Welcome everyone. This is Michael Morris, and I work with the ITTATC Project. ITTATC is the Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center, which is a project funded by NIDRR, The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research at the U.S. Department of Education. The project is funded to CATEA, Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access at the Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, in Atlanta, Georgia. We're pleased today to have you join us for what is our third annual State of the States - a look at where states are currently in terms of improvement of accessibility related to electronic and information technology. We've been able to put together today an outstanding panel of experts from around the country. You're going to be hearing today from Kathy Record, who is the IT Management Analyst with the State Government IT Accessibility, Office of the Chief Information Officer for the state of Maine. You'll also be hearing from Bill Pierce, who is with the Information Technology Oversight Commission for the state of Indiana. Steve Noble, the Policy Analyst with the Kentucky Assistive Technology Services, or KATS, with the state of Kentucky, and Mary Henthorn, Manager, Technology Investigation Center with the Office of Information Technology with the state of Arkansas.

Joining me today in moderating this audio conference will be Deborah Buck. Deborah Buck is the Director of ITTATC State IT Accessibility Initiatives. Many of you know Deborah from her work over the past 10-15 years with both the Assistive Technology Project for the state of New York and then with the Office for Technology for the State of New York. We're very pleased that Deborah joined the ITTATC State IT Accessibility Initiatives Project last year. We're in year four of a five-year project, and as I mentioned, this is our third annual state of the states in terms of electronic and information technology accessibility initiatives.

With that, let me turn it over to Deborah.

Thanks, Michael. Good afternoon, good morning and good evening to everyone. I say that because we have people from all over the country and France and Canada joining this call. I want to welcome you all, and let me give you a sense of how we're going to manage today's call.

We have over 170 people who have tapped into the call, and initially what we're going to do is give each of the panelists an opportunity to give us the lay of the land in their state regarding the electronic and information technology accessibility law, or policy that's in place in their state. Each presenter will have about ten minutes to cover some key components of their law or policy regarding the scope of applicability, what standards have been adopted, etc. We'll then go into a series of questions that we've developed prior to the call, and we'll go through and ask each of the presenters' different questions. Towards the end we will open it up for questions from the audience and we will take those questions either by e-mail or the operator will facilitate a live question.

As we go through the process, let me tell you that if you do want to submit a question, I'll ask that you submit it to my colleague, Laura Farah, at lfarah@mail.law.uiowa.edu. Those questions will come to us and we will ask some of the panelists. Use either format that you prefer.

Let's start out with Steve Noble from Kentucky to give us a lay of the land of the electronic and information technology accessibility law in Kentucky.

Thank you, Deborah. Let me with just a few minutes here go over our policy. Actually, we have a state law in Kentucky. It is KRS Kentucky Revised Statute 61.980-988. That is a statute that was passed in our state in the year 2000 and the individuals that would be covered by this law are rather broad actually. It includes anyone that would be considered as having a disability and under any federal or state law would be a covered individual as far as the beneficiary of this statute.

As far as who is covered, the actual state entities that have to comply with this statute are also very broad. It includes by statute the state or any state assisted organization. And it goes on to explicitly include a definition of the state as any of its departments, agencies, public bodies or other instrumentalities, and then further defines state assisted organizations as meaning a college or university, non-profit organization, or political subdivision, school system or other entity supported in whole or in part by state funds. So you can see from that definition it is very broad as far as the entities that must comply with the statute.

Michael covered the question of the standards that are used to determine accessibility. That is also explicitly mentioned within the state statute as linking the state of Kentucky with the federal standards that have been established under both Section 508 as far as information technology is concerned and also Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act as far as telecommunications equipment is concerned. So any piece of equipment or software that would fall under the provisions of either Section 508 or Section 255 would be covered and the access standard would be based on the federal standard that is applicable for those federal statutes. So we are linked then in Kentucky with the federal law which in many respects makes it easy to simply use federal technical assistance to determine these issues.

If we talk about who actually would have the authority to enforce or implement the law in the state, the way that the statute is set up it actually gives this responsibility to the head of each covered entity. So this is obviously going to vary by the entity involved. For instance, at a university, the responsible party would be the President and whatever the Board of Trustees or overseers I guess would have joint responsibility there in insuring that the standard is in place at the university level. In the case of the school system, the way in which the schools are set up in Kentucky it would be the charge of the superintendent for the school board of the district to be sure that this policy is enforced. It would be similar as far as the other entities would be concerned. If it's a non-profit organization which is doing work for the state, then the Executive Director theoretically for that entity, according to this statute would have the responsibility for implementation.

When you look at other provisions of the law, it works primarily through the process of purchasing or appropriating equipment in that there is a necessity under the law for a contractual clause to be included in contracts for IT equipment or software that is put forward by the state and state supported institutions that would again include the requirement for Section 508 and Section 255 applicability.

There is a provision in the Kentucky law for undue burden. So for a covered entity that believes that complying with this act would tend to produce an undue burden, then they would be able to try to make that argument and there are provisions within the statute which lay out how an entity would be able to do that to fit the criteria. But even in that case, it's clearly stated within the statute that even if particular equipment or software would be an undue burden for it to meet the qualifications of access within the statute that whatever information or service that is being provided with that still has to be provided in some kind of alternate accessible format, so the individual is still going to have access to whatever the material, information or service that would be rendered through the information technology.

And finally, there's also the ability for any person who believes that they've been injured by a violation, an entity that violates this law or doesn't comply with it, they can actually bring an action for injunctive relief in the Circuit Court of the county in which they reside. So that is a provision that's explicitly mentioned within the state statute.

I guess that kind of gives an overview of what is in the statute and about covers my ten minutes there.

Thank you, Steve. Before we go on to our next presenter let me remind everyone that each of our panelists did submit documents summarizing their laws and/or policies. So if you would like to follow along, and have your computer on while you're listening to the call, you can go to the ITTATC website, www.ittatc.org and just click on the first notation about the audio conference and it will bring you to that site. At the bottom of this page is a listing of all the different documents that our presenters have provided.

We're going to go next to Mary Henthorn from Arkansas who is going to tell us a little bit about their program that has been in place. Arkansas' law has been in place probably the longest in the country, so we can learn a lot from what they've been experiencing.

Arkansas Law, Information Technology Access for the Blind, was enacted in 1999. It just addresses blind and visually impaired and it addresses IT purchases and development. All new development and purchases are covered, and anything that reaches a time for update gets covered at the time that updates are purchased or developed.

The spirit of the Arkansas law is really written right into the law, that the goals of the state include universal access so that segments of society with particular needs will not be left out of the information age. The original intent of the legislation was to open jobs for the visually impaired that have been closed due to using Dewey interfaces at all our workstations.

The Arkansas requirements basically require equivalent access to the blind and visually impaired throughout all use of information technology. It's required that standards be set up, that effective interactive control be given, that equipment that's used for the visually impaired be compatible with the networks and the systems in place for seeing people, that the technology integrates with telecommunications, and that a procurement clause be included with all contracts that places the burden on the vendor and the developer to make sure that the information technology is accessible.

The Arkansas covered entities are similar to Kentucky's law. It's anybody who's fully or partially funded by the state. So that's all agencies and departments, all state-funded education facilities, all political subdivisions, and even nonprofits. Anybody that receives any state funds is covered by this law.

The Arkansas standards were required by the law. And they were developed by a working group that was brought together right after the law's enactment. This working group continues to be in place today, and they're facilitated by the Architecture Group for the state. So, the standards that are developed in response to the law are only part of the Arkansas standards. The standards in response to the law really just repeat what is directly in the law, the requirement for effective interactive control, for equipment compatibility, for the integration of any IT with networks in telecommunications when they're made accessible.

Our Architecture Group has gone farther than the set of standards that were just written in response to the law and have worked on architecture standards for the state that go beyond just our need for accessibility for the blind and visually impaired.

