- [Stef] Hi, everybody. I see there are quite a few folks joining. Unfortunately, we're having some serious technical difficulties with our presenter, but I'm hoping in the next few minutes it will work out. Just for the folks joining, we are having some technical difficulties with our presenter. We might start a couple of minutes late, but hopefully, we're working on it right now. Hopefully it's gonna work out. Thank you for your patience. Just for everybody joining, we are having some technical difficulties with our presenter at the moment. Allen's having a hard time connecting, so I'm gonna give it a few more minutes. Hopefully we'll get everything sorted. Thanks for your patience. This is a first for me. Okay. We are talking on different methods of communications. Just trying to get him logged in. I think we need a couple more minutes. Allen is trying to update his Zoom and see if that rectifies the situation and we can get started then. For those of you that are just joining now, we are having some technical difficulties. Our presenter, Allen Hoffman, is having a hard time getting onto the Zoom, and we are working with him to hopefully get that rectified and get started in the next minute or two. Sorry for the inconvenience. Oh, here we go. Allen, you're there. Can you hear us? He's just joining the audio now, okay. Okay, Allen, can you hear us?

- I am here and I hear you. Hopefully you hear me.

- [Stef] We do, we do, thank you so much. I'm gonna quickly do a couple of housekeeping items, just so everybody knows. The session is being recorded, and we'll email everyone the recording after the event. We do have captions available, so feel free to use them as needed. Hopefully we'll have time for live Q&A. There is a Q&A box. Put your questions in there. I will monitor them for Allen. And hopefully we'll have time for answering questions at the end. If we don't, 'cause I know we're a little bit starting short, we will take down the questions and get the answers to you. So today our webinar is Demystifying Section 508 and Section 752: What Gets Measured Gets Done, with Allen Hoffman. Okay, and I am going to share my screen so that I can-

- And you won't have to look at me.

- [Stef] I can see you and the screen actually.

- [Allen] Oh no.

- [Stef] Let's see. Get everything sorted now that Allen's on.

- So hopefully you, my picture is okay.

- [Stef] Yep. Okay. I think everyone can see my screen. Can you see my screen, folks? I hope so. Mmm. I believe that people should-

- There, am I framed better now?

- [Stef] Let's see, what do we have here? Okay, everybody sees the screen. Ah, they're seeing the presenter screen instead of the presentation. Let me see if I can fix that. How's that? Perfect. Thank you, Eric. Okay, Allen, please get started. We're on the title page.

- All right. I cut off the top of my head, oh no.

- [Stef] Okay, we see you.

- There you go. Okay, let's just go to the next one after the title. So what we're gonna talk about, we're gonna talk about Section 508 background and compliance measures. We're gonna talk about what is section 752 and the government wide section 508 assessment. We'll talk about the recent assessment of results, at least sort of in the big picture. And we'll talk about next steps and as they relate to a recently released memo from OMB, the Office of Management and Budget. And we'll talk about how TPGi can help if you need it. So, then we'll go to, and then we'll have questions if time permits. Next slide. So quickly about me, you can see me for at least those that can see, I'm white, blind, bald, and have a green, brown, and white checkered shirt in front of a, there's a flower, I think, in my background. But beyond that, I have 25 years of full-time digital accessibility work, 30 years of federal employee. Let's see, 19 or something like that of them were as a full-time digital accessibility person. I've contributed to WCAG standards as well as the DHS Trusted Tester process and the Section 508 standards. And I'm currently supporting a Federal agency for TPGi. Next slide. So we'll start on Section 508 background and compliance measures. And I'm hoping that some of you at least have some familiarity with 508, because this won't be a very in-depth piece. So it was enacted clear back in 1998. It's been, you know, 26 years. It's a long time. It's located at 29 U.S.C 794 . And it applies to federal agencies when they procure, develop, use, and maintain information and communication technology, which is a huge scope. Basically, it requires that federal agencies must provide comparable access to information and data to persons with disabilities as that provided to others. And that primary falls on electronic and communications technology, including websites, web apps, all kinds of things, documents, laptops, printers, copiers, phones. So let's go to the next one. So what has the government been doing since 1998 about measuring compliance? You know, they put it out, but is anybody doing it? So the first Section 508 assessment was done in 1999, and I actually worked on it. And all they tested was a few parts of webpages, of course, with no consistent test process or anything, but people did report some information, and it turned out that it was very low. So before we jump right into the assessment, I skipped ahead a little. The U.S. Access Board is in charge of developing and maintaining standards that support the Section 508 regulations. Department of Justice, and now the Department of General Services, are responsible for conducting compliance assessments. And the General Services Administration is sort of in charge of it as the lead of the federal Section 508 activities. They drive education and adoption of appropriate things for each federal agency. Each federal agency generally has a Section 508 program manager or coordinator, as they used to be called. But often the definition of the roles and responsibilities and authorities are either not defined or insufficient. So we'll go to the next slide. Its background in compliance continues. So the standards were updated in 2018. I worked on that update for 12 years with the Access Board when I was working at Department of Homeland Security.

