Using ART to Acquire Accessible ICT

>> Hi, everybody. Welcome to the 2018 Section 508 Outreach Event, which is hosted by the DOI Office of the Chief Information Officer. My name is Sid Sharma, the DOI Section 508 program manager, and we are so happy that you can participate at this year’s event. Now, the goal of this event is to educate our personnel on Section 508 accessibility requirements, explain the importance of accessible technology in the lives of persons with disabilities, and help identify tools and resources to help you all meet accessibility requirements. Now, we have a great presentation and vendor exhibits planned for the day. For those of you that are here in the main interior building, please take the time to visit our vendor exhibits, which is right outside the Rachel Carson room. I asked the vendors to exhibit their accessible solutions that improve access and opportunity for everybody. For those of you that are joining via live stream, we will during breaks between presentations, we will rotate through the vendor slides so you can learn about the awesome accessible solutions being demonstrated today. And just a reminder that the presentation recordings and associated materials such as PowerPoints will be posted on the DOI Section 508 event page later on this month, so please check the event page periodically or reach out to your Bureau Section 508 coordinator or myself if you have any questions. So let’s just into our first presentation using the accessibility requirements tool to acquire accessible information and communication technology. Please join me in welcoming representatives from the General Services Administration Officer of Governmentwide Policy, Mr. Arthur Brunson, who serves as the Section 508 program analyst, Mr. Michael Horton, who serves as the accessible design and development advisor, and Miss Avis Rhein, who serves as the Section 508 program analyst. Welcome, guys.
>> Thank you, good morning.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Yay.
>> Good morning. Are you able to hear me now? Okay, first, I’d like to say thank you all for attending this session. We’re going to be discussing using the ART tool. ART stands for the Accessibility Requirements Tool to acquire accessible ICT. Welcome to the Section 508 Accessibility ICT. My apologies. I get nervous in front of people [LAUGHS]. But you all seem like a nice group of people, so this should go pretty smoothly. I’ve worked with GSA for 28 years. I’ve spent 15 years with Federal Procurement Data Center as a programmer and as an analyst. That’s where I first had my introduction to contracting and the life cycle of contracting. During that time, I was not introduced nor heard anything about Section 508. As you heard, that was 15 years there. One of the things I did not share with them at the time was I am completely deaf in my left ear. And so accessibility for me, when I learned more about it, became more important to me. I oftentimes would not share that disability so that folks wouldn’t treat me different, and or make sure that I would receive work that I could actually do that the opportunity was not turned away. So when I had an opportunity to work with this program, it was a very exciting one for me. It’s one that I am enjoying, and I’m happy to be a part of the acquisition life cycle with the ART tool. With me also is Mike Horton, and I’ll let Mike talk a little bit about himself.
>> Good morning, everyone. Again, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. As Arthur said and Sid, thank you, my name is Mike Horton. I’m in the office Governmentwide Policy. I serve as an accessible design and development advisor. Primarily, my focus is on helping folks build and test accessible ICT, and prior to joining the GSA team last August, I served as the Section 508 coordinator program manager over at FEMA for eight of my nine years there. So I have a lot of experience with the programs and supporting the contracting. But Arthur has the tie on. He’s the lead here today, is the acquisition expert, and I am the technical advisor. So I’d like to support any of the technical questions you have as best I can and do my best on the contracting side. But we’ll leave some of the more contracting-specific things to Arthur. So between the two of us, we’ll get the answers you need. So thank you.
>> So with that, next slide please. Thank you. Appreciate it. So I do want to mention that we’re going to take all questions at the end of the presentation, and we also plan to do a demo of the ART tool, and we’re going to walk through purchasing web.
>> Yeah, we’re going to walk through the acquisition of web-based product. Again, 508 is very broad. It covers a lot of things other than web, but I think most of what folks are doing either from a content perspective or in their applications, they’re typically web-based these days, and so we think that might be a good example to walk through. But certainly, there are other things, hardware, software, and other aspects of ICT.