Back to the law itself. It required a procurement clause. It also was developed by the working group. It's required in all information technology contracts and forces a vendor acknowledgment that this law is in place and they are required to provide information technology that can be made accessible to the blind, that this is not just an accommodation but it is truly equivalent access that provides formats for non-visual use and it integrates it into the networks.

The Arkansas access assurance responsibility, like Kentucky, falls on the heads of the covered entities. So, whether you're a small nonprofit that receives some state funds or a major state agency, whatever the head of the entity is has a requirement to assure equivalent access, that they're designed for non-visual use, and that this procurement clause is utilized.

The Arkansas law did have a phase-in period, and this is well past now. Initially, for the first year any projects over $50,000 were excluded from the requirement that the vendor clause be utilized. The second year, the limit was raised to $100,000, and the third year to $250,000. But, of course, this phase-in period ended in July of 2002.

The Arkansas law had no exceptions written into it at all. It had no undue burden clause and no other exceptions. It was amended in 2003 to allow exceptions for inherently visual products. This would be things like AutoCAD and other designed-based tools that are - I'd call them assistive technology for the seeing. But these inherently visual products are specifically allowed by the law now. There never has been an undue burden exception. In reviewing this law in the last year preparing this exemption and the amendment to the law, no one spoke up saying there appeared to be a need for an undue burden clause. The ECIO (Office for the Executive State CIO) folks under the Office of Information Technology, through Architecture and the Technology Investigation Center, on an ongoing basis will be addressing the issues for accessibility. That basically covers the law.

Thank you, Mary. Our next presenter is Kathy Record from the state of Maine. The state of Maine, unlike the other states represented here today, uses a policy to promote electronic and information technology accessibility, rather than a law. Kathy is going to share with us some of the strategies that they've used as the basis for their initiative and how that can be as effective as a law.

Thank you. That's true, the state of Maine does not have a state law, we do have two policies; one for software applications programs, and the other for web development. These policies are not specific to any one disability, but they're meant to include all individuals regardless of physical or mental challenges.

Those in Maine's Executive Branch are the only ones who are required to comply with the policies and standards. The policies do not apply to the judicial and legislative branches, they don't apply to schools or public access. However, we have been working with the judicial and legislative branches on an informal basis to at least make them aware of issues, even though we cannot enforce compliance.

Both of our policies were reviewed, updated and improved by our Information Systems Policy Board in 2003. There is a group, the Maine Federation for the Blind, who is working on drafting legislation for a law, and our Standing Accessibility Committee will also be discussing the pros and cons and possibly initiating some legislative documents ourselves.

The state has a Standing Accessibility Committee, of which I've just spoke, which spent several months in 1998 drafting standards for the state of Maine which were based on Section 508. The membership of the Accessibility Committee, who assume this responsibility, includes expertise in all of the major disability, accessibility and information technology specialty areas. Major core areas represented by the committee include the deaf and hard of hearing, blind and visually impaired, mobility and speech impaired, and cognitive disabilities. The members have a vested interest in accessibility, and they represent a broad spectrum of skills and knowledge, including legal policy in various technologies.

We also have a waiver process that's managed by the office of the CIO. An agency may submit a waiver if it believes a requirement places an undue burden on them. However, the agency will be granted a waiver only if they demonstrate that they can't provide a reasonable accommodation or they plan on coming into complaints in the future.

For example, if an agency wants to deploy a Citrix application and is able to clearly demonstrate an undue burden, we would probably allow that provided that the agency demonstrates to us that they can load the application onto a desktop, and more importantly, have a process in place to insure the desktop version is updated as the application is updated.

Maine does not accept that anything is an undue burden if it means that the agency cannot meet special needs. If there's no case for undue burden, an agency may request a temporary waiver with a plan in a time frame for coming into compliance. They have to clearly document why they have to deploy their system before being fully compliant. Up to this date, no agency has requested a waiver. The office of the CIO has had one complaint about a system not being compliant, and when the agency was contacted they contacted their vendor and the system was immediately made compliant.

What is our wish list? How could it be better? Well, obviously money, more money. Funding could provide dedicated compliance testing personnel. It could provide ongoing accessibility training for webmasters, software developers and technology procurement, additional awareness training and contract staff dedicated to accessibility related projects. However, that said, it would be better if the accessibility effort became an integral part of the definition and development of process so that accessibility no longer had to be addressed.

Our overarching objective this year is to integrate accessibility into our everyday business processes and practices. For example, when an architect is designing a new office building, it's just as much a part of the design to make it wheelchair accessible as it is to have windows. Architects don't even think about that any more; it's just a part of the process of designing and building a building.

We recognize that with budget constraints such as they are, and with so many involved with deploying technology, people simply don't have the time to take on any additional workload. That fact makes this effort even more critical because when accessibility becomes simply a part of our regular business practices it will not mean more work - it simply means that we do it right the first time.

We hope that through education and example, accessibility will no longer be one more unfunded mandate, but will become just one more element of how Maine does business. When the Standing Accessibility Committee can dissolve, then we have succeeded - and that's our goal.

Thank you, Kathy. I think what you can see already from the panelists is while there are some differences because many of the different states do operate administratively different, there are some significant commonalities in terms of approaches, trying to make it a seamless approach to their general operations of their Office of Information Technology using some consistent standards, etc.

Our last speaker to share the lay of the land in Indiana is Bill Pierce who is with the Information Technology Oversight Commission.

Thank you, Deborah. Good afternoon. The first thing I would like to explain is that, as Deborah said, I'm a staff member of the Information Technology Oversight Commission, or ITOC, which sounds amazingly like ITTATC, so we're going to have to be careful about exactly how we pronounce that. But the Information Technology Oversight Commission is responsible, among other things, to review all requests for IT products and services within the state of Indiana Executive Branch.

We have both a statute and a policy. In 2001, the Indiana General Assembly passed House Enrolled Act 1926. And that actually modified the statute that defines the Information Technology Oversight Commission and its responsibilities. And it says that the commission shall appoint a group to develop standards that are compatible with Section 508. The group had to consist of, at a minimum, a representative from an organization with experience in and knowledge of assistive technology policy and an individual with a disability.

So what we did was formed a group with about ten members and we had somebody from ATTAIN, Inc., which is an advocacy group in Indiana. We had somebody from the Civil Rights Commission, from the Protection and Advocacy Commission, our staff attorney and our procurement division, and our Division of Disability and Rehabilitation Services in Indiana. So we tried to get all of the players in the Executive Branch of government on that committee.

The first thing that we decided was that we really needed to adopt the Section 508 standards instead of creating our own, because it really just didn't make any sense to do that. So, we worked over the rest of 2001 and into 2002 and developed a policy. The policy was adopted by the Information Technology Oversight Commission in August of 2002.

It is kind of broken into two parts. The first one has to do with state employees or I guess what we call 'back office systems'. And what we're basically saying there is those need to be compliant with Section 508 as they are being replaced or modified significantly. We weren't worried about, for instance, a desktop that was on somebody's desk that didn't necessarily have a disability. But as that desktop is replaced, we wanted to make sure that it was replaced with a compliant desktop.

The second part of that was the public access and we were more concerned about that. We basically said, again, if an agency is planning on revising or replacing their equipment that is able to be used by the public, then it had to be compliant with Section 508. But also, if it wasn't going to be done in a year, then they had still had to submit a plan for compliance.

So after that, we kind of broke up into two groups. The first one, which was made up primarily of the members from the original Standards Group, which we now call the Assistive Technology Standards Implementation Group. And it's concerned mostly about the procurement process and making sure that all of the IT procurements for products and services are compatible with Section 508. We're also looking at waivers, and I think we've only received one so far to take a look at. And also, the complaint process. We're just kind of getting started with that.

The other group is the State Webmaster's Working Group on Accessibility. And they were looking at the web pages that were out on the state websites. We're also taking a look at some of the assistive technology tools that the webmasters can use in order to check for compliance and to help them make their websites compliant.

