of its procedures in effectuating its disability inclusive emergency preparedness, safety, security, and protection policies in alignment with its accessibility policies.
That's a mouthful of words, but it basically says, it's not one and done, guys. And you're going to have to show yourself annually, whether you're still on track.
Two more examples and then I will stop this part. Emergency communications planning including—excuse me. Emergency communications planning includes planning for accessible emergency communications. And company involves persons with disabilities in the review and design process for all accessible emergency and disaster-related features of new or remodeled facilities.
So it does reflect, I hope, nothing without us. Let me see what I wrote out.
That was it. Mary, would you like to pick up from here?
MARY RAINER-SKALA: Sure. I'm Mary Rainer-Skala, a white female in my 60s, and I am a cofounder in 1997 of a company called Bartimaeus Group which merged in 2005 and has now been rebranded as Level Access.
I retired from there in 2016 and am now working with IAAP as the director of special initiatives.
So I wanted to just give you kind of an overview of IAAP. First of all, let me start with the mission. I'm going to read it to you so you know exactly what it is. The mission of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals is to define, promote, improve, and diversify the accessibility profession globally through certification, education, and networking in order to enable the creation of accessible products, content, services, and environments.
IAAP is currently in its seventh year. When it was on the ground floor and starting, one of the things that was under discussion was that we had a little bit of kind of the Wild Wild West as far as what was an accessibility consultant or what was an accessibility professional. And although in this market space, people have always been fairly helpful to each other and collaborative with each other in helping each other solve problems, there has not been any way to really define what an accessibility professional is. And one of the main problems with that is the accessibility professionals know each other, but when companies are trying to hire somebody that knows about this, they don't know what they're looking for because there wasn't really anyway to quantify what it was to get an accessibility professional.
So this organization is squarely focused on recognizing the expertise and skill sets of accessibility professionals and offering for them these certifications to showcase their credentials.
The other thing that we're very focused on is being dedicated to being a resource not only for our members but for organizations around the globe and bringing excellence in terms of credentialed people, ideas, cutting edge practices, and education. And I think the very first place that we started historically with the organization was looking at the accessibility credentials and the certifications.
So let me tell you a little bit about who our members are currently. We are made up of individual and organizational memberships totaling over 2400 members today. Our professional and organizational memberships represent a range of industries and sectors, including IT, education, government, AT, disability services, telecommunications, consulting, healthcare, and more. We pretty much cover the waterfront here.
We currently have representation in 67 countries and 29% of our membership is international.
Two years ago, Dr. Christopher Lee took over as managing director. He himself is a person with a disability. He brings 20 years of experience to this job in the disability field, and he is an author of three books on learning disabilities.
He is a creative and energetic and funny think-out-of-the-box person. And the vision he is bringing to IAAP is turning in to reality, and we're all very excited with what's happening. So if you haven't had a chance to meet Christopher, you definitely should take an opportunity to sit down and talk with him.
I wanted to just also make you aware of two other key people in our organization. One is Samantha Evans. She oversees our certification. She also helps people set up for tests, study for it, figure out how to do their extra education after you have a certification to keep it, and she's a great resource if you had questions about anything to do with certification.
She's also very involved in the new certifications that we're working on and bringing them to market.
And then lastly Rachel Paul is our marketing coordinator. She is the behind-the-scenes person for all of the great things that come out: Our newsletter, things on our website, and you might catch her moderating a webinar. But she's another great resource on our leadership committee.
So the certifications are a way for people to showcase what they know. They're a way to have an organization sort of build expertise across the organization by asking people to get these certifications. And currently many companies are actually asking for an IAAP certification as part of the job requirement. So we're very excited to see that.
All of our certifications are not just a one and done. They require that you have continuing education to keep your certification going forward.
So I just wanted to show you currently there are five certifications. The CPACC certification is one that is not highly technical but very broad based as far as understanding persons with disabilities, the challenges, assistive technologies, sort of the laws, the guidelines, kind of the groundwork things that everybody should know about this space.
One of the things about CPACC is that we're seeing companies actually ask people that are not IT people but just people that are in the organization in leadership positions to take this certification so that they have a really good kind of groundwork idea of all of the things that would be important to know here.
