[Blind-Gov] Sec. 508 Accessibility Program

[rothmanjd at gmail.com]

I'd say the first thing to look at is what Interior reserves for itself and
whit it sends down to the component or OPDIV level.  For example, HHS keeps
508 complaints from the public at the Department level and delegates those
filed by employees to the individual Operating Division level.  Homeland
Security keeps everything - or at least they used to - at the Departmental
level.

 

Once you know your scope, you can start thinking about what you're likely to
see.  If your component is dealing with complaints from the public, then I'd
predict the majority of those complaints will be about public-facing
websites.  You'll also get complaints about mobile applications if you have
any.  If you have any public-facing kiosks, like in parks, you'll get those
too.

 

If you don't have delegated authority for complaints from the public, you'll
see issues related to employee systems - and who knows what those might be
since they're usually agency specific.  The ones we tend to most talk about
on this list are accounting and financial applications, training platforms
and systems (and those of us dealing with contracts have a collective hatred
for DOD's DAU and CSOD systems), and potentially data collection or
visualization platforms.

 

The other question is whether you're working on receiving complaints and
processing them or if you're responsible for mitigation and remediation -
two very different things.  You'll get more issues that need remediating
than you will get complaints that need to be processed, because employees
tend to want to just do their jobs instead of complaining about and to their
employers.

 

Folks, feel free to add to this thread.

 

 

Ronza Othman, President

National Federation of the Blind of Maryland

443-426-4110

Pronouns: she, her, hers

 

From: Blind-Gov <blind-gov-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Cricket Bidleman
via Blind-Gov
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2024 12:08 PM
To: blind-gov at nfbnet.org
Cc: cricketbidleman at gmail.com
Subject: [Blind-Gov] Sec. 508 Accessibility Program

 

Hi all,

 

As a relatively-new program manager with OSMRE, I am wondering what kinds of
Sec. 508 requests I can expect to receive, and which ones it is within the
scope of my program to respond to. I was warned before taking this job that
requests may include things like PDF remediation, which I was also told at
the time I should not do. I believe the person said that I should instead
provide instructions/resources on how the requester might do the remediation
themselves. Boundaries are important. That being said, I'm sure that I'll be
doing the legwork on a lot of things. I appreciate any advice that you may
have. Thanks in advance.

 

Best,

Cricket

 

--Cricket X. Bidleman (she/her/hers)

B.A | Stanford University, Class of 2021

Section 508 Accessibility Program Manager | U.S. Department of the Interior
| Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, & Enforcement

 

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