In 2003, the Indiana General Assembly passed House Enrolled Act 1724. Again, that changed the statute that defines ITOC, but it added in that the Standards Group had to also now include representatives from the Administrative, the Judicial and Legislative Branches, and three representatives from local units of government. Instead of just a policy, it needs to adopt rules under this section that would apply not only to the Executive Branch, but also to the Legislative, Judicial and Administrative branches of state government and local government in Indiana. So we're broadening our scope, which is kind of a departure for ITOC.

So what we've been doing since then is contacting some members from those groups and asking them to participate in the newly-formed Standards Group. And we should be having our first meeting here in the next week or so.

The other thing that we did at the latter part of 2003 and the beginning of 2004 is to issue an RFP, Request For Proposal, for assistive technology tools. Those were due back last week and we received no responses from them. So we're working on now where we're going to go with that, but it looks like we'll be contacting one of the vendors that we know that provides those tools and working with them to try and establish some quantity purchase agreements for both the client server and the server tools.

I think that pretty much summarizes where we've been in Indiana.

Great. Thank you, Bill. Just a reminder to everyone: There are summaries of the presenters' presentations on the ITTATC website. And in addition, Bill Pierce from Indiana has provided a supplemental document that they use in Indiana when they look at products and RFPs in terms of the standards they're using and how to determine whether the vendor complies with those standards. That one has not been posted to the website yet, but you should check back later for that.

What we're going to do now is move on to some facilitated discussion with each of our panelists, and then we'll open it up to all of the participants for any questions you might have. I will remind you that if you would like to submit a question via e-mail, please send it to lfarah@mail.law.uiowa.edu. Or you can use the operator when we come to question and answer session.

Let's start back at the basics in terms of: Why did your state even consider enacting 508-type legislation? Steve Noble in Kentucky, can you share with us why Kentucky enacted legislation?

Sure. In the state of Kentucky, and I guess I'm sure it can be true in the case of all states on the call, when you're looking at this type of legislation you're concerned about access to primary things like that it will be available for people with disabilities, just as everybody else. From access to employment situations in which information technology is going to need to be used, to access to education where information technology is, of course, very much tied in these days and simply things like access to state services and information. These are all basic things that people with disabilities need to have access to, just as anyone else. And there needs to be some kind of system in place to ensure that state entities and state supported entities, when they go about acquiring information technology equipment and software, when they go about trying to develop a new system for use, for instance, in the state, that accessibility is one of the first things in mind in the design stage. That you don't wait until after your new program is up with your brand new software and then think about whether it's going to work with the person two offices over who needs to use a screen reader, for instance. And that was, of course, a concern here in Kentucky. If you look at the history of our law in Kentucky, it initially was promoted by some of the blindness advocacy organizations and of course it mushroomed out into other disability groups. We had a great acceptance by the deaf community here in Kentucky and they wanted to also be involved in getting the law passed. We were very careful to make sure the state law was very inclusive of all individuals with disabilities to make sure that electronic and information technology products would be usable by all people with disabilities in using whatever assistive technology they might need. So I guess in a short answer that's why we wanted to enact our law here in Kentucky.

Mary, what about Arkansas? You said your law has been in existence since 1999 and that actually came right on the heels of the reauthorization of Section 508 at the federal level when the federal efforts actually strengthened 508 and required the development of standards. Arkansas was right on the heels of that. You passed your law and started implementing a program before standards were even available. What prompted Arkansas to move ahead in this direction?

It was requested by the blind community, with the support of the Arkansas Chapter of the National Federation for the Blind. They were prompted by the activities that were going on nationally, but really in response to the loss of IT jobs for the blind with the change to the Dewey Interface. Arkansas Services for the Blind taught the use of technology in their facility, but increasingly found that information technology was inaccessible, no matter what efforts you might make to teach someone how to use it. And, of course, as information technology was reaching out from the state to citizens, blind and visually impaired citizens were losing the benefits of what could be offered by the state.

The intent was really to put pressure on developers, so that accessible products would be available to everyone, not just government workers. This was a way to hopefully make this happen.

Yes, to insure that that would happen. Let's stay with you, Mary, since you have one of the longest existing laws. What kinds of benefits have you seen since implementing the law?

Blind employees do have better use of tools, and blind citizens have better access to state resources. The seeing also enjoys better online formats. We've all found websites that we would call inaccessible to the seeing, with just poor design, overuse of visuals to the point that the message is actually lost in the format. Clearer formatting has helped everyone. The awareness, of course, has been good. The effort to make developers aware of the needs of the blind community has been slow, though. Very slow. And maybe 508 has helped a lot more than just the Arkansas law, by the way it's really made the law more visible.

For the most part, though, you're seeing the same trend as we saw with the requirements for architectural accessibility. It not only was intended to benefit people with disabilities, but ultimately benefited a far broader group of individuals. Is that right?

Absolutely.

Kathy, what about in the state of Maine? What kinds of benefits have you guys seen?

Well, again, we don't have a law, but with our policy we found that it provided guidelines for developers, contractors and potential contractors wanting to do business with the state. Currently, we are in the process of deploying overview documents to explain better in layman's language the basis for the policy so that business people can grasp the concept of accessible technology without going through all the details of the policy.

For example, in this documentation we state that if you can change the size of the fonts, change the screen and text colors, and can use all of the functions of the application without a mouse, you've probably dealt with 80-90% of the accessibility issue. That's just sort of an over simplified way to attract vendors so it doesn't look too complicated for them. And this statement, which is part of a PowerPoint presentation that we'll be posting on our purchasing website, can be understood by people with no technical background. In this way, both the contractor as well as the business person responsible for signing off on an application better understand what they need to see in the end products.

Next we've defined what we need to achieve so that we can then focus on key areas of the policy, and work with agencies to come into compliance with areas of the greatest risk. Those responsible for compliance view the policies as tools which assist them in meeting the objective. This is especially true with the web policy. The new format not only states each requirement, but also explains the outcome if the requirement is not met and it tells the developer how to correct it. This actually is similar to the state of Illinois's policy. We reviewed their policy, liked it, and asked them if we could use their format, which is a benefit to this sort of networking.

Periodic review is required of all policies, and when that review is performed it again brings focus to the accessibility issues we're faced with. As part of the review, an overview of changes are sent out to multiple technical and business groups, again, increasing awareness which is so important.

And finally, for Maine, accessibility, especially web accessibility, is critical given the rural nature of the state and the fact that we have an aging population. The State of Maine's 2002 Census figures show that almost 30% of our population is 55 or older. And with aging comes more sight and hearing disabilities. Additionally, this figure doesn't take into consideration those who may already have physical or mental challenges. To provide accessible government web services enables independence to those who may otherwise be forced to rely upon outside help for those services or may be unable to access services at all. It's not just limiting services when the web is inaccessible, it's also limiting information that we provide to citizens, such as weather, key news stories related to the government, recreational opportunities for those with disabilities, etc. And, of course, when we help any individuals with disabilities it also helps many other citizens. For example, we have phones that vibrate. Well, that not only helps the deaf and hard of hearing, but the community in general who do not have that disability who are also taking advantage of that more and more.

Right now we're looking at our homeland security reverse 911 to decide how we're going to notify individuals with disabilities. These individuals may not be the only ones who can't hear that reverse 911. If somebody is in a room like right now, we wouldn't hear it. So, when we figure out how to do that, we'll be helping all those people who are not right near a phone or somebody who can tell them that there are some issues that need to be addressed.

It sounds like you're looking at the broader picture and certainly a recognition that you've got to infuse the strategies to implement the law to make it successful because in terms of procurement it's not always the same people who are doing the procurement, so you have to go back to that old adage of kind of the KISS adage, 'Keep it simple, stupid,' so that everyone can understand and grasp it. It makes it part of their general operations. In addition, you are looking at the broader people who will benefit from it. I know you mentioned the number of Maine residents that are aging. And recent statistics are showing that 50% of the state government's work force is over age 45, and 15% are over age 55. And as we age, we do acquire more functional limitations, so the efforts to implement IT accessibility can benefit a broader group of people.