- [Stef] Allen, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I got a bit, I thought you were talking about... I'm not sure we're on the right slide. Which slide would you like me to be on? What is the title?

- It should be 508 Background and Compliance Measurements, and it's either three or four.

- [Stef] Yeah, so the slide says what is Section 752 is not yet, correct?

- No, we're not there yet. Should be Section 508 standards were updated in 2018 should be the top bullet.

- [Stef] Oh geez, none of those really start with that. We have one that says enacted in 1998.

- Keep goin' down, next slide.

- [Stef] And then the U.S. Access Board develops and establishes the Section 508 standards is the next slide.

- Keep going down.

- [Stef] The next one is 752.

- Oh, I don't know what happened to that. Well, I'll just go over this, and I'll tell you when we get to 752.

- [Stef] Okay, sounds good.

- So standards were updated in 2018. I worked on 'em. The revised standards rely on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for most electronic interfaces. So, the assessments overall up till now have generally shown a pretty low level of compliance across the board, with a few, you know, bright spots. The assessments were irregularly conducted. They weren't conducted at all for quite a quite a few years. And the assessments results were not really used to drive change in a meaningful way in the past. The surveys do tend to focus on how is information and communication technology acquired, developed, used, and maintained. And a big problem with past Section 508 compliance assessments has been inconsistent interpretation of the standards and what they mean, and then you get different responses 'cause of different interpretations. So now we're at the 752 slide. So I don't know where some of my content went, but we'll worry about that some other days. Okay, so there is an increasing focus from Congress on digital accessibility. There have been some senate and some other hearings and reports, and the White House has been increasingly paying attention to digital accessibility over, let's say, the last four or five years. Section 752 is part of a budget act and it included a requirement more focused for making sure that Section 508 compliance is measured more regularly than it has in the past, among some other things. And then in December, so that came out in December of 2022, I think, as part of the large budget deal. And it did spur on quite a bit of activity at the General Services Administration and others. So let's go to the next slide.

- [Stef] Okay, we're at the next slide.