The WAS certification is a web accessibility specialist certification. It's very technical, and people that are taking it, we advise that they've been doing this for air couple of years. It's not a ground level IT certification.
For those who have both the CPACC and WAS can be eligible to have the CPWA, meaning that they hold both of those credentials.
The CPABE is new. We recently have added the built environment as part of what we're working with at IAAP, which is exciting. So we now have a certification for people working with built environment.
And then the newest one that we have is the accessible document certification. We're very excited about that. That's another one that should be really, you know, like promoted throughout an organization so that documents that are being created internally are accessible to everyone.
As far as education, this is a really big focus for us now. And as we've gotten bigger, we've gotten the bandwidth to really do a lot more with this. We have exciting webinar series that are ongoing all around the year where you can listen to subject matter experts talk about a wide variety of things. These are all recorded, and if you're a member, you can go and listen to any of the ones you might have missed or one that you want to go way back and listen to.
We also are putting together a website resource center where you can go and look for up-to-date resources on things you might be looking for instead of having to Google it, which once you Google something in accessibility, you often have no idea if that's something that's happening now or if that's something that was being done 10 years ago. So hopefully our resource center will be a vibrant place for people to go to get those kinds of things.
And then networking is another really huge piece for us. It's a great and exciting place to be as far as watching some of the topics accessibility people are around really get a chance to talk and collaborate and share ideas and come up with new programs and new things.
So then let me just tell you a little bit about housing this Smart Business 4 All Benchmarking Tool. Actually, when I first heard Dan speak about this at Chris Law's symposium, that started the conversation. That was probably 3 years ago maybe now? But one of the things that I believe is that this is a very important thing that we can put together. And I think that it's very important that somebody who is a nonprofit organization that's not affiliated with any brand named anything would be the house for something like this tool. So being a neutral nonprofit, we really I think are a great place to house this, and one of the things we certainly want to give to this tool is a business plan, an infrastructure. We want to have resources around it. We want to create an app so that if you're working on this, you have a way to track this and really work with it outside of a super giant Excel spreadsheet which is not very friendly.
So we will also how's the advisory committee, which is that group of organizations that Dan listed. And each of those organizations has put up a person to sit on this advisory committee. And that advisory committee will be looking at any of the things that need to be changed, not only if there needs to be something new added because there's a hole there, but also because, as you know, anything in IT is a living, breathing document that's changing constantly and we need to keep up-to-date with the current laws, rules, and guidelines. So that's going to be very important. So the advisory committee will have a lot on their plate to make sure that this is an up-to-date and dynamic tool.
And then IAAP will also be able to offer guidance for organizations as they try and look at how they might complete this work. As far as pointing them in the right direction for approved vendors and partners and people that would be great to work with.
And then we also would love to showcase organizations that have completed the tool and also, one of the things that we're very interested in is data and trends. So we will be capturing data and trends and sharing that out. And those are important as well.
So moving into a strong future, I'm very excited to see where IAAP has come from and where we are going. We are a very strong organization of accessibility professionals today. We are so proud to be a full-featured membership organization, and not only here in the United States but really building accessibility around the globe. The growth has been great in so many ways, but one of the things is that it's given us the ability to increase our staff so that we can do more and grow more. So it's kind of the snowball effect at some point, where you can really get moving and do some of the things that you dreamt of doing. So that's been great.
And we continue to drive the accessibility conversation in ways that create access, jobs, and inclusion for persons with disabilities. And we're currently very financially stable.
So I'm very excited about all of that, and if you have any questions or would like to know more, please let any of us know. Glenda actually is on our global accessibility leadership group for IAAP, so any of us could help you with that.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: Mary, there is a question from Monica Wegner: Does IAAP have a testing environment that can be used equally by disabled folks? In the past, people not requiring accommodations could test online but not disabled people. How is that being addressed?
MARY RAINER-SKALA: Glenda, do you know the answer to that?
GLENDA SIMS: So, Monica, I was a proctor at the very first IAAP certification, and we do have online ways for people with disabilities to take the exam. I happen to proctor in the room. And there were nine people in that room, eight of which were screen reader users that were blind. So there is absolute support for that. And that's not the only kind of support. But it's definitely there.
There are in the middle of a pandemic, certain things we're definitely looking at improvements, but we have many, many people with disabilities who have taken the exam and passed it with flying colors and they are given what they need to be successful. Thank you for asking.
