[blindlaw] Format Question

[James Pepper]

Charles and Jim:
SSA is under Section 508, they have to comply. They are required to be
accessible to the blind and there is no excuse and it has nothing to do with
their charter, they are required to be accessible.

Charles I contacted the folks at ACB and told them what I can do with the
forms and they refused to even listen to me.  I can make the Social Security
Forms accessible and there would be no difference between the forms for the
blind and the forms for everyone else.  But I think the ACB is more
concerned with older technologies and not any interaction.  This confuses
the issue.

What we need is accessibility, real substantial accessibility where you can
walk into a court room and show that a blind person can access the content
with their computer or device and show that it can be done, right there in
front of a judge.  That demonstration blows away any argument made by the IT
people of a government agency because quite frankly they never test their
pages.  They simply do not test their work using the products used by the
blind.

It is astounding how simple this work can be demonstrated. And when you go
through all of their code on webpages and explain each point and why it is
not accessible, the courts listen to this, and it either is accessible or it
isn't there is no in between.

IT people only test for SEction 508 compliance using testing programs like
Bobby or the Section 508 test in Adobe Acrobat.  Both of these tests only
test for specific items and they both say in their literature that they are
not conclusing testing, that you have to manually test your pages for
compliance.  But the IT people do not know this, they just test  with the
programs and claim compliance and show this to their bosses and they take
them at their word. And since the IT professionals are self regulating, this
means that nothing is done when they do it wrong.

This is what is happening in the Texas Case with the NFB versus the Texas
Workforce Commission which was over the idea that Oracle, while claiming its
products are section 508 compliant, it was found that they actually were not
accessible to the blind workers who used their software.  The demonstrated
the lack of accessibility in the court room.  So the State of Texas is now
in a mad rush to become accessible to the blind, real tangible
accessibility.

The recent case against Target opens this up even greater.  And it shows
that there is no tolerance for this type of nonsense anymore.  The question
is what formats are we going to use.  Why not all of them?   Why does ACM
insist on converting everything to text when we can have interactive forms
and documents.

The problem here is IT officials who think that what they are doing is
accessible to the blind because they say it is accessible.  I run into this
all the time, the pride of an IT official and how dare anyone challenge
their work, they have been in the IT industry for at last 20 years.  But
that doesn't mean they know how to do it.

You see this in the training tutorials for software.  When you come upon an
accessibility issue the training tells you how to do it as simply and as
fast as possible because accessibility is considered a nuisance and you must
do the bare minimum and that is all.  Adobe teaches in their online seminars
how to get around the Internet Explorer safety feature that prevents videos
from turning on automatically.  This feature prevents Flash Videos from
showing automatically so people who are photo sensitive can get a blast of
flashing screen and thus have seizures and migraines.  There is no regard
for the consequences, they really do not care to find out why the rule was
in place.  They just think it is cool to have the video come on
automatically.

So I recommend that failure standards be imposed upon all IT officials.  The
first thing that needs to be done is to have every webpage be audited for
W3C compliance.  There are some legitimate reasons for non compliance in
minor cases (blogs for instance) but that is not the norm. All websites
should be W3C compliant.  W3C compliance (World Wide Web Consortium)
compliance is a test to determine if your website's code
is written properly; it is a test to determine if you know how to write
code.  So this is an easy failure standard that management can use to
determine if their IT people know what they are doing.

Web pages can be audited to determine who is working on them and if they
actually know how to write code.  If they don't; fire them and replace them
with someone who can write code properly.  And this will speed up webpages,
make them work properly and save organizations and government agencies and
states a fortune in down time because their IT people will no longer be
fixing bad code with other bad code.

IT people are the problem here, they are the face of the agency, they
control how the content is delivered and if they refuse to do their
jobs, when the agencies are told it cannot be done because they cannot do
it, it is time to fire them and hire people who will do the work.   The
problem here is who is actually running the agency?  IT runs everything, the
Social Security Adminstrator works for their IT people, not the other way
around.

Also SSA has forms in about 16 languages. SSA recognizes that for equal
protection you must present the forms in multiple languages, so why not
braille.

I can make the forms accessible in all the languages supported by JAWS and
Window Eyes, I have not tested for HAL. I noted that government agencies who
think their forms are accessible, never do it for Spanish.  They are English
only accessible.  So they are discriminating against people of Spanish
descent. You are all lawyers, isn't that against the Civil Rights Act?

There is no excuse for SSA for not having accessible forms.  I can do
it.  Does anyone here have any connections to the case because I can fix
this situation.  Or how do I get a grant to demonstrate this so we can make
SSA accessible to the blind, in all the languages supported by JAWS and
Window Eyes?  How would I go about showing the judge that ACB does not have
all the answers, that it can be done in other formats?  And since most of
SSA's forms are already in PDF format, that can in many cases save a lot of
time and effort including the fact that they are set up to handle PDF
format.  But most of the forms would have to be reworked.  I would think SSA
could understant accessibility in an accessible PDF form more easily and
integrate the idea quicker than any other format.  they are already familiar
with the technology and what is happening here is trying to teach IT people
that things are possible because after all, they run the agency.

Sincerely,

James G. Pepper