Let's move on. Steve Noble, what kinds of strategies has Kentucky used to implement the law and policies that they have in place?

Okay. I'll certainly cover that. In remembering that in the state of Kentucky, as in the case of some of the other states, it is the responsibility of the head of each covered entity to take care of implementation. So with that in mind, you're going to have a little bit of variability from one covered entity to the next, depending on a variety of factors. So if you look at what Kentucky has done historically, I guess to begin with one of the first things was that the Governor's Office of Technology, which is an executive branch agency here in Kentucky, got busy on putting together some resources that would benefit executive branch agencies. Part of the Governor's State Agency set-up in the state was to be able to implement the law. So the Governor's Office of Technology, first of all integrated web accessibility requirements under Section 508 within the web state enterprise standards that are used by all state agencies. And then they also took care of the training issue in that they put together a full-day training course that was just for integrating accessibility standards and making sure that all the websites that the states are putting together are accessible. So that was one of the early on things that was done.

A little bit later on, there had been some work, which started as cooperation with GOT, Governor's Office of Technology, and then also the State ADA Coordinator's office to work with the state universities, so the higher Ed entities are required to comply with our state statute. So they have been working on that issue and have put together state distance ed requirements as far as accessibility is concerned and then web requirements for each campus to adopt. Again, at the campus level, the head of each covered entity is going to be responsible for that, so there may be some variations in the actual policies that are adopted, but Section 508 is always going to be the base line that every entity is going to adopt on that end.

And then, of course, our agency, the Kentucky Assistive Technology Service Network, the KATS Network, which is the state's Tech Act project, has been providing technical assistance to entities that are trying to comply with the statute to the degree that we have the capacity to do so. And one of the things that we've been working on more lately has been a joint project with the Kentucky Department of Education and working with school systems, the K-12 education entities in our state that are required to comply with this law. We received assistance and partnered with one of your sister agencies there at Georgia Tech, the Southeast DBTAC, Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center, who provided some funding to assist us to work with the school systems in the state of Kentucky to be sure that they are informed about the state law and to aid them into putting together district level accessibility policies that will cover information technology and web access that's used within the school systems here in the state. So that is a project that is continuing to unfold that we are working on right now. So those are probably the three main thrusts that have been going on in the state to implement our state law.

Thank you. Bill Pierce in Indiana. Can you speak to some of the specific strategies that Indiana has implemented or pursued?

Yes. Once we created our policy, the first thing that we did, as we do with all of our policies, is to publish it. We put it on our website, we sent out electronic mail messages to all of the agency heads and all of the MIS directors so that they're aware of that. And we also did several awareness presentations. We have an IT Forum that we hold quarterly and I've given several updates at those IT Forums. We also have a Webmasters group, and I've spoken to that group several times so they're aware of not only the policy but where we stand with the implementation and changes in processes as well.

We've also tied that policy into the procurement process for IT so that we're working closely with our Procurement Division and making sure that all of the requests that they have for IT products and services address compliance to Section 508. As I mentioned before, we've got two groups, the Assistive Technology Standards Implementation Group, which is made up primarily of the members that were in the original Standards Group, so they have a good idea of a lot of the discussion that went on, so there's that tribal knowledge, if you will, that goes along with that. So as things like waivers come up, they can understand how we got to where we got and why the standards and policies say what they do. And that helps us a lot in either approving the waivers or going back to the agencies and counseling them on what it is that they need to do.

The State Webmasters Accessibility Working Group has prepared coding guidelines to make their websites Section 508 compliant. And they also put together guidelines on what their compliance plans needed to contain. The last thing that we're going to be working on in the near future is the administrative rules. And we're going to have another awareness campaign on that because the legislative, judicial, administrative and the local units of government probably don't know very much about Section 508 and how it applies to them, so we're going to have to get the word out on that.

Bill, when you're talking about the procurement of products and seeing if they're in compliance with 508, you're actually looking beyond web accessibility. Indiana has adopted the full scope of 508, including self-contained closed products which includes things like fax machines, Xerox machines, desktops, telecommunications, multi-media. Is that correct?

Yes, it is. What we are doing with those is as those kinds of procurements come up, we've created a template that basically has all of the Section 508 standards for eight different categories of products, plus another one that's called Functional Performance that applies basically to all of them. So as a procurement would come up; for instance, we're redoing our procurement for desktops so we're including in that one the template for software and operating systems for desktops and portables and for functional performance. So those will go out with the Request for Proposal, and the vendors then will provide their compliance to each of those standards.

Great. Can I jump back to Steve Noble for a second? Kentucky is also looking at the full scope of 508. Correct? And not limiting it to piece meal or portions of the standards. Is that correct, Steve?

Yes. In the statute, Section 508 and 255 of the Telecommunication Act are adopted fully as far as what are the provisions for determining what access is within the state. I mean the requirement is that access is provided. And when access is defined in the statute, then that's where the Section 255 and Section 508 standards come in in determining what is accessible information technology.

And if the vendor is providing products that conform to those standards?

Exactly.

Good. Let's move on. Kathy Record in Maine, can you share with us what kinds of initiatives Maine has undertaken in terms of involving different individuals in groups for the planning and implementation. And give us some insight as to how you got them involved. And are they state employees? Are they external vendors, perhaps? Are they volunteers, paid consultants? Give us some insight.

Okay. We have multiple ways of expanding involvement throughout the state. We have several groups who we regularly report to. One is the Information Systems Manager Group, which is a technical group. Another is the Information Service Policy Board, which is comprised of Department Commissioners, appointed members from the private sector, and members appointed by the Governor. We've also begun to present annually to the Governor's Cabinet. We see these efforts as getting attention from the top, whether it's the technical managers or the business manager. And it's our hope that we can get them to better understand the need for accessibility, and as a result, assist the core group that we have working on the issue with needed resources. We also include accessibility in Maine technology conferences. This provides education and awareness to state staff as well as letting our vendors know our expectations and getting them involved with us before we're actually working with them on a particular project.

We want to have another conference just focused on accessibility but have been unable to do that due to the budget situation. Over the years as we found a resource within the state with the skills to do testing or familiar with a particular assistive technology, we've approached that individual and then their management to see if they could assist as needed. Although this has worked in many cases, often workloads interfere and we cannot utilize these services as much as we would like to.

This year we've initiated an outreach effort into the consumer community and in an effort to see if we can get volunteers to help us in further expanding the scope of those we get involved with. We've also partnered with University College, which is part of the University of Maine system, in a pilot program to offer web accessibility training to state webmasters at no cost.

We have also received help from an organization called Consumer Information Technology Exchange, which is part of the Department of Education and a state-wide project funded with federal grants designed to help with assistive technology.

With the budget constraints we have not hired consultants to work on any of our efforts to date. We also have had summer interns who've helped us. The one we most recently had last summer did a research project for us and wrote up the results of that project, which was on web accessibility.

Mary, in Arkansas, can you share with us some of the strategies you've used to involve consumers and state employees and other interested persons?

From the initial enactment of the law our Technology Investigation Center was called on to answer the 'what is' and 'how to' questions. And our involvement has continued right up to the current time. Also, the Office of Information Technology's Architecture Group was involved right from the beginning with developing the state standard and the vendor clause. The working group that was put in place then is still in place now. And they've gone on to develop policies and best practices. And these groups working together have done a number of outreach efforts with providing training and online presentations.

The working group includes a broad range of people involved in state government, from people with services for the blind, blind employees at agencies and seeing people involved in information technology. Some of the original people with the group really were interested in the group because they opposed the law and thought this was going to be something that was impossible to get going. They found out over time that it really is a doable effort and it makes sense to establish accessibility as things are developed right from the beginning.

The Information Network of Arkansas, a public instrumentality, has been a real leader in modeling accessibility. They host most of the state websites and do a great deal of development of on-line e-government applications for the state. And they've been just a great model and advocate of employing accessibility right from the ground up in development.