- Oh, Section 752 establishes a process for measuring compliance moving forward. And it came out on the 7th of April to tell people to start doing their first survey. They had to finish the survey by last August 11th. And you can see information there. There's a link to information about that. So, let's go to the next slide. So what did they measure in the survey? This one was pretty large. It was similar to old DOJ surveys, but I would say more focused. So there were 40 questions that relate to the maturity of accessibility programs. 43 questions about, sorry, I'm, about basically, you know, what was compliant or conforming to the standards? There were conformance measures for a range of ICT, including web, software, internal applications, documents, you name it, there's metrics there. There were 22 questions specifically about the 508 programs within agencies. Things that they ask about programs include staffing levels, interactions with lifecycle, and things like that, to understand, you know, great, you have a program, what are they doing? So we can go on to the next slide, assessment results. Overall Section 508 compliance was found to be pretty low across the board, again, which isn't a real surprise for a lot of folks working in this. As it says here, 75% of them were found to have below average compliance. There's some more information here that I'm gonna try to skip through because time. Policies and procedures were lacking in many agencies, and one of the things that's been a mantra is policies and procedures drive a lot of things in the government. Program resources are low. And there's a link there for the full report, which is enormous. But if you really wanna dig into it, it's there. It gives you the answers from every agency that responded. So it's the next results slide. Training and Human Capital were limited and inconsistent. And the report has a lot of recommendations on how to basically start remedying all these low compliance aspects. And there's a link there to that. And so, as I said, the report has some next steps. But they went further, and there's a presidential memo that's more than voluntary as a recommendation. It's here, we need people to do things. So the recommendations from the government wide report were put into that memo. And here's the link to that. It's in the sentence, but if you get the link, it's really long. So the Next Steps slide. The memorandum provides some clear and pretty direct instructions for federal agencies of what they need to start doing now, not, you know, notionally next year or next week. They need to establish Accessibility programs and policies. They need to buy accessible products and services. They need to design and develop accessible products and services. And they need to communicate and deliver accessible products to their... They also need to be able to evaluate products for compliance. And they need to cultivate a positive culture around digital accessibility. These are like the big sort of themes of the recommendations and the directions. So immediate agency actions... Ooh, I'm gonna have to speed up. So, 30 days from the memorandum, which was in December 28th or 22nd of 2023, their agencies have to identify their Section 508 program manager. So agencies need to review, update, and basically acknowledge that they have digital accessibility statements on their public-facing websites. Agencies have to review and update Accessibility policies. I'm sorry, policies, as you know, a lot of agencies not have policies. So, they've directed them to review and establish policies. There are some other immediate agency actions, but I'm not gonna go through all of them. They are in here and there's a link to the presidential memo. So, again, they have to look at agency policies, they have to have a plan for updating them. It's sort of, you know, repetitive, but it kind of brings the point home to agencies. They have to make their policies publicly available. So, we'll go on to the next immediate government-wide actions. Yes, these are government wide. So these are actions that are not necessarily for each agency, but these are actions gonna be done by General Services Administration and others. They're gonna update resources on Section 508. They're gonna explore with the Access Board establishing a place to keep accessibility information for products. This has been a theme that's been discussed for years and just always seems to have a problem getting done. They're going to establish a government-wide service to help agencies, you know, do the work for accessibility. I've found that a lot of agencies just don't know how to do the contracting to get such services. And I could see that this will help quite a bit. They're gonna establish some position descriptions.

- [Stef] Forward with the slide, Allen? Should I move forward?

- Yes, I think so.

- Okay.

- I know Anthony had split some slides, and I didn't get 'em into my notes. They're going to look at some updating some accessibility professional certifications as applied to Section 508 program managers. Basically trying to make sure that program managers actually have the skillset to do the job they've been given. This is some more immediate, and I think this may be the next slide, but immediate government-wide actions.

- [Stef] Yep, I'm on the immediate.