>> Thanks, Mike. So for today’s agenda, we’d like to cover, what is Section 508, accessibility matters, the arch role in the acquisition process, your role in Section 508 requirements, and do an ART demo on the features, functionalities. And then from there, we will go into an actual procurement and get any requirements. So what is Section 508? As most of you already know, in 1998, Congress amended a 1973 Rehabilitation Act. This amendment, law, strengthened Section 508 by establishing accessibility standards and requiring agencies to make the electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities by ensuring that EIT meets the standards. The law applies to all federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use EIT, which has also been updated in the new standard to ICT, which is Information Communications Technology. The biggest takeaway from that is that this law applies to all federal agencies, and that’s when you develop. If you procure, you maintain, or if you use it. So even if you make changes to it, you have to make sure that those changes still comply with the law. IN 2017, the Section 508 standards were revised in chapters 1 and 2. Everything else there you probably could read through it. But the important thing is the revised standards are out there. They’re available if you need to access them at section508.gov and also on the Access Board’s website.
>> Just want to add, so you notice that we’ve changed from Electronic and Information Technology to Information and Communications Technology. The easiest way to kind of describe that is the way the law changed in the standards wall. A lot of the technical standards are very similar to what they were. The focus has gone from a device-specific approach to a feature-specific. So if it’s talking about web and a web browser, it doesn’t matter whether it’s on a mobile phone, a laptop, or the front door of your refrigerator. It’s a browser. And so we’re not talking about devices, we’re talking about how information is provided.
>> Thanks, Mike.
>> Yup.
>> We’ll move to the next slide. Thank you. So why accessibility matters. One of the biggest reasons why it matters, it’s the law. Let’s take a break from that list right now and just say - I’d like to say that the most important reason that I think it should matter to everybody is it makes sense, it’s the right thing to do, and from my perspective, it’s a caring thing to do. And so there are people involved in those decisions surrounding the laws and accessibility. And of course, I am over 50 now, and things have changed, sight and mobility. And as you get older - I have grandparents who are still here. And accessibility is a people thing. It’s a caring thing. And from my perspective, that’s a good reason for it to matter. But we’ll go back to the list. It’s the law. We’re required to follow it. One of the things that it will have you involved in if you don’t include it early in your life cycle, is remediation. If you procure something that does not take into account the accessibility requirements in the beginning, then you have to go back and you have to try to either retrofit it, or if your agency decides to purchase it and the vendor makes a claim that they have it, and no one tests to confirm that the accessibility requirements are being met, then you have to go after the vendor for its claims, and somebody has to work out legally remediation and costs. And that takes up a lot of your time that could have been saved in the beginning. So dealing with accessibility in the beginning is really important because it saves you remediation, which leads into modifications. Then your contracts have to be modified to either add the language or fix some of the problems that were not identified in the beginning. One of my favorites is the deliverables. 99.9 percent of your deliverables are delivered electronically. And we need all of those to be accessible so that folks with disabilities are able to use them. And one of the things that Mike likes to point out to me often is, it’s not just with disabilities. Some of the things that having those accessibility functions and features are things that you can use outside of just for someone who has a disability.
>> Yeah, I think there’s the common things that we think about, curb cutouts and automatic doors. I think all of us understand that we can use those if both of our hands are full or we have a stroller or a hand cart for deliveries. But having these standards allows our vendors to utilize that. The standards are used by technology, so for example, screen readers to read. But that also enables machines to read that for us. So our phones can read articles to us, they can scan articles. But something that I saw in the news recently, and I don't know why - but millennials have a lot of labels on them. But they’ve been tagged with - they love to watch television with the captioning enabled whether they have a hearing disability or not. It’s a multi-tasking issue. Perhaps it’s the way movies and TV are made now with the background noises loud and the dialogue is quiet. But nonetheless, that captioning feature is an accessibility feature that enables anyone to use it, and this whole population does. John Sullivan, our director, he’ll point out that at one event we learned that one out of two folks who have the - I’m not endorsing Xfinity here, but this was the case, I guess - that one out of two folks used their speech to text to control their television. And they don’t have a mobility impairment, but they like to use that because it’s efficient and useful. So assistive technologies aren’t just for those with identified disabilities or disabilities that maybe perhaps we don’t want to admit that we have because we’re getting older and things are harder. It’s just technology. And we’re using technology. And that’s I think why accessibility matters, is it enables us and machines to consume and control information.