Our blind community, of course, is anxious to help and is right in the middle of state government. There are visually impaired people throughout state government. And they've worked with the same community and within the government to increase awareness of the issue and promote that this really is something that works and is practical.

Involvement with the tech schools and Lions World Services for the Blind, their training efforts has been very interesting. Going back to 2001, we've been working with ITECH Tech School and Lions World Services for the Blind, and they're programmed to educate blind students in the NCSE Program. Since 2001, our office has been involved in their intern program. So right now we have a couple of their students working as interns for us. They'll work her for a month to two months as they're completing their NCSE training.

Great.

Vendors have been involved in our efforts right from the beginning. There hasn't been any funds directed directly to accessibility. But as the awareness has increased, the cooperation among all the parties has been really exciting to watch.

Thank you. Bill, you mentioned earlier that the group ATTAIN, Inc., the State Assistive Technology Project, as well as the State Protection and Advocacy Agency were an integral part to Indiana's efforts. Can you give us a little bit more information about that? Did they approach you? Did you approach them? And who else is involved?

Well, ATTAIN, Inc., I think as I understand it kind of led the effort to get the original statute changed. Again, they're an advocacy group in Indiana. The person that was the Executive Director at that time is Cris Fulford, and she now is working for a group that's called COVOH, or the Council of Volunteers and Organizations for Hoosiers with Disabilities, Inc.. So she's still on our Standards Implementation Group, and we have now new members from ATTAIN, so we have both of those groups working with us. That's been a lot of help.

Again, we looked for those agencies that had some dealings with people with disabilities in Indiana, so we did have somebody from Protection and Advocacy, from the Division of Disability, Aging and Rehabilitation Services, and the Civil Rights Commission. And we also thought it was very key to have somebody from procurement involved from the start to make sure that we were going to be able to implement our policy within the procurement process. We also involved our staff attorney to make sure that what we were doing was legal and was going to stand up. And we've also worked with some other groups, like the Association of Indiana Counties. We got some word out on voting systems a couple years ago when we had an RFP with some of the voting systems that were compliant and some that were not. So we wanted the county clerks to know, which actually buy the voting systems in Indiana, which ones that they should be looking at.

And more recently, we've been working with the Secretary of State's office on the HAVA Act (Help America Vote Act of 2002) looking at new voting systems, looking at a voter registration system, and they've also been working on making the polling places accessible.

Great. Certainly the federal government has been addressing 508 for about three years now, has any of the presenters been able to access and use the information that is available that has been developed by the federal government, the Access Board and the General Services Administration and the ITTATC Project? And has that information been useful to you? Bill?

Primarily. We used what was posted on their websites to create our process and our templates. So that information has been very helpful, but we haven't worked directly with the federal government in developing those.

Great. Let's move on. I'm going to ask each of the panelists, starting with Kathy in Maine, to share with us some of the challenges that you face. Very succinctly, what are probably the top three challenges you've faced in addressing 508 or 508-type laws or policies. Kathy?

The top three challenges. Financial: the budget challenges have probably been the greatest. We've had to learn to do things in new ways at very little cost to assist in getting the message out. And I guess the second biggest challenge we have is the structure of state government, because our policies only cover the executive branch. And when you look at the executive branch, we still have silos between departments, making it different to get out in front of the accessibility efforts. And I would say the third challenge is the technical contract review.

Ultimately, the responsibility for whether or not a project is accessible remains not with the vendor, but actually the manager of that project. So, if the vendor says something is accessible, it's still our responsibility to test it and find somebody with the technical expertise to run it through its paces to make sure it is accessible, since it is the manager's responsibility ultimately if that project is not an accessible project.

We have written into every RFP, which clearly defines that the software has to be accessible, but that doesn't mean that it always is. But I guess those are our top three.

Thank you. Bill, in Indiana, what would you say are your top three challenges?

Well, the first thing is probably the awareness. To make everybody aware of what the policy is and what it means to them and what they have to do as a result of that. And the other thing is that it took a great deal of time to get the process into the procurement process itself. We kind of started small and with certain kinds of procurements and kind of expanded from there, but it took a little while to try and weave that into that procurement process. And the third thing is probably this expanding to other governmental units. I think when they originally passed the House Enrolled Act 1926 in 2001, I think they understood that it was going to be all IT purchases in state government, and they found out that the Information Technology Oversight Commission really only had purview over the executive branch as far as approval was concerned. So that's why they went back two years later and changed the statute to expand to other units of government to include legislative, judicial, and the local units of government.

Now we're having somewhat of the same problem with universities. I don't know what the legislators had in mind, but my guess was with the way that it was worded that they intended that basically all governmental units in Indiana were supposed to be covered. But at least some of the universities believe that they're now exempt. So we may go back in two years and have them change the statute again to include the universities.

Would you recommend, then, since there are a number of states that are considering legislation and have legislation drafted and or many of them, they rightly want to maintain some control over the issuance of the regulations and the policies and practices that go along with implementing the state statute. And with that perhaps is designating a specific entity within the state government with the authority to issue those regulations.

Would you say that unless the state statute clearly specifies who it all applies to, such if it's going to be all executive branch entities, authorities, commissions, perhaps even local counties, towns and cities, universities, that they make sure that the legislation is clear about that as opposed to assigning that authority to the state agency given the responsibility to implement it because they may not, in fact, have the authority to issue regulations or requirements for some of those entities? Bill, I'm going to start with you.

(laughs) I'm trying to figure out exactly how to answer your question. I think the answer is yes, I would highly recommend that. Because that is one of the stumbling blocks that we've run into here is that it always seems like somebody says, "Oh, well we're exempt from that." So the more clear you can make that statute as to who it does apply to and who has the authority to issue those rules, I think the less heartache and the less procrastination you're going to wind up having from those units.

Okay. It's kind of that response of 'If it doesn't say I have to,' then some entities may take the position that 'Well, I really don't unless you tell me specifically I have to.'

I think that's correct.

Yes. So, for those states that are listening, take heed. Steve Noble in Kentucky, what are the three top challenges you faced?

Well, I guess in one sense all three of the challenges might have some connection to funding if somebody wanted to back trace. But certainly one that comes to mind immediately are matters of testing and verification. Something that there certainly is a need for but not a lot of ways of providing that, not a lot of sources that can aid with entities that want to test or verify that products are accessible or that even their websites are accessible outside of the standard product, like the Bobby tool for websites. But that's certainly one. Technical assistance, generally speaking, is another challenge. Groups that need assistance in creating programs, things like scripting in order to ensure that their software works with screen readers and such things. There just really isn't much in the way of resources available for that. And certainly we try to provide our agency with a certain level of technical assistance that we can provide and the Governor's Office of Technology provides that as far as the State Executive Agency is concerned. But when you branch out to other groups that don't come under the purview of the executive cabinet, then you have less available for these entities. And then the third thing is outreach and awareness. There are a number of entities that are covered under statute but probably are not aware of its existence or that they indeed need to comply with it. Nonprofit organizations that have various programs that they provide for the state through state funds, they're obligated to comply with it. Political subdivisions, county government, city government. There hasn't been, if you will, the funding available to do a lot of outreach to these entities to maybe get them aware of it and to aid them in what they need to do as far as compliance is concerned, so I guess those are three that would come to my mind.

Thank you. It sounds like in Kentucky and a couple of the other states presenting today, you do have a broad scope of applicability in terms of requiring not-for-profits to comply as well. It sounds like you certainly have enough to do right now just trying to get it rolled out at the state level, let alone being able to invest efforts in increasing the awareness at the local level and helping them to implement approaches as well. So I can see why that is a significant challenge for you all.

Yeah, exactly. And that's one of the things that we're certainly happy that we were able to get the funding from the Southeast DBTAC to help with our state's school systems. Because that's a large component, you know, think of all the school districts across the state that need to comply and so we were very happy to be able to cooperate with Southeast DBTAC in rolling that project out and helping school systems to understand and comply with our law.

