Wired News


Disabled Access Now, More or Less
By
Jeffrey Benner

2:00 a.m. June 25, 2001 PDT

New standards requiring the federal government to make its websites
accessible to the disabled will be enforced beginning Monday, regulations
that have
been hailed by politicians, corporations and advocates for the disabled.

But beneath the happy proclamations and feel-good press conferences lurk
rumors of potential lawsuits and signs of chaos.

Just because the regulations of the Section 508 standards go into effect
doesn't mean the federal agencies are ready for them. Some bureaucrats
fear complaints
and lawsuits.

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The task to comply with the standards is huge. The
National Archives and Records Administration
estimates that the federal government maintains 26 million Web pages.

"They are so far behind," said Ryan Turner, a technology policy analyst
at
OMB Watch,
a government watchdog organization.

Just how far behind is hard to know. The Justice Department has collected
statistics from every agency on their compliance but won't be issuing a
report
on them until August.

But there haven't been a slew of announcements from departments proudly
proclaiming they have achieved compliance. "Silence is sometimes golden,"
said Turner,
"but not necessarily in this case."

The new rules require media files to be labeled with text tags, which
allows screen readers used by the blind to communicate what's in a
picture. Sites
need to be easily navigable for those who use voice commands or a
keyboard pointer instead of a mouse. Graphs shouldn't rely on codes that
the color blind
cannot understand. Ideally, frames should be eliminated, because they
complicate navigation and confuse screen readers. The list goes on.

PDF files, which agencies like the IRS rely upon heavily for downloadable
forms and other documents, have to be rendered compatible with screen
readers
as well.

The coalition of industry representatives, lobbyists for the disabled
community and government representatives who have worked to develop and
implement
the guidelines for years is downplaying the significance of Monday's
effective date, portraying it as the beginning of a long process toward
an admirable
and important goal.

"June 25 is not a deadline," said Olga Grkavac, a 508 expert with the
Information Technology Association of America,
an industry trade organization. "It's a starting point."

Many who have been involved in the process agree with her, but the law
does not. According to the books, as of Monday, an agency that is not in
compliance
with the new rules can be sued.

If the rumors are true that millions of government Web pages are still
incompliant, then many agencies just entered a new universe of legal
jeopardy. The
hope is that a cease fire will hold long enough for the government to get
its act together, and for industry to get more compliant products to the
market.

"We're hoping there will a zone of reasonableness," Grkavac said. "But we
don't know if there will be a trickle or flood of complaints."

The possibility of lawsuits gives Section 508 its teeth. But it also
threatens to break up the carefully crafted coalition of industry,
government and advocates
responsible for bringing improved accessibility so close to reality. If
that coalition comes to blows before the project is done, some fear
progress could
grind to a halt.

"I think folks may play nice for a little while," Turner said. "If the
problem (of non-compliance) is as bad as we think it might be, you don't
want to
snag up the agencies with lawsuits." If lawsuits do break out, it could
take resources away from getting compliant, he said.

Websites that don't meet the guidelines are not the only potential
headache for the government. The higher accessibility standards will also
apply to all
new computer and software purchases as well (existing equipment is
exempt). The standards are designed to ensure that the 122,000 disabled
federal workers
can use the new equipment.

This part of the new rules is expected to force software and computer
makers to make their off-the-shelf products accessible enough to meet the
new standards.
The federal government is such a huge customer that it's easier to change
their standard products than develop a customized version for the
government,
manufacturers say.

The prospect of commercial vendors competing with one another to see
which can make their standard products most accessible is great news for
the entire
disabled community, who can expect a steady stream of improvements in the
IT products available to them.

In the near term, this means that few if any products that meet Section
508 standards are available for the government to buy. According to the
law, if
there aren't any completely compliant products available, agencies should
purchase the one that is most compliant.

In practice, this means that if you're a federal worker in charge of
deciding which brand of software or PC to buy, shopping just got a lot
more complicated
and risky.

No one wants to be liable, so this means the burden for interpreting the
rules, and picking which product fits them best when none fit perfectly,
has fallen
upon whoever it is at each agency that decides what to buy. Choose the
wrong product, and the agency could get sued.

"These are people that want to be risk averse," Grkavac said, "and here
they are being set on the front lines of implementing this policy."

Some vendors are worried that the extra burden placed on agencies could
slow down purchasing, she said.

In an attempt to help agencies with the additional market research
they'll have to do, last week a tech trade organization released a
voluntary template
that vendors could fill out to provide information to federal customers
about how compliant their product is with the Section 508 guidelines.

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1994-2001 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.


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