>> And the last bullet on why accessibility matters is lawsuits, the increase of lawsuits. And so we want to do our best to save taxpayers’ monies and do what’s right in the beginning and avoid being sued. Next slide.
>> Did I go too far?
>> So what is ART? ART is Accessibility Requirements Tool. And the tool itself was generated to assist with the manual progress of going through the checklist to determine what accessibility requirements you needed to put into your solicitations. And it works very similar to if you - we use the example of Turbo Tax. It asks you the questions that are there. It gives you options to choose yes or no, and after you go through all of the questions - and I will be the first to admit that there are quite a few questions to go through. But at the same time, you’re not manually having to read through each one of the questions, then figure it out. It’s walking you through a defined process. And where you say yes or no to some, you now don’t have to go to all of the questions. Whereas before, if you were unsure, if you’re using a manual process, you read through each and every question. ART’s role in the acquisition process is it can be used to develop your accessibility requirements. It can be used as helping you with your market research, and that’s one of the ways that we present it. And we’re going to get to that soon. But I’d like to mention here that from my perspective, I think it’s better to do your market research before you actually go into the tool, because the more market research you do, the better you’ll understand what your requirements are, and then as you’re going through the tool and the tool is asking you questions, you may have found some of those answers while you were doing your market research. The other thing I’d like to caution you with or encourage you to do is, ask you’re using the tool, understand that it will more than likely be a group effort. It’s going to require someone from your core, your PM, a technical [inaudible]. It’s not necessarily a one-person solution for the level of questions that it’s asking. So doing your market research, from my perspective, in the beginning, is key and important to getting through the process. Next slide. So the procurement process. How to incorporate accessibility. So here as I mentioned in step one, determine your accessibility requirements. And a big part of determining your accessibility requirements is really understanding what your requirements are and making sure that you have the right people in the room when you’re working on your requirements between the technical [inaudible], what your program needs are, and what is it that what you’re procuring is going to do, and understanding that so that you can make the connections between the accessibility of someone having to use whatever it is that you’re going to procure. Our step two is conduct your market research. Again, I mentioned earlier that from my perspective, I really think you should conduct your market research first, so I’m going to encourage that. Because I believe it will help you with determining what your accessibility requirements are. From there, you develop your solicitation language. By this time, you will have already had your accessibility requirements, so you add those requirements to the requirements of what you’re procuring. So within your solicitation, there’s a section for what your requirements are in that section at your requirements that you’ve now generated using ART for your accessibility requirements. And then the next step is to submit your package of course to the contracting shop. They put it out on the street. You’re going to get back proposals, and then you would evaluate your proposals. In that evaluation process, you’re going to validate the contractor’s compliance. So how do you do that? Part of doing that is testing. Is what they’re claiming actually really here, now that you are looking at the product? And if you don’t have it - let’s say if you’re procuring a software. You’re able to go back to your contracting officer and ask them for a version of it that you can actually test. And speaking of testing, Mike is a trusted tester, so I’m going to take advantage of that and let him speak a little bit about different ways that you could validate and or possibly test.