Great. Let's move on. Mary Henthorn in Arkansas. Can you share with us what you feel are the top three challenges that Arkansas has faced?

Initially, ignorance of the law and the whole problem and fear of complex solutions. Later, overworked information technology people didn't keep accessibility a priority. There is no one group in Arkansas that's overseeing the law. Now that quite a bit of time has passed and there have been a lot of outreach efforts, and the awareness of 508 has really helped with the awareness of the Arkansas law. But still, things like web content that's not directly contributed from IT professionals reveals that this kind of content problem means that training and awareness has to reach deep into organizations. You can't just hit the IT professionals or professional web developers. This really affects right down to common desk-workers everywhere through the state. They need to be aware of the law as they prepare for presentations that are being posted on the web. So outreach will have to continue for a long time.

And it always does because your audiences are always changing, i.e., you always get new members of your audience that you have to educate to the laws, etc.

What we're going to do now is ask two more questions that we developed ahead of time with the panelists, and then we're going to open it up to the audience. So if you have some questions, start sending them in, or you can wait for the operator.

What I want to focus on now are some of the very specific procurement activities that states are engaged in. I want to ask Kathy Record from Maine how they purchase off-the-shelf equipment, within the 508 terminology it's often referred to as COTS, Commercial Off-the-Shelf Products.

How do you do that and make sure that the products you're purchasing actually meet the intent of your state law or policy? For example, do you have a centralized purchasing agent or process in place that coordinates bids and does agreements for both buying, and if you take that approach, how does that infuse requirements to make sure that what you're buying is accessible?

Kathy, do you want to go first?

Sure. We have standard contract language today that requires that all technology that's purchased off the shelf must be accessible and meet all the state of Maine policies, and we do have a centralized purchasing agent. Those making the purchases of the off-the-shelf software, as I said before, are responsible for the final evaluation. They can't simply take the word of a vendor.

For example, a few years ago an agency was looking at the product Click To Learn. And obviously, the name itself implies the problem. So one of the members of the Accessibility Committee was asked to evaluate the product. He set up a demo with the vendor where he asked to see all the functionality. At the demo, he required that the mouse not be used. As you can imagine, it was a very long demo. But the point is the user and the manager of the project is still ultimately responsible. We don't catch everything because some folks are not as thorough at evaluating the software as others, but everyone is clear that the agency making the purchase is responsible to make sure that the product is in compliance.

Thanks, Kathy. Mary in Arkansas, how do you guys handle this?

There is a vendor clause that's required by law that's included with all contracts. The Off ice of State Procurement does require that that contract be included. But with minor purchases and even major ones, there is no oversight. So if that clause is included but overlooked, sometimes there are problems afterwards. The Technology Investigation Center does offer free testing and teaches others to test, but there's no mandated requirement that anyone take advantage of our testing facility.

More and more as projects are viewed as enterprise projects, though, the testing does become required as far as projects.

Mary, do you find that some vendors are approaching the Technology Investigation Center and asking you to test their products before they market them to some of the state agencies so that they can have that kind of anointment right at the front end?

Well not quite at the front, but closer to it than it used to be. Now usually when vendors first hear that they are required to comply with an accessibility law and that we're available to work with them, they'll work with us much earlier in the process than they used to. But so far I haven't experienced a vendor coming to us before they've approached anyone wanting to make a sale.

Thank you. Bill Pierce in Indiana, can you share with us how you guys are addressing the purchase of off-the-shelf products?

Well, for the most part, again, when we do the solicitation, either for an invitation to bid or a Request for Proposal, we include the appropriate templates and have the vendors then respond, and that becomes part of the evaluation process. Either pass/fail in the case of the invitations to bid, or in the case of the RFPs, it's part of the evaluation criteria and weighted in the award points.

The other thing, which I think some of the other members had mentioned, is that we do have a contract clause that says that the vendor has to, if they're going to provide any IT products or services, be Section 508 compliant. And that's part of our state contract boilerplate, so that's included in all of the contracts.

Have you encountered any vendors that have been reluctant to sign that clause?

I don't believe so. I think all the contracts that I've seen have had that in there. There have been a couple of cases, and it's not a waiver, it's just that it doesn't apply to that particular thing. For instance, if the maintenance of an existing application that is not accessible to the public, if they're going to make a modification, then they need to make that compliant, but as it stands now, if all they're doing is supporting the existing application, there isn't anything for them to comply to. So we're basically making them make a future promise that if anything that they're going to do, make sure that that is Section 508 compliant.

Okay, great. Kathy in Maine. Can you tell us how Maine is handling the purchase of customized hardware and software? Do you build the accessibility criteria into your bid specs? Just some of the basic procurement elements. Do you query the vendors that are applying to provide the product to make sure that they have the skills and ability to actually develop products that meet the specs? How do you know when the product is delivered that it actually has met your bid requirements? And have you experienced that awful scenario where they said it was and then later on you discovered that it really wasn't?

Okay. The process of how we handle customized hardware and software actually is very similar to the process of purchasing off-the-shelf products. There's standard contract language in all of our RFPs. Things do slip by sometimes. In the future, we're going to require third-party testing as a way of minimizing that. In the meantime, one of the processes that we hope to formalize in 2004 is to identify a person in each agency who's sort of the go-to person, who's an expert in testing for accessibility, because we don't have a centralized testing center. And it has worked out to be the case that that has worked and we caught some pieces that were not accessible. We've never experienced a project that's wound up that was totally inaccessible and were surprised by it.

That's wonderful to hear. And hopefully, your luck will stay with you. Mary Henthorn, in Arkansas, can you respond to that long litany of questions I threw out there, if you can remember them all?

Basically, we do rely on the vendor clause and it's up to individual agencies if they care to do the testing. If the purchaser requests, the Technology Investigation Center will do testing. And the purchaser can rely on the vendor's word, or they can go ahead and do their own test.

Usually, if we find a problem with a product, these problems can be fixed. And we've seen vendors move pretty quickly to get problems fixed.

Good. Where we are now in the audio conference is that we're going to open it up for questions from the audience. We have been receiving some questions by e-mail, so I will start with that. For all of you, if you want to submit a question to the operator, you just press *-1 to ask a question and the operator will facilitate the questions coming in.

Deborah?

Yes, Michael?

Let me jump in with a question that we had received in advance and let me throw it out, since this person obviously was ahead of everyone else in sending one question in by e-mail before we started. And this could go out to any of the panel members. But let me read it. It's not that long.

Question: This is a person with the Virginia Information Technology Agency, and here's her comment: When I look at the procurement requirements of 508 and the way the federal government implemented compliance methods, I do not see much of value. To me, access improvements occur only when applications are designed to address access, not by using nuts and bolts declared to be compliant with accessibility independently of the application. It seems to me that states wanting to improve accessibility should target technology using projects and not nuts and bolts. When you read the vendor's self rating responses in the federal system, it seems to me that it is easy to see that the nuts and bolts approach is not of great value. How do you, as panel members, view this issue?

Does anyone want to dare start this?

I guess I'll take a stab. This is Bill Pierce. First of all, I guess you have to start somewhere. So I think the way to start is with the nuts and bolts. Eventually, you're going to have to get to projects and weave that accessibility into the overall application or whatever it is that you're building. But you have to start somewhere is I think the best approach. And it's the same thing that they're running into on the equipment side, is that initially everybody's not going to be Section 508 compliant, but they're making progress. So, you want to look at those that are the most compliant if nobody is, or the ones that will be compliant the soonest, and then work from there. But I think the approach that they're taking to say 'Here are the things that you need to do for Section 508 and those standards,' as a base line, is about the most reasonable approach that you can take.

This is Mary from Arkansas. And I think the 508 standards for web development are quite easy to apply and easy to understand. I've used them for the outline in my training presentations and they really are easy to understand, easy enough to apply. And once they're applied, that's very effective in providing accessible web pages for the public and for employees.