All right, Mary. I think I'm going to pick up here and do a quick introduction of myself.
So my name is Glenda, the good witch, Sims. I internally have a youthful mindset, and so it might surprise some people to know I'm 57 years old. I live in Austin, Texas. And I'm currently showing a virtual background of a field of blue bonnets at sunset because it's springtime and the blue bonnets are blooming here in Texas.
So Dan and Mary asked me to speak to this group about the Smart Business 4 All Benchmarking Tool and to focus in a little bit more on the digital accessibility aspects of it.
Before I dive in deeper, I wanted to make sure that everybody has in their mind the concept of a capability maturity model. The first time I saw this capability maturity model, I went, oh, that makes so much sense.
There are five levels to reaching true ability to do something, including accessibility. The first is initial. The second is managed. The third is defined. The fourth is when it gets interesting: Quantitatively managed. That means measuring to see if you're really doing it. And level 5 is optimizing.
So when we think about all the steps forward that we've made in digital accessibility and inaccessibility and we wonder why we haven't been as successful as we've wanted to in the last 20, 30, 40 years, it's because many organizations don't have full maturity sustainability. At the initial level, it's very unpredictable and it's reactive. A lot of companies are in that mode.
At the managed level, oh, there are some processes that are written down, but it's still reactive. It's not part of their culture.
It's not until they get to the third level where it's really defined, it's become a regular part of the business, it's you wouldn't think to not do it. Like you wouldn't think to not check for security when you're developing a web app. You would never think of that. Well, you shouldn't ever think of creating one that's inaccessible either.
And level 4, that quantitatively managed, we didn't just write down processes. We actually make sure they're being followed.
And my favorite level is 5:are we doing this in the most efficient way possible? Which you can't get to until you start measuring. So when we think about this, we need to help people in the world of accessibility not with, oh, here's the standard and here's what's wrong, but how do we build the sustainable model?
So in your mind, I want you to realize that the capability maturity model, those five steps that I just explained to you, those apply to any business capability and pretty much apply to any human capability. And that the Smart Business 4 All Benchmarking Tool is an example of that. And I really, really respect Dan so much for recognizing this need. And what's been happening, and I want to show a lot of respect for NFB, NFB has had some models for this as well. And what Dan is trying to do is create a central model that includes all disability types and is in this neutral organization where we can really move this globally. So I'm thrilled with that.
Now, I want to focus in on digital accessibility. If you've never heard of Glenda, the good witch, Sims before, I've had the great fortune of being involved in digital accessibility for over 20 years. My mentor was John Slayton, a visually impaired faculty member at University of Texas Austin. And I consider him my accessibility dad. I currently work at a company by the name of Deque. I've been there for 10 years. And I get to do digital accessibility all day and then I forget to stop so I kind of do it all evening too.
While everybody in this room probably already knows this, I would just like to level set that accessibility is when all people, regardless of disability, can obtain the same information and perform the same functions. It's relatively simple to explain the broad concept, and the disability types that we are focused on, both in the work that I do and what this benchmarking Smart Business 4 All tool is doing is helping people with any sort of visual disability, any hearing, any motor disability, as in not able to use a mouse or a keyboard. It can also be a speech disability. Because, you know, when I started in this business and we talked to our computers, they didn't really listen and talk back. But they do now. And also there's a great movement on cognitive disability. So a very broad spectrum of disabilities.
With that in mind, the SB4All benchmarking tool, as Dan says, has these strategic pieces. And the first piece is governance. We have to have somebody actually watching what's happening in accessibility within an organization.
We also have to look at how it's impacting the customer. Are the customers having an accessible experience. But it doesn't stop there. The internal standards, because, hello, we have employees and applicants who also need the same accessibility rights. And as Dan mentioned before, while technically emergency planning may be covered in customer and internal standards, it's so critical that the Smart Business 4 All Tool has raised it to this high level of strategy because when that disaster happens, we don't want to have a mistake, and for a warning that could have saved lives to be sent out in an accessible format.
So as we look at these things of governance and customers and employees and emergency planning, the breadth of this wonderful tool, it includes the physical needs for accessibility, the acoustical needs for accessibility, and digital. So I'm the digital girl. I am about to focus in on web accessibility and app accessibility, but before I do that, just reminding how important it is for the applicants and the employees to also have these same rights as well as the physical and acoustic and the digital.