- They're gonna continue with developing staff positions for filling a Section 508 program. You know, testers, governance people, acquisition reviewers, et cetera. DHS is going to explore creating a version of Trusted Tester for electronic documents. Mine has a slide split here. They're going to explore something about providing a government-wide method for aiding agencies in obtaining assistive technology, and this one seemed to be a bit of a mystery to me, 'cause there's kind of a program for that already, but... They're looking at setting up a digital accessibility design and testing lab for agencies use. So I'm gonna skip down to the next slide, which is how can TPGi help? So I think, so I can wrap this up. Just to wrap it up a little, these are a lot of recommendations that people have discussed for years, and in, at least my personal opinion, is I think it is just outstanding that the GSA and others who worked with OMB have managed to get these put out as a presidential memo. And I can't speak to the DHS documents, Trusted Tester. I know it's certainly feasible, because the processes are already pretty well developed and the trainings are very well developed. How they'll go about doing that, I can't speak to, 'cause I don't work there anymore. But ACRs for documents certainly can be done. It's the same standards except for four. So, you know, it's pretty feasible. It's just a matter of figuring out which test IDs go where. So how can TPGi help? So we can help agencies to do audit support for their web content. We have lots of tools to do that. People need to look at our tools, they can feel free to reach out. There's a slide at the end here. We can help agencies collect their data, because the assessment is every year, and it actually takes a lot of work to collect it in any agencies of any size. So, we have personnel that can help organize and collect that data to respond to the survey. We can help them do analysis on their data, and we can do things also, so we can help them do policy and strategic planning for accessibility. That's what I do. We can help agencies better connect with their customers with disabilities through a program called JAWS Connect, where accessibility SMEs are available within the help desk environment and they get feedback on their websites. You know, here's the problem, here's what we found. So we have that capability. And we can help people with integrating accessibility into their acquisition requirements. Establishing repeatable accessibility evaluation procedures. You know, put it down, too, for the list of things that are recommended for those immediate agency and government-wide actions, TPGi can help with pretty much the full range. So the last question slide. I know I ran out of time, I apologize.

- [Stef] No, we have plenty of time. We have plenty of time, Allen.

- So if there's any questions. Sorry I had to kinda rush through, but I think the big thing is, is that we're moving forward from assessments that aren't really, the data isn't used to assessments where the data is being used and shared and then actions are being pushed to agencies based on that data. So we're moving more towards a data-driven approach to making government-wide accessibility decisions and investments. And I think that's a good thing.

- [Stef] We do have one question in the chat, and if I can ask people to put the questions in the Q&A it's easier for me to see them, but there is one question in the chat, and it says, Austin is asking, "Is there a resource that would help keep up to date "on all the updates around accessibility?"

- Well, I don't know. I'll take that as far as the scope around the government side of 508 and accessibility. You can go to section508.gov, is probably the best resource. I don't know, I don't think there's one resource that I'm aware of that would cover every single thing on the planet. But as far as the government side, that's where I would go is section508.gov.

- Great.

- And of course tpgi.com. You can go there, too.

- Yeah, of course. We have another question from Rick. "Do you see the federal government "requiring training certifications "for federal contractors and vendors? "What is available besides DHS Trusted Tester "and IAAP certifications?"

- Those are the only two using the word certification I would recommend. There are other comprehensive sets of trainings, but I wouldn't call them certifications, and they don't call themselves that. And the difference is the level of the exam. So right now I'm only aware of those two certifications. There used to be some certifications out of CSUN more around assistive technology, and they still may be doing those. And they are not bad certifications. I actually have one of them from a long time ago. But I do see the government moving towards requiring more certifications. It's sort of a basic thing of establishing some baseline knowledge for the people you're hiring to do the work that you need. You know, if you need Trusted Tester testing done, then you're gonna need Trusted Testers. So, I'm gonna say I don't know if the other agencies are gonna be moving forward. I see a lot of job positions open for people with certifications. So I'm gonna say that yes, it's picked up, but no, there's not a lot more variety of certifications that I'm aware of.

- [Stef] Okay, we have some time, so if anybody has any additional questions, please put them in the Q&A box or I am also trying to monitor the chat.

- If you're in a government agency and if you haven't seen the memo from the White House, you can look in the link in the slides. I would recommend looking at those, you know, immediate actions, because those things probably will be coming to an email near you soon. I found it interesting to see that it came out right before Christmas, and then where I'm at the emails finally started arriving about two months later. So every agency's rate of percolation will differ.

- [Stef] Right.

- And I think my email's on the end there, ahoffman@tpgi.com, if anyone has a question or wants to know about services that I can connect you with the right people at TPGi.

- [Stef] Yeah, and for sure, if anyone else is interested or has additional questions, you can always write to ida@tpgi.com or info@tpgi.com. I'm thinking we don't have any more questions.

- It's such exciting material that there's no questions.