I have one other, Deborah. Let me throw it out. This question came in from Georgia:

Question: As each of the panelists talked about challenges, whether each of the panelists might talk or respond to the question: In addition to the discussion of more money, are there other things that you would like to see the federal government offer that make sense to you in your efforts and approaches to improve electronic and information technology accessibility?

You know, one of the things that I struggled with as we were creating our standards is I was under the impression when Section 508 was initially passed that everything that the federal government was going to be buying was going to be Section 508 compliant. And we found out that the federal procurement process was significantly different than the one that we're using in Indiana. They were doing market analysis and determining what was going to be compliant and then issuing their Request for Proposal or whatever the analogous process would be for that.

I think it would be good for the federal government to maybe certify some of the equipment and the products that vendors put out as being Section 508 compliant.

Okay. Any other panelists? Steve, your thoughts?

Well, I would say along with Bill, that if the federal government could indeed help on the question of testing and certification and allow itself to be a sort of final authority on some of these issues, that would certainly help I think both states and vendors, if that kind of system could be set up. Even if you have a system in place at the state level, obviously that will help one state, but if the federal government could set that up, if they want to actually engage in that and assistance to states, that would certainly benefit all states. We'd be able to simply point to the same source on that.

Okay. Deborah, let me take it back to you.

We do have a series of questions here.

Question: The first one is from a technology vendor. And they're asking whether any of the states present have kind of a list, an accepted list of vendors that provide accessible products and/or services and consulting services. And do you have a bid like that, and do you regularly use that bid when you're looking to get bids on projects?

Any of the panelists, do you maintain lists?

In Arkansas, we don't. It was one of the things we first considered when our law passed in 1999, and we gave that effort up as something that was beyond what we had the resources to maintain.

This is Kathy from Maine. We don't have a list either, but it is something that we would like to do, recognizing of course that the maintenance is the time-consuming effort.

This is Bill Pierce from Indiana. We don't have a list, but what we were going to try and do is as we are getting responses from the vendors to RFPs, we're going to capture that information and share it with other agencies. So if another agency would look for the same or a similar product or service, they would know if there was somebody that would provide a compliant version of that.

Great. Let's move on.

Question: This is from another technology service provider. And they're asking states, what kinds of training will you be offering your staff, and how technical will it be? Are you doing primarily the overview awareness or are you getting down to the down and dirty of the real technical requirements, etc.?

Steve Noble here in Kentucky. As far as state agencies are concerned, the Governor's Office of Technology does provide a full day training on this, and they continue to provide ongoing assistance. I was looking at their website today and they have another training coming up in February and it's a full day, which is set aside just I believe for web and accessibility training. And it's slated as for advanced web designers, the people that are already involved in designing web pages. So it appears to be fairly thorough.

Anyone else?

This is Bill Pierce in Indiana. Several months ago we did a similar thing. There was a number of state webmasters that attended some training on making their websites accessible.

Great. Does anyone else want to respond?

This is Kathy in Maine. We have skills training and we also have awareness training, and that's incorporated into a management training course that every manager is required to take. And our skills training is for web developers and also for our software application developers.

Good.

Question: Our next question is from a consultant. And they recognize that a lot of the discussion among the states has focused on access for persons who are blind or have visual disabilities. And they recognize that the blind advocacy community has played an integral role in encouraging states to adopt 508-type statutes. They are wondering, however, recognizing that accessibility is broader than this and also applies to people who have other disabilities, and are asking if other states are addressing access for persons with cognitive disabilities.

Clearly, it's important to note that Section 508 does not address cognitive disabilities, but that does not say that states in moving forward on their efforts have not been pursing that.

Have any of the states that are here today looked at or expanded their regulations to ensure access by persons that have cognitive disabilities? And if you have, has the supplier community been responsive to those additional requirements?

This is Kathy. We've done some training on our websites to simplify them for people with cognitive disabilities, but that's pretty much it.

Steve Noble in Kentucky. I think by statute, our statute would cover a person with cognitive disabilities. I mean it's a rather broad designation that would cover any person that has a disability that is defined within either federal or state law, so surely that would cover cognitive disabilities. But again, Section 508 and 255, which are set aside as the access standards, do not really deal with cognitive disabilities. So there'd be a question of how you would actually define the essential criteria of providing that level of access and how you would measure it that would instantly come up. There are some entities out there that are working on the issue of cognitive disabilities, but nothing quite to the extent that WC3 has done with sensory primarily disabilities, and of course, the Section 508 access standards.

And some of it, in terms of persons that have cognitive disabilities, it's relative to user control, and being able to have redundancy built in and being able to have visual supplemented by auditory output of equipment, so you have both of those if you in fact need them, or the ability to shut one down because it might be too much stimuli. But the area of cognitive needs is clearly an area that is a next step that we need to evolve to.

Question: Our next question is for Bill in Indiana and it's from an Office of the Chief Information Officer. And it notes that 'You mentioned earlier that Indiana sent out an RFP for AT Tools. Could you clarify what you mean by 'AT tools'? Is this a reference to the assistive technology that will be used by employees, or are you speaking of validation type tools used to ascertain whether or not the products are in fact conforming.

These are not going to be used by people with disabilities. They are going to be used by basically the webmasters to take a look at the websites to ensure that they are Section 508 compliant. There's two versions of this. One is a desktop tool and the other is a server tool. And the server tool is usually used by the domain master or some kind of auditor and will take a look at all of the websites within the domain and say which ones are not Section 508 compliant and produce a report. Now that can be given to the web developers, but usually it winds up being kind of an internal process for the auditor himself.

The other one, the desktop tool, is actually the developer tool. And it will do sort of the same thing on a smaller scale, but it will show what is not compliant. But in addition to that, it can automate a lot of the processes, particularly those that are repetitive in making that website Section 508 compliant.

Great.

Question: The next question is for Mary in Arkansas. The Arkansas law requires compliance by recipients of state dollars. And if one of the not-for-profits that are state funded but are not a state entity develops a non-conformant product, how is a complaint delivered and enforced in that venue? Because I think you said that if the state were to roll out something, clearly the constituents have avenues to file a complaint. But if someone is filing a complaint against a not-for-profit, is that clear how one responds to that?

Well, the same way whether it's a not-for-profit or a state agency. The only remedy offered by the law is an action for injunction. A person injured by violation may maintain an action for injunctive relief to enforce the terms of the law.

Okay.

They have up to four years after the cause of the action.

Are there any ramifications for the entity, the not-for-profit entity perhaps, for non-compliance.

There's no enforcement of the law, except through the ability for someone to file an injunctive action.

Okay. I'm going to stop and see if our operator has anyone with a call-in question.

I think you have two questions on the line.

Our first question is from James Gagnia. The line is live.

Hello.

Hi, James. How are you?

I'm fine. How are you?

Good. Good to have you join us.

Thank you. Basically, (laughs) - Sorry, we got cut off-guard here for a second.

Sorry.

The question I think that we had is we're basically a web accessibility testing organization here. And we've been asked on several occasions, 'What does a website need to be to be 255 compliant?' I mean we've had a lot of 508. We know the 508 rulings and so on. And the question basically I guess is 'What exactly are the standards for 255 compliance?'

As it pertains to a website, because often in the Telco industry, those who need to comply with Section 255, also need to provide online services which need to be accessible. So how does Section 255 or becoming compliant with Section 255 meet up with 508?

Section 255 actually applies to Telecom manufacturers and service providers. It puts the onus on them to develop products and services that are accessible.

Right.

So I would expect that at the state level, should a state have an agreement with a Telecom provider and perhaps have a website so that the state agencies are procuring devices, if they need to go to that Telecom provider's website that needs to be accessible. And that would depend, depending upon the agreement with which state and which standards they've adopted. Many of the states have adopted the Section 508 web accessibility standards. Others have exceeded that and have adopted the World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and some have adopted priority level one, some have adopted a staggered implementation right up to priority level three.

Do any of the other panelists want to add to this?

(no response)

No? Okay. Other questions, operator?

Our next question is from Donald Green.