So that's kind of the setting of the Smart Business 4 All Benchmarking Tool.
And the key components in the digital area are very straightforward. Dan was giving you some examples earlier. The first one is an accessible policy and standard. You need to commit to this and state how you're going to measure it. But that doesn't magically make it happen. Just like if I post a sign that says speed limit 65 miles per hour, that doesn't magically make everybody go 65 miles per hour. We have to provide training as well to support the policy and the standards.
And when it comes to the digital space, we either have to make or buy accessible software. And just because they said it was accessible doesn't mean it is. You better test and verify. You can test with an expert, and we highly encourage validating the accessibility with real users.
So digital accessibility reality depends on policy, training, accessible software, whether you make it or buy it, and a validation process. So all that is built in to the Smart Business 4 All model.
And from a high-level overview of the policy, it is simply encouraging people to commit to accessible websites and apps and social media and mobile and desktop apps. And to define their standard, the standard recommended through the Smart Business 4 All Tool is WCAG 2.1 A and AA.
And if something is going to be bought or made that's not accessible, there should be an exception, required senior management approval. Because that's a risk. And it's discrimination.
Very important to put into place, procurement policies. Because even if your internal people are creating accessible software, somebody over in procurement could buy something that says it's accessible but actually turned out not to be.
And another piece in the Smart Business 4 All Tool is equally effective communications. How critical that is for all sorts of things, including tech support, and providing whatever type of communication a person needs: CART, ASL, listening devices, Braille, etc.
Now, I mentioned that a policy is not enough. We have to have training. And you may be surprised at how broad the training must be. Obviously for digital accessibility, you need to train the people that are writing the code. Whether they're creating a website or web app or an app for your phone, they need to know how to do it accessibly. But we also have to consider the digital designers and the digital content creators who just post things to social media. Or update website content. And even staff who send emails with attachments.
And here's something that may come as a surprise: Customer service representatives must have accessibility training. So when the call comes in to customer service that there is a problem, that people actually understand.
And your third-party vendors that are providing support or providing software, make sure they understand accessibility. Any one of these pieces being missed, inaccessibility sneaks in.
In the digital space, I want to give an example of the types of people who must understand and take this responsibility to heart. The first group are the leaders, the managers who are defining the accessibility in software that's going to be built. What are the software requirements? They need to know it's a requirement that this be accessible. They're going to test to WCAG 2.1 and we're going to do QA testing independently as well as usability testing. That has to be a part of the process.
The designers as they're sketching out their ideas need to be aware of accessibility as well.
And our developers who are getting ready to code. These are three different categories of people: Managers, designers, developers. They're all involved in this process and have to be aware.
For testing and user validation, you heard Dan mention that there are silver and gold levels, bronze levels. In the silver level, testing for accessibility should be done for any new major change to software before it goes to production. Automated testing, manual tests are also required. With annual user testing for conformance.
A gold level would be to take a step further and to get input from people with cognitive disabilities on how to help them with communications. And one thing that I know makes for better products for all is including persons with disabilities at the research phase, at the design phase, at the development phase and at testing phase. Not just after it's in production and it's already a train wreck. Start with them from the beginning. Not only will you get accessible designs, but you'll literally get better designs for all. It's the universal design principle that's so beautiful.
Another thing I want to illustrate to you before we open to questions is how the Smart Business 4 All changes the software development life cycle, also known as the SDLC. A very simplified SDLC consists of five pieces: What are the requirements? How is it going to be designed? Someone takes the design and develops it. Step four is somebody tests it. Step five, we put it out to the world. We deploy it and make sure it continues to work.
In that simple software development life cycle, if we look at what happens when a company doesn't take accessibility in a proactive manner, they are stuck in a reactive manner, you know the reality of the inaccessible website or app that's out there? How did this happen? Well, it's not a surprise at step five in their process, they didn't have a requirement for accessibility before launch. So of course it went out with problems. Back it up to step four, they might have first tested for accessibility at step four. They got a bunch of issues, but, you know, they didn't have any rule that they couldn't go live so they logged a bunch of issues in their bug tracker.