>> So there are several different methods out there. The Department of Homeland Security a couple of years ago initiated a Trusted Tester program. There are two components of that. One of them is an ICT-based line. Essentially, it’s kind of the building block of how we test. This is, if you’re going to test, this is how you test, and this is the output we expect. Based on that, they developed the Trusted Tester process, and it’s a method of how to test against the baseline standards. And this is all kind of technical stuff, but really all it is is we’re creating a standardized, repeatable, consistent way to evaluate your ICT. What are the benefits of that? Well, one of our goals - and the wheels of government work slowly at times, but we’ll get there. One of our goals is to work with our vendors to make sure our vendors are testing in a similar way so that when you have an ACR or accessibility conformance report that’s based on the VPATs - you may have heard that term, Voluntary Product Accessibility Template. That is essentially the vendor’s claim based on testing of how well they feel their product meets the requirements of the government through Section 508. So there’s the trusted tester process, which is a manual process. That baseline could also be used by private sector firms in the accessibility field to build tools that automate accessibility testing where that’s possible. And the reason I say that is that right now, computers aren’t intelligent enough to test all of the standards. For example, when we describe an image in a product or a website, we have to provide alternative text that describes what that image is in the context of the material it’s placed. Computers can’t test for how well that is described. It can test whether text is there or not, but it can’t test how well it’s described. So there are some limitations on the technology. But there are some great places where it can create efficiencies in automating say 30, maybe 40 percent of those test IDs. And then we fill the gap with something like Trusted Tester or another test process that’s certified on that baseline. So those are some of the things that you can do from a testing perspective above and beyond just looking at a VPAT and evaluating that at face value.
>> The last thing you would need to do is understand your legal requirements, and not just the laws such as The Rehabilitation Act, but also understanding for your specific agency, what process do you need to go through if you’re seeking an exception? Hopefully before you start, you will already have an understanding of what exceptions your agency accepts and what that process is, because that may save you time from having to already have done this work and just to find that you have an exception that you could use. So I don’t normally go into a lot on the exceptions, because agencies have different rules about how they want to tackle that. Some agencies will say, if it’s ICT, we’re going to do no exceptions. We want to make sure everything goes through the right process and that we avoid all possibilities of lawsuits. And then of course when it comes to national security and things of that nature, they think about it a little differently. And if you’re interested in finding out more on those areas, that last link there is buy accessible products and services. That’s found at section508.gov under buy. And it lists this process and goes into a lot more details. Next slide.
>> So Arthur’s calling for the next slide. I forgot to mention something when I was talking about Trusted Tester, and I saw Mr. Creagan here from the Access Board. And Tim, I’m sorry. If you can remind me, you have a webinar coming up with Department of Homeland Security to discuss the new Version 5 of the Trusted Tester process. What date is that at, and where could they get information?
>> I’m Tim Creagan from the Access Board.
>> David, mic.
>> What he’s asking me about is an ongoing webinar series, which is the last Tuesday of [inaudible]. So it’s January, March, May. The webinar for this month in May is going to be May 28th, the day after we get back from [inaudible], and it’s going to be [inaudible] talking about the - sorry, okay. So I’ll start over. Tim Creagan, Access Board, CIOC webinar. May 28th. Starts at 1:00 p.m., runs until 2:30 p.m. hard stop. You have to register before Monday, because registration closes 24 hours ahead of time. Since Monday is a holiday, you need to register by Friday. You can register by going online to the Access Board website, www.access-board.gov. In the right-hand column, there’s a link that says webinars. The page will take you to two paragraphs. The upper paragraph is for the monthly built environment webinars on the ADA and the ABA. The lower paragraph is for the 508 webinars. You go to the 508 webinar page, register, and you can also submit a question which the presenters can consider during the webinar. Okay, so that is going to be about Trusted Tester. It’s going to be about Version 5, which is going to be coming out this Spring.
>> Great, thank you very much, Tim.
>> Thank you.
>> It’s really important. Again, this audience may not be the ones that are doing that, but we need to put that into the programs to be able to evaluate.
>> Yeah, and I normally send out those announcements through the Bureau Section 508 coordinators throughout DOI, so I’ll be sending that out by next week.
>> Great, thanks, Sid.
>> Sure.