Hi, Don. How are you?

Hi, Deborah. How are you doing?

Good.

Good. I'm from New York State Procurement. The question that I have, and we've been a procurement entity in New York, we kind of try to assist the other agencies in getting the products that they need. And, excuse me, I've been in and out with other meetings, so I'm sorry if I'm asking a question that's already been addressed. It has to do with the HAVA Act and voting machines and if there are actually any that are meeting the compliance standard and has anybody had any experience or even any contracts in place to acquire those machines?

Okay. And does your law in that state require a certification by your Secretary of State?

They do that. I can't tell you if that's part of the law or not.

Is it a full-states ballot issues, etc.?

I think so.

Okay. Because in this state we're having some issues with full-states ballots and how all of that stuff could possibly fit on a page and who goes first, etc., etc.

Don, ITTATC sponsored some HAVA-related webcasts during this last year and those are archived on our website as well. So you can go back to those and glean some more information. The HAVA accessible voting machines is an area that states are struggling with. There are some machines that are being evaluated and there's some that are not really. I think that states are struggling with finding machines that are accessible and compliant in order to move forward in making their purchases within the time frame.

Thanks.

Question: We have another question that was e-mailed in. It's from a CIO's office. And they're asking the panelists whether they see open source code as a benefit or a detriment. Does anyone want to take that one on?

(no immediate response)

This is Mary from Arkansas. Open source code means that you can change the code yourself, and you've possibly acquired it without outputting any money. It does give you the possibility of modifying something for accessibility. I will say that a lot of open source products that we've worked with have been accessible from the get-go.

Does anyone else want to take that on? I did notice recently in one of those news-zines that one of the major East Coast states just adopted and went full open source code, so it will be interesting to see how their strategies change or are affected.

Bill, do you want to give any comments on the open source approach?

Actually, no I don't. I'm trying to think of what the implications would be. And I think that was a good comment in terms of what it does. Well, it's sort of a two-edged sword because on one hand it allows you to modify the code and that can assist you with the accessibility, and it more likely may be accessible at the beginning. But on the other hand, it can also have developers changing it so that it becomes non-compliant. And so you may continually be going back and trying to validate that they have compliant websites. So it could probably go either way.

Okay. Anyone else?

Question: We have another question that came in via e-mail from France. And they're asking whether each state in the U.S. has a free hand in making the decision to cover 508 or not. And does the federal policy impact upon the states in financial terms if the states don't implement 508 what happens to them? And is there an advantage in following 508? Is it more important for the states to get and stay in line with the national standards?

Do any of the panelists want to respond to that?

We started looking at the federal Section 508 actually before 2001. I think it was in about mid-2000. And the financial changes that were going to be involved, or I guess the penalties to the state, if you will, had to do with if the state received money for disability programs that could be revoked if they didn't procure Section 508 compliance. At least in Indiana - and I'm guessing the same is true for at least most of the other states - that wasn't going to be significant enough to make a judgment either way if it was going to cause a major overhaul of the whole architecture that we were using. For instance, we had heard that Microsoft at that time wasn't going to be Section 508 compliant. So if we were going to have to throw out all of our Microsoft products, then it wouldn't be worthwhile just for the amount of money that we were getting for those disability programs.

But I think the thing that we came down to was it wasn't a financial incentive; it was the right thing to do for the people with disabilities as well as the other citizens. And a lot of this stuff just has to go with good design. And so, I think we wind up doing it, not because of financial penalties, but because of the reason to do it just was correct.

Let me offer some additional information on that issue as well. When 508 was passed at the federal level, it clearly applied to federal agencies. However, the U.S. Department of Education has interpreted that states need to comply with 508 because they have received dollars under the Assistive Technology Act, and it's only tied to that Act and the recipient of funds under that act. I know that a lot of people believe that if a state accepts any federal funds they're obligated to comply with 508. And that's not the case. The reality is that this interpretation has been made. It's tied to a nominal sum of money that states are receiving, an average award of $350,000. Setting that aside, most states have clearly seen this as 'the movement.' And recognizing that by making their products, not only their services, more accessible to people with disabilities, it increases access to all of their constituents, whether they be employees or citizens, in their state and outside of the boundaries of their state. And so they are moving ahead.

DEBORAH'S LINE TEMPORARILY DISCONNECTED

All the lines are still in the conference. I believe Miss Buck is dialing back in. It seems her line was disconnected.

Let me go ahead because I thought I was disconnected with the silence. I know we're nearing the end of time. We just have a couple of minutes left. I was going to ask one final question if we just had a moment.

Question: We're here now with what was our third state of the state kind of review and discussion, which I'm sure has provided a lot of insight and perspective, not just in terms of the four states represented but relative to any activities going on across the country and other states.

I guess my question would be - and I want to try to go quickly through each panelist. It's almost like looking at the beginning of the year - If we were to come back together a year from now, if you were each to identify one area you think will make the most progress at a state level in terms of electronic and information technology accessibility - What might that be? And I guess you could either limit yourself to your own state or sort of kind of forecast where we might be in this country nation-wide.

Let me go first to Bill.

The big thing we're going to be working on this year is again to get the other units of government into compliance. So, that's going to be I think a pretty huge effort for us, because there are a lot of local governments that may never have even heard of Section 508 before. The other thing, I think maybe the state of the technology. Because right now we're still in kind of a transition state where vendors are making progress towards Section 508 compliance but maybe haven't got there yet or it's in the next release or something like that. And I don't know if it will be by the end of 2004, but I think in the foreseeable near future we're going to wind up having that as a hard requirement. Not who's the most compliant, but are you or are you not.

Right. Excellent. Steve, how about you?

Michael, I'm back.

Okay. Deborah, while you were gone, I threw out kind of a last question which is: a year from now, for each of the panelists to kind of forecast where will their state be or where might we be on a national basis?

Great.

Bill went first. We're going next to Steve.

Yeah. And what I mentioned before, one of our main targets for this year is our school systems. The area of K-12 education, which is one area that nationally has been rather slow to adopt these policies. So we're going to make a special effort to work with them in our project and this should produce technical assistance materials and other things that can be usable across the nation. Hopefully, there's some model policy and examples of what can be done in other states.

Very good. Let me turn next to Kathy.

A couple areas. One would be in the area of procurement because we're planning on having third-party testing required. And the other area, which we barely have discussed, but we're looking at instead of just having a policy, also having a law, which we don't have right now.

Okay. And finally, Mary.

I think our latest progress has been to find ourselves in the position where awareness is expected. It took a long time to get there, but I think we're finally getting there, where state entities and vendors are aware that these laws exist. I hope in the next year that we'll be moving towards where compliance is expected.

Great answer. Deborah, I think we're just about out of time. Let me urge anyone who's still with us on this call, and I hope many people are, that you visit the ITTATC website, www.ittatc.org, not only to learn more about electronic and information technology accessibility at a state level, but a variety of resources and links, training, technical assistance opportunities that can come your way via the ITTATC program.

Let me thank Deborah for co-moderating and turn it back to you to thank our panelists.

Great. Thank you, Michael. Before I close off, let me ask everyone to please go to the ITTATC website and complete an evaluation form. We recognize that there were a number of questions we did not get to, and some of them are very specific. And so we would like input from you regarding what other kinds of training and support materials that ITTATC can focus on so that we can better serve you, our constituent state governments.

I would like to thank our panelists. I'm very impressed with the level of expertise out there and the efforts that are going on in the states. Clearly, IT accessibility is a front-runner and is of importance, even though in the last couple of years security and privacy really jumped to the top of the list out of necessity, I'm happy to hear that states have not forgotten about accessibility, and I want to thank each of our panelists, individually. You've really helped us, and I think helped the audience.

And if any of the audience members have any additional questions or would like technical assistance, please give me a buzz or an e-mail. You can go to the ITTATC website and submit a generic e-mail query and we'll respond to your request.

Thank you everyone, very much.

(You're welcome.)

At that, we'll conclude and sign off.