Take a step backwards, why didn't the developer do the right thing? Developer was never trained. They didn't even know how to do accessibility right.
Take it back to step two. Designer didn't know either. They didn't have any training or awareness.
Take it back to step one. That project never said accessibility was required.
So it's not a surprise when these things happen. And this is what the Smart Business 4 All Benchmarking Tool can help with, because it's not just saying oh, test to the standard and we're gonna make it accessible. It's really getting it down into the processes so that it happens instead of horribly reactive like this. In a proactive way, how does a web app become accessible? You can tell the story already. WCAG 2.1 requirement is written and known at stage one.
Stage two, the designer is actually completely aware of this, has been trained for it, and is designing with accessibility in mind.
Step three, the developer is coding for it, and they're proud of it. And they're looking for the mistakes themselves.
By the time we get to step four, we're doing the QA check and balance. So a developer might miss one of their own errors, just like if I try to edit my own writing, I'm going to miss some of my own errors. So that QA step is important.
And a requirement. You can't go to launch if this isn't compliant. Or somebody high, high up in that chain needs to have a written exception, because this is a risk. This is a risk for a potential lawsuit. And just the risk of not giving people equal access.
So with that in mind, I want to close this session. We do have a slide deck that we used to guide us in our talks so far. And the slide that I have up right now also has some wonderful resources.
Dan, do you want to come back on mic, and Mary, and we'll take questions?
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: Yep.
GLENDA SIMS: I think Chris Law has raised his hand.
CHRIS LAW: Hi. Do you want me to use video?
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: Sure. I guess. I don't know if it interferes with access to the ASL interpreter. If so, somebody tell us and we'll turn it off.
Go ahead.
CHRIS LAW: So my question. I get email—so sorry to bring this question up. But this morning's email, 54 CEOs on our end, former BLN. Some of the CEOs you're going to talk to are going to say, we're already certified through Disability In and we got 100%. I know we don't hire any people with disabilities, but we don't make accessible products, but that's not a point, we've got 100%.
So my question to you and to Mary is, is there any discussion between the two camps?
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: There is some discussion. Not a lot. But. Some and I think we're not trying to compete with Disability In. To my way of thinking, it's a different approach. It's an approach by businesses deciding as a group what they want to do next. And one of the things I understand they're doing right now is looking at their supply chain of employee-facing software, which is fabulous. But the NFB trained me too well to think that something that does not come from the disability groups themselves is not going to be authentic and it's not going to be comprehensive. It may have expensive things that aren't necessary, inexpensive things that are necessary, and so what we've said to some of the corporations that have done the DEI, we're the next step. And by the way, you should know, corporation, that when Microsoft gives itself a score of 100 while marketing SharePoint, that triggers skepticism about the grades. So that's a great question. I'm glad that you raised it.
We have a question from Michal—
MARY RAINER-SKALA: Could I just add one last thing to that before we go on? We had several of the large corporations that had completed the DEI were in some of our groups working on our tool over this last year, and one of the things that I would say is that DEI is a great place to start for a company just starting out looking at accessibility. It is more general and it certainly brings up some important areas to look at.
One of the things about it is that it is self-certified. We're talking about the benchmarking tool something that we would actually go in and look at to see are they actually doing what they should have done to complete a step. So that's another important difference.
But one of the big corporations that has been very involved with the DEI said that they were excited about our tool and that they have completed all of their work with the DEI. They're looking for a next step, something that's more specific and broader, more in depth, and that they really were excited at looking at what we were putting together and were looking forward to doing that at some point. So I just wanted to add that piece on.
GLENDA SIMS: And Mary, someone asked what is Disability In. Is and I believe DEI stands for the Disability Equality Index. But what was Disability In before it was called that? USBLN.
CHRIS LAW: U.S. Business Leadership Network.
GLENDA SIMS: I have put in a link in the chat so you can learn more about it.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: Michal, do you want to go forward?
MICHAL: Sure. I wonder if you're aware of any state or local government anti-discrimination ordinances that affirmatively require employers to consider things like technology accessibility when acquiring or purchasing or developing technology. And if not, if you have any proposed statutory language. You don't have to give me off hand, could email afterwards, but I'm interested in the concept of putting this into state and local regulations for employers to affirmatively have to consider.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: Well, I don't have language for you. I'm just trying to think. I think it's Kentucky has a state law requiring publishers to produce accessible educational texts. That's unusual.