>> Next slide. So determining your accessibility requirements. As I mentioned earlier, there’s an option one. You can do this as manual process. We have a link here that would take you to how to determine your 508 standards and exceptions. Of course, that’s going to take you back to our website, section508.gov. We’re not going to do that today. And then there are charts of exceptions, examples of exceptions for your manual process if you decided to use the manual process. Your second option is the automated process, which is the Accessibility Requirements Tool, which we affectionately call ART, not after Arthur. And so you can use that to generate your customizable solicitation language. We’re going to walk through that in a couple of minutes. ART also contains downloadable predetermined accessibility requirements and solicitation language for over 40 standard ICT procurement categories. That was done - if you were familiar with the accessible wizard a few years back, that was called the Quick Links, this is very similar where you’re able to go and just grab language. And then the last bullet there is a standard contract language. I am going to take a minute with that. What we created was a standard template of what we would consider the minimum of what you would need in your ICT solicitations to make sure that we point out accessibility requirements. The caution that I have there is that if you only use the standard language and you do not go through the tool and specify what you need, then you put the onus on the vendor to go out to either the ART tool or whatever claims that they’re going to make for your purchase. And now they’re going to decide what all your requirements are. And typically, if you give the vendor an opportunity to do that, they’re going to say you need everything. And then of course everything costs. So it becomes important to be efficient and good stewards of taxpayer dollars, which includes all of us, that we go through the process, identify what we really need, and include that in your solicitations. Next slide. So conduct - did we go backwards?
>> Did I go backwards? No.
>> Okay, conducting your market research. As we mentioned before, you determine your business need, what functionalities do you require, conduct your market research to find possible solutions. There’s a possibility there may be a solution out there that already has been tested, that already had everything that you need. So that’s an important piece. If you’re able to find that, then you don’t have to repeat the process. Try to find at least two possible solutions. Part of the reason why you want to do that is you may find that what was already done at DHS only gives you 90 percent of what you need. And then another area within GSA, we may have tested a product that gives you the other 10 percent, and then you don’t have to repeat that process. And those solutions may work for you either combined or you may decide that the other solution at 90 percent is enough for what we need. And of course, that would be something you would decide within your agencies. Document your research and compare your solutions to find one that best fits, which is where I was headed. Document your justification for the solutions you select. That way, if for some reason there’s a protest or you’re questioned by leadership as to why you made the decision to take certain risks, you have it already documented and you can support it. Next slide. Developing your solicitation language. You want to specify your accessibility requirements in the beginning. As I mentioned, we have the template that gives you that minimum language, but it is not specific. It does not walk through the tool, give you each section that actually applies to what you’re procuring. So once you develop that through the tool, when we walk through the tool, I’m going to show you what that output looks like. You can add that output to your requirement section of our solicitation. And you should request vendors to provide accessibility information. Requesting accessibility conformance report. I’m actually going to take a break here and let Mike talk about the accessibility conformance report. He has a little more experience with it.
>> So I touched on it a little bit before. The voluntarily product accessibility template is something that ITI, the industry body created for industry to be able to standardize how they make their accessibility claims. In short, those are just saying, do we have a method that provides an alternate text description for visual information, things of that nature? And they’ll say they comply, they don’t comply, or they meet, partially meet, or something like that. And really, that’s all it is. There’s a lot of confusion about how to fill out VPATs. But at the end of the day, vendors know their product. They should be able to evaluate it for how it conforms to the standards. And they are standards. The refresh of the Section 508 standards harmonize with the W3C’s web content accessibility guidelines. So this is a worldwide standard. This is adopted in Europe. This is adopted south of the equator. Again, worldwide standard. So this is something that industries should be able to adapt to just as they have the regular W3C standards on how to write HTML.