- [Stef] Katie Whitelaw said, "Thanks so much. "I hadn't heard about Section 752 before this webinar." So if you wanna maybe elaborate a little on that, I don't know.

- Well, it's buried in a budget. It's buried in a budget bill, and it actually does have some money for some things for agencies to do, which is astoundingly new. I don't think, to be honest, that agencies have come to grips with what's in it yet. I don't see that evidence of some of that. But the biggest results is the, it is driving the assessments every year. The assessments, they're public. Agencies don't like to see bad things about them in public. So I think, you know, that's gonna help change things. When you have data and then you have top down actions, maybe it'll take a few cycles, but I think it's gonna start changing the landscape around the proverbial lack of high-level leadership attention to this across a lot of government agencies.

- [Stef] Right, Allen, we do have another question here. "If someone had to choose," this is from Russ. "If someone had to choose one certification product, "would you recommend the Trusted Tester "or something from IAAP?"

- This is a little off topic, but I guess it depends what you're gonna do. You're gonna do with it. If you're not gonna test, then you really don't need Trusted Tester. If you are just entering the field and you need to get started with a good wide baseline of knowledge, I think IAAP is really good. If you're gonna be diving into actually helping people identify, and to some extent, remediate accessibility problems, the IIAP's Web Accessibility, SME certification, it's a good knowledge certification, let's call it that. So the difference is a Trusted Tester is not only a knowledge certification, but it's a pretty close to world skills certification. Can you actually test pages and find the errors, you know, where the errors are and which WCAG success criteria it connects to, you know, more or less in real world situations. But if you're not gonna be a tester, then Trusted Tester doesn't really make that much sense.

- [Stef] So I have an interesting question here that somebody put. "European countries are enforcing fines and even prison time "for not complying to accessibility laws." They wrote standards, but the EU has actual laws coming up into play now. "Are there consequences besides reputation loss "for not complying to section 752?"

- Not that I'm aware of, no.

- [Stef] Okay, and another question, "Does 508 no longer refer to "electronic information technology as EIT?"

- The term EIT was replaced with Information and Communication Technology at the 2018 release of the revised Section 508 standards. And that is because it harmonizes the phrasing with, for example, the Europeans. It still covers the same stuff, but it's mostly just a name change.

- [Stef] Mm-hm. Also, Chris asks, "Will this trickle down "to all companies providing any service to the government? "We deal with banks and medical, "and we are starting to really be pushed "in the U.S. and Canada for clarification on these. "Thanks."

- Well, I'll try to do a short one here, but the chain of events could be if the government starts doing these assessments and they see that they're not doing their acquisitions correctly, so for example, not including 508 in their acquisitions for services, and they take action and say, okay, they can use the Accessibility Requirements Tool, which helps 'em create their requirements, and when they do, they're gonna have 508 in there, and then when those requests for services, RFPs and RFQs come out for those services, you're gonna start seeing an increased level of attention to having good quality accessibility requirements. So the short answer is I sure hope so. If the data-driven decisions can hold and take root over the few years, then we should see an increase in both good quality accessibility requirements in government contracts, and hopefully them using those requirements within their selection processes. So the short answer is, I sure hope so.

- [Stef] Okay. I think, if anybody else doesn't have any questions, I think I covered all of the ones in the Q&A. I don't see anything else in the chat. So, yeah, I think we're good. Thank you so much for joining our webinar today. Sorry for the short delay at the beginning, but we got it all sorted. Really appreciate your patience. And like I mentioned earlier, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to info@tpgi.com, and we will get back to you, set you up with an account manager to talk about our tools and services further.

- And if you're looking for TPGi at CSUN there, you can find us there.

- Oh right, yes, of course. I should have said that, thanks. We will have a large presence at CSUN this year, so come by our booth, attend our sessions, and introduce yourselves. Says, "Thank you, Allen." You got a lot of thank yous in the chat as well.

- Yep.

- Okay, thanks everybody. Have a great day.