And the one thing I would dearly love to see is a requirement that authoring tools have built in accessibility checkers for producing accessible websites, because there's so many companies, like GoDaddy, that the inevitable result of making that selection means they will have an inaccessible website. So I would love to see a legislative effort there. And there may be people here who know other local initiatives.
GLENDA SIMS: I was thinking state of Texas. Jeff Kline. I put a link in chat. He would probably be a good resource. He's at the department of information resources, and I'm trying to look up, he works closely with two other people. It's Jay Wyant and Sarah Warnan, and I'm trying to get the name of the tool that they've created. So y'all go ahead while I look that up.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: There's someone with a—well, first of all, Michal, did you have any follow-up you wanted to share?
MICHAL: No. I'm working with a group that is considering a lot of disability amendments to the DC Human Rights Act, and one thing that has been raised is the constant issue of employees with disabilities joining a firm and having to sort of backwards patchwork, accessible software, and what it would look like for employers to affirmatively have to consider accessibility even if there is not an active accommodation need. And we would love to—not just here, but anyone could reach out to me to share your thoughts on what this might look like to have more broad accessibility.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: That's great. I would strongly recommend that you raise this question with Eve Hill. She used to be the D.C. human rights officer. Is that the title? And would definitely have some ideas in that respect.
The person with the 510 area code has a hand up.
Hi. Thank you for a wonderful presentation. I have a question about statutes. I believe in California we have a semi watered down statute which encourages state agencies to take accessibility into account. What it doesn't do is (inaudible) a bill mandate, there's no consequence for doing so inadequately.
I'm also wondering if New York City human rights law has been construed to have such an obligation or could have been used in a way to write evidence (inaudible).
My question I want to ask, though, during (inaudible) one of the tendencies of companies to rush out software and apps and to market without any kind of testing accessibility or otherwise because they're in a hurry for economic or competitive reasons. And as a result, usability testing, accessibility testing (inaudible). The fact that people who (inaudible) for client access, third party services or screening employees or customer engagement and becomes very, very difficult in some cases to even begin to understand who is responsible for the design let alone for an effective interface.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: Glenda, do you want to tackle that?
GLENDA SIMS: Yes. It is a challenge, but those of us who know this is the right thing to do love a big challenge, right?
So I don't think it's an excuse for a software company to say I have to go to market, I'm not going to test. It's one of the reasons why the work that Dan and the NFB have done together to litigate is so critical.
On my side and the IAAP side, I would say what we have to do is we have to make it—I want to make it irresistible. I want to make accessibility irresistible and find ways to make it more efficient and effective just like when you and I type up an email message and there's an automatic spell checker, we can have at least automated testing. And you guys, I know automated testing does not cover it all. But at least it can remind me, oh, I didn't do any testing yet for accessibility. I didn't test for keyboard. Here's something so obvious. So I really think we can make strides in this direction. But it's not easy to change the mindset of all software development companies.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: It's not easy in part because by and large they're beyond the reach of the law in terms of the products they sell. We started before I left Brown, Goldstein & Levy to see if we could reach epic under the Massachusetts anti-discrimination law. Because all the hospitals and pharmacies and doctors are buying epic software. And while it may be accessible to consumers, when HHS wrote that regulation, they forgot that people with disabilities also work in healthcare. And if you work someplace that has Epic software in healthcare, you're screwed. That's the technical legal term. You're screwed.
So the question then becomes, how are we going to get there because they're far from the only employee-facing software that's inaccessible. And what I'm hoping, and I think it's not an irrational hope, if you start getting a dozen companies who work with our bench marking tool, which I have to remember to call Smart Business 4 All because that's the brand we put on it, what I'm hoping is that if all of a sudden accounting software vendors and inventory software vendors and HR software vendors and other vendors that market to businesses are hearing, we're not going to renew your license if you're not accessible in the next round, that it will then make accessibility a market plus, a feature that they're going to want to push. And that we'll do this the old-fashioned capitalistic way and wave some dollar bills in front of these software developers.
Maybe it won't work out, but my thinking is there's no harm in trying. And I'm really hoping that will be a ripple effect from this tool to areas that we can't reach with legal requirements.