>> So in addition to that, not only are you going to request the ACR, but it’s important to let them know that you plan to evaluate that. And so that should be written into your contract. And as best you can, outline how you’re going to do that and what process you’re going to go through so they have a good understanding of what they’re going to be evaluated against. So next slide. So for the evaluating process, it’s great to trust that what the vendor says is actually what you’re going to get, but it’s even better to verify. So you can do that by reviewing your ACR and or the VPAT to determine how well the product conforms to the revised 508 standards. And then lastly, test for accessibility, as Mike touched on earlier. So evaluate each proposal to validate vendor claims against your stated accessibility requirements. So that is an important process, and I think we talked about it earlier, so I won’t touch it much here. And then when we get to the end, we’ll probably talk a little bit more about it. I suspect you’ll have questions about that. Next slide. Validate your contractor’s compliance. All your ICT must remain accessible throughout the contract period of performance. As I mentioned in the first slide, I believe it was, that it’s important to monitor that even if they’re making updates, they’re making changes, that those changes comply with the standards and that those changes don’t now make your standards void. They’re no longer working. So that’s going to be an important part to look at whenever you’re doing a modification to have changes done to your systems, your websites, or your product. As products and software are up - basically the same thing that’s there. It just says that as your products and services are updated, modified, retest each new version and or product against the terms and conditions originally established in the contract. So IT accessibility laws. I think we’ve already mentioned that Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Of course, the U.S. Access Board is responsible for developing information and communications, technologies, ICT accessibility standards which we are to incorporate into regulations that govern federal procurement practices. The recent updates and reorganizations to Section 508 are in response to market trends and innovations and technology. I just want to make sure, Tim, that you didn’t want to add anything to the Access Board.
>> So while we’re waiting for a microphone for Tim, I do want to add, because I don’t remember if we have it in the slide. In December of last year, the Congress passed the 21st Century Idea Act. This reinforces Section 508. It’s the first thing in there, is it reinforces the Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. It goes on to talk about other digital services, digitizing forms, and electronic signatures, as well as standardization and commonality between agencies. But I just want to point that out. Guidance will be forthcoming at some point in time from OMB and GSA. But if you go ahead and look at that, you can see ahead a little bit on how that act reinforces the need for 508 across government websites. Tim?
>> Thanks. Tim Creagan. So just very, very broadly, the revision of the 508 standards, in addition to updating, bringing the world into the first half of the 21st Century, the big thing it changed was it added specific requirements for content. Because one of the questions before was people would ask, well, are PDFs covered? Are emails covered? Are letters, [inaudible], et cetera, covered? And so one of the things that we did in the refresh is we made it really clear that all public-facing content is covered. That’s no change. The Interior Agency official communications, as long as they conform to the nine categories of communication, they’re covered, no matter what the format is. With regard to standards, what we did was we referenced international standards on various measures. So when Mike talked about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG 2.0, that is a worldwide standard for web accessibility which we’ve adopted. Now, one question that I often get, Mike, and you guys might want to address - people say, well I understand there’s another standard called WCAG 2.1, which is the revision to WCAG 2.0. Is that required in my requirements contract with the government? Does the government require WCAG 2.1?
>> Well, Tim, I learned from the Access Board, you, that the answer is no. So all joking aside, the refreshed 508 standards harmonize around WCAG 2.0. Those were the standards at the time that the Access Board was working through, very, very hard work to get that done. And shortly after, I believe, the 508 refresh came out. The W3C body said, oh, we have that one revision. The European Union, in their 301...
