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Panel: Advocacy / Consumer Perspective on the Progress of 508

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Participants

• Brenda Battat, Self Help for Hard of Hearing People (SHHH)

• Jim House, Telecommunications for the Def, Inc.

• Dave Poehlman, American Council of the Blind (ACB)

• Joy Relton, American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

• Moderator - Skip Crane

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Comments fromBrenda Battat – SHHH (1 of 3)

• Great need for more consumer education on 508.

• Complaint process may not work; employee hesitant to complain due to impact on career.

• More "technical" consumers should be involved where decisions are being made regarding evaluating products.

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Comments fromBrenda Battat – SHHH (2 of 3)

• We should go back to the Access Board to learn the intention of the provisions and what they mean.

• Neither Federal agencies nor vendors want to take responsibility for signing off on products conforming to the 508 standard.

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Comments fromBrenda Battat – SHHH (3 of 3)

• Still no clear and simple way to evaluate products for conformance to 508.

• Most 508 attention focused on accessible websites and screen readers, but there is more to 508.

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Comments fromJim House – TDI (1 of 4)

• TDI promotes equal access to telecommunications and media for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, late-deafened or deaf-blind.

• On the Internet, we have applications for both telecommunications AND media.

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Comments fromJim House – TDI (2 of 4)

– Video Relay

– Video Interpreting

– Video Conferencing

• Telecommunications:

•Barriers:– VoIP Technology

– IM closely resembles TTY but it is not completely real-time

– No way to receive incoming calls unless you are online

– E-Mail and pagers

– Instant Messaging (IM)

– Chat Rooms

– IP-Relay

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Comments fromJim House –TDI (3 of 4)

• Media:– Wealth of information in text and graphics

– Ease of publishing your own information

• Barriers:– Current broadband policy and economics limits use of

full-motion video

– Virtual lack of captioning on commercial website streaming video (News media, entertainment clips, etc.)

– Audio files lack transcripts or captions

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Comments fromJim House – TDI (4 of 4)

• Government issues:– Regulations do not keep pace with technology

– Courts divided on access rules in private sector

– Many agencies are complying with 508, but others are trying to avoid compliance

– TDI has learned some agencies are polling audience requirements to see if they can avoid captioning.

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Comments fromDavid Poehlman – ACB (1 of 4)

• Areas of progress since the advent of Section 508 standards … Sectors that have shown positive results and advances– Websites are better

– Good tools which use verifiable means to test for section 508 compliance are helpful

– Lots of talk and generated interest

– Web development people seem to be much more interested at least at the government level

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Comments fromDavid Poehlman – ACB (2 of 4)

• Shortcomings … needs for continuing improvement– Accessible content needs to be provided in electronic

form

– Many people (including those who should) still do not know the meaning of section 508 and the standards

– We need more of the human in the equation and less of the legal

– Inaccessible software remains a big problem for federal employees

Human resources and financial packages keep promising to become accessible in the next release but never get there

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Comments fromDavid Poehlman – ACB (3 of 4)

• Shortcomings … needs for continuing improvement– Real lack of enforcement of accessibility

• Bidders with products that do not fulfill the promise must start being turned down

• Makers of accessible hardware and software must start getting the nod

– Documentation must be more accessible

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Comments fromDavid Poehlman – ACB (4 of 4)

• Activities being pursued that we hope will prove fruitful– Entering an FCC formal complaint on cell phone access– Federal Government should enforce section 255 access

requirements for telephone equipment as a 508 matter.– Involved in the Accessibility Forum and other initiatives.– Building an informal network of people involved with 508

• Compare notes and make strategic decisions.– Educating our members to their rights and that should

produce more expectations and demand.– Expressing concerns about specific sites to web

masters and agencies.• Draw more attention to compliance.

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Comments fromJoy Relton – AFB