I also, while I'm waiting to see if anyone is awake and has a question, I want to mention that IAAP is also at the beginning steps of certifying experts with respect to emergency planning and disaster resilience. And working with the World Institute on Disability. Marci Roth doing that as well. And I think of that now nearly every day when I pick up the papers and read about one more mass shooting after another. I think that's terribly important work that we need, and tornadoes in Alabama and so on. Terribly important work we need to pay attention to. And there simply is not a cadre of experts out there on including people with disabilities in the planning. And we need to do that.
Please, we must have—oh, and I also wanted to thank Monica for the question she posed earlier. I am hoping that the potential for embarrassment will be one of the things that will keep IAAP on its toes in terms of how it runs its own house, although I certainly know that mistakes can and will happen. I'm hoping that IAAP will be called on by the folks who are in this workshop.
GLENDA SIMS: We have to live and breathe it without a doubt.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: Exactly.
Please, somebody ask a question or make a comment.
GLENDA SIMS: Does the next session start in 8 minutes?
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: Ah! That may be the case. In which case, bathroom break, folks.
GLENDA SIMS: Uh-huh. Bio breaks are wonderful.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: I just want to say, even though it's long distance, I felt like I was coming home today to see so many of you again. And I look forward very much to next year's tenBroek in person. After Saturday, I will have my second shot and look forward very much to being able to see all of you next year.
So Mary, Glenda, any final remarks?
MARY RAINER-SKALA: No, but if you have any questions about anything or have any ideas for us or want to share anything, we would love to hear from any of you at any time. Dan says he's retired but don't believe it for a minute. He's working 80 hours a week.
[Laughter]
GLENDA SIMS: Well, it was a real honor to be invited to speak at this disability symposium. Thank you so much for inviting me. And you know, we still may have a lot of work to do, but I am excited to be a part of the solution and I believe that we are making a difference.
CHRIS LAW: One quick question. In case I missed it earlier. Sorry if you said this and I missed it.
But the time frame that you're looking at, the time table, is everything up there now or is planned to be?
When is 1.0 available?
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: That's a very good question. We did not discuss it. We are currently in conversations with three and soon maybe a fourth corporation to see whether they are prepared to be guinea pigs. Excuse me, beta testers. On this tool.
One of the things I'm hoping to learn from is how long does it take to get to silver. Depending on where they're starting from, it could be a 2-3-year process. But I'm hoping we can go from beta testing, little bit more like the vaccine, to go from beta testing to marketing it sooner rather than later. But it's hard right now to project a time frame. We don't have a definitive yes from anybody yet, and so we don't have the when will they start, how will they start, what vendors will they pick. So this could be a process.
CHRIS LAW: I suppose your pitch to them also includes that they've got to commit the resources in order to go through this. So there's going to be a thing that's going to cost them money. Or time and money. Or resources.
GLENDA SIMS: It could save them in the long run, because proactive accessibility, we know, is a lot better than when you get in trouble with somebody like Dan, right?
[Laughter]
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: But in the short term, yes, it's investment. And there has to be a commitment from the CEO. Mark Riccobono and I had a fascinating experience with an entity that we had settled with twice and they still couldn't make their website accessible. And so we finally said, we're going to court, we're going to sue you, unless your CEO has a heart to heart with President Riccobono and commits to making this work.
And the response was, well, we need a week because the CEO doesn't know there's a problem.
GLENDA SIMS: Oh, my word.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: And that made me realize that from then forward, we needed to hear from the top that there was a commitment or we were wasting our time.
So you know, I can't tell you from looking at my actuarial table whether I will be around to see version 2.0, but this is something we're in for the long haul. And I'm hoping that somebody else will take this with IAAP and say, wait a minute, we need a standard like this for educational institutions, wait a minute, we need a standard like this for municipal and local governments. Some of it can be translated over but some of it can't be because you don't run a business the way you run a government the way you run an educational institution with all its independent systems. But we need this across institutions, I believe.
CHRIS LAW: Well, I look forward to updates in the fall. Maybe you'll have some good news for us then at the various conferences coming up.
DANIEL GOLDSTEIN: Hope. So thank you all.
GLENDA SIMS: Bye, y'all.