>> 5.9
>> 5.9, their equivalent to Section 508 Law over in the EU, they harmonized onto 2.1 The difference is that if you meet 2.1, you automatically meet 2.0. And 2.1 adds to but does not take away from 2.0. So at a time if and when the U.S. was to update to 2.1, which would take a long process to get to, I think, all it would be - I think there’s 17 more test IDs or criterion that we would evaluate for that just enhance a little bit more of what we’re doing. And that brings up a good point as well. Section 508 is a minimum standard. Let me say that again. 508 is a minimum standard. A lot of people say, well, how much do we have to comply? Is there a percentage that we need to comply? It’s a minimum standard. Agencies are absolutely free to require higher standards. If they want to require 2.1 and they can justify that and support that, then they can do that. If they want to support best practices for their agency that go beyond the WCAG Advisory Standards but don’t negate them or go below them, they’re free to do that. So for example, if they require certain color contrast that is higher than the minimums described in any of the WCAG standards, they can do that. But it’s just a minimum. And that’s all we’re really trying to do here with your help, is make sure that we let our vendors know that there’s a minimum standard just like we did with security. Oftentimes, I like to say, let’s replace security in our documents with the word accessibility, right? If we do that and we approach it that way, we’re not going to let a vendor go, well, security is hard, we don’t know how to do that, and it’s only a $50 software product. We don’t have the money to do security checks on it. But trust is, it’s secure. Right? If we replace that we accessibility, that’s kind of the environment we’re in now. Accessibility is hard. We don’t have the time to invest in that. It will cost us more to do that than the $50 product we’re selling you. Can you make it easier for us? We’re going to try to. We want to make tools like ART so that we can implement it easier, so that we can execute it easier. But at the end of the day, it’s based on a technical standard. It’s technology. Technology is hard. And so just like security, we have to make sure we do that. We need to do that with PII. We need to do that with plain language, and there’s all sorts of other laws that we do to make information accessible to people. We need to do that with accessibility as well.
>> Just a quick question. I’m sorry. What’s the WCAG that [inaudible]?
>> Web Content Accessibility Group.
>> Thank you.
>> Sorry. Did I need to go to the next slide now, Arthur?
>> Yes.
>> Okay.
>> As we mentioned earlier, we’re going to get ready to do a demo. I had a couple of lines to tell you that it’s a multifaceted tool that’s interactive, it does step by step guidance on how to determine your accessibility requirements. But instead of reading through and or discussing it, to make sure we have enough time to actually get through the tools, we’re going to go ahead and actually launch the tool and walk through the tool itself. It’s here on this...
>> David, can I drive from up here on the podium? Okay, thank you. I’ll be your hands, Arthur.
>> Thank you. So as you can see, you can get to ART from buyaccessible.gov, which is what Mike is going to click on now for the demo.
>> So I have it on the browser here, but it’s not showing on the screen. How do I switch that? All right, someone’s coming to help us.
>> So while they’re doing that, ART will - in the beginning, it walks you through a few questions that you have to answer. The ones that have the asterisk are required fields. And basically, we’re just trying to track it as being used. Outside of that, we are not collecting your actual results and or who used the tool, just that based on that information that you put in the main slide. So on the left, we have the left navigation. You have your place that you can come back home. You can start a new procurement. You can continue an existing procurement. Mike is moving faster than me. I’m struggling to see from back here.
>> [LAUGHTER]
>> Sorry.
>> So I’m going to get up here. You can find sample procurement, language, find 508 provision and clauses, your 508 standards checklist that I mentioned earlier if you wanted to do it manually. That checklist is also included here. We have a user’s guide if you’re having some struggles with using the tool. This will help you with the tool. You can also email us at art.gsa.gov. And there’s a listing of all of the ICT accessibility requirement statements. If for some reason you just wanted to see, what are all of those, the statements that were updated in the standards, that list is there. When you navigate over to start a new procurement, you’re able to - the links are live with the words start a new procurement, as well as the pictures that we have here on all of these. My recommendation is that you - thank you. My recommendation is that we start with find sample procurement. There’s a list of 40, and that way if what you’re looking for is already in the list, you can just grab it and go with theirs. So Mike, can we start with find sample procurement? I’m going to just quickly walk you through how you get it. I won’t do a lot of explaining, because we’re going to actually do one in about two minutes. Yeah, and just select the first thing you can get to.
>> Whoops. So thank you, Sid. For what is your role, I selected contracting officer. What is your estimated total value of your acquisition? I selected between 150,000 and 650,000. For what is your agency, I selected the General Services Administration Office of Governmentwide Policy. And under selecting ICT, I’m going to select a web-based application. Excuse me, we’ll do...
