[Colorado-Talk] Politico: 508 Complaint

[Curtis Chong]

For those of you who want to read the article in the body of your email, here it is.

 

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Congress ordered agencies to use tech that works for people with disabilities 24 years ago. Many still haven't.

The Senate Aging Committee is conducting oversight to get agencies to comply with the rules.



Congress made a portion of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act known as Section 508, which asks federal agencies to make technology accessible, mandatory in 1998. But nearly a quarter century later, they are still failing to do so. | Steven Senne/AP Photo

By  <https://www.politico.com/staff/ruth-reader> RUTH READER

08/21/2022 07:00 AM EDT

Ronza Othman, a lawyer with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Baltimore, hasn’t been able to order a sandwich without help in her office cafeteria for a decade.

Before the deli replaced workers with a touch screen in 2012, she would walk up to the counter and ask for a roast beef and cheddar sandwich with cucumbers, not pickles. But Ronza, who is blind, can’t work the touch screen as it doesn’t take voice commands.

“I’m an attorney. I have a master’s degree in government and nonprofit management. I’ve raised children,” she said. “But I can’t get a damn sandwich by myself in my agency.”



Ronza Othman, a lawyer with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Baltimore who is blind, has lobbied her agency to adopt technology that people with disabilities can use. | Courtesy of Ronza Othman

Congress made a portion of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act known as Section 508, which asks federal agencies to make technology accessible, mandatory in 1998. But nearly a quarter century later, they are still failing to do so. And it’s not just about ordering lunch. Roughly 30 percent of the most popular federal websites don’t meet accessibility standards, according to a 2021 report by the  <https://www2.itif.org/2021-improving-accessibility-federal-government-websites.pdf> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Enforcement is virtually nonexistent, and agencies are spending little effort or money to comply.

“Clients of my firm right now are dealing with trainings required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that don’t work with blind people screen readers and with intake kiosks at the Social Security Administration that are not accessible,” said Eve Hill, a lawyer with Brown, Goldstein & Levy, who testified about the problems before the Senate Aging Committee last month.

Hill, along with Anil Lewis, executive director for blindness initiatives at the National Federation of the Blind, and Jule Ann Lieberman, assistive technology program coordinator at Temple University’s Institute on Disabilities, asked senators to ensure the federal government is complying with federal disability law.

Most frustrating, the advocates said, is that making technology accessible isn’t difficult. It just requires forethought. And it’s important.  <https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html#:~:text=61%20million%20adults%20in%20the,Graphic%20of%20the%20United%20States.> More than a quarter of Americans have a disability.

For the past 10 years, the DOJ hasn’t made public any of the biennial reports that Congress mandated on compliance with Section 508. As of the DOJ’s last report in September 2012, less than half of federal agencies had established a compliance plan. Those that did had an average operating budget of $35,000 a year devoted to the task.

In June, Senate Aging Committee Chair Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and ranking member Tim Scott (R-S.C.), along with other lawmakers, wrote to  <https://www.scott.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2022-06-06%20-%20Aging-SVAC-HVAC%20to%20VA%20Secretary%20McDonough%20re%20Section%20508%20Compliance.pdf> Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough and  <https://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_doj_from_aging_judiciary_and_help_committees_re_508_compliance.pdf> Attorney General Merrick Garland.

They asked McDonough to provide detailed information about the accessibility of VA websites and plans to bring them into compliance, noting that only 8 percent of its public sites and even fewer of its intranet sites complied with the law. “The lack of fully accessible websites at VA is a potential barrier for the one-quarter of all veterans with a service-connected disability, and may well be a harbinger of similar shortfalls at other federal agencies and departments,” the senators wrote.

 

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Best wishes,

 

Curtis Chong

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