>> Web-based collaboration tool?
>> Sure.
>> Thank you.
>> And then I need help with my simple math here. There’s a math captcha rather than a visual captcha. I did that right, hopefully
>> So I like to mention that the answers that you select there does not impact your output. So let’s say if you chose a dollar value of 0 or if you chose a dollar value of 400,000, that does not change your requirements. It doesn’t impact it. So once you make that selection, then here it brings you to this page where you’re able to download your contract language template. It’s in PDF and Word. It’s in Word for those who like to make changes to it. They wanted to add the solicitation number or update with the name of what you’re procuring. You have the option of doing that. And that will be added to your statement of work, PWS. If you’re working with a [inaudible]. At the second level, we have the ICT Absolutely Requirement statements. And then this is going to give you your requirement statements. It’s also in PDF and word. I’m not going to click on these because we’re going to go through an actual procurement, and it’s the same information that’s going to be at the end, and you’ll get an opportunity to see it then. So from here, let’s click on home.
>> So I just want to quickly note, if you need to generate language, please go to the ART tool. Don’t generate it once, save it as a word file, and work off of that. Updates may be made to the tool from time to time to clarify language or insert new language. Also, it ensures that you’re generating the right language based on your acquisition. So don’t save anything and just work off of that locally. Thank you.
>> So we’re going to click on start a new procurement. Each time you start a procurement, it’s going to walk you through that same set of questions. So here you can put your project name in, so you have the ability to type that in. And this one is going to be web ICT. What is your role? Contracting officer. Your estimated value, we chose 20 million. What is your agency? Access Board. What electronic content are you procuring? We chose inter and intranet websites and web-based contents. What software are you procuring? We chose none. What hardware are you procuring? We chose none. What ICT support documentation, services, products are you procuring? Here, we chose none. But that is a rarity. There’s very little that you are going to procure that you aren’t going to require some type of documentation for.
>> Even if it’s just support services and you have a consultant coming in, they’re going to deliver you their analysis in an electronic document, so that would apply as well.
>> And we’re going to complete the captcha. It’s two, and from there, we do next page.
>> Not according to my accountant, but...
>> [LAUGHTER]
>> Okay, so one of the first things it’s going to ask you is does a general exception apply to your procurement? As I mentioned earlier, if there is an exception, then there’s no real need to go through the tool. So you have the option here of saying yes, no, or I don't know. And if you say I don't know, it’s the same as saying no. So we’re going to say no, that exception does not apply. And from there, the next page.
>> Yeah, I just want to touch - so if you say I don't know, it’ll walk you through what’s there and you can say no to each of those exceptions. But we’re going to say no. Sorry, Arthur.
>> So then from here, it asks you what is the name of your electronic content? And that’s basically, what are you procuring? Website...
>> So again, these names are your names that you give it. It will put it in the output, but these are just kind of names for placeholders in each of the sections.
>> Mike, before you go to the next page, I want to point out that some of you may have noticed that we have an information button that’s in red with a circle. There, it gives you, tries to guide you through what it is we’re asking you, is what it’s intended to do. Here, it says components are the parts or pieces you’re procuring such as hardware. An example of component name of hardware is Hewlett Packard laptop. Next page. So as you can see, the title that you gave it, it shows up here. It’s also going to show up on your output. And then it asks you the questions. Are the internet and intranet websites and web-based content comprised of records maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration pursuant to federal record-keeping statutes? And if you’re unsure about what we’re asking, we have the standard, which is in red, and then the green square. We try to give you an example of what we’re asking. And so here, we’re going to say no. And then of course, with that, it asks you another question. Make sure you’re sure. Will the content be public facing? Yes. Will the intranet, internet, website and web-based content be web-based? Yes or no? Yes. Then you can go to the next page. The next page has provided you with your ICT accessibility requirement statements per the revised Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. As you can see, it took your title. I’m looking at Tim, and I see he may be thinking that there were a lot more questions that would have been asked. But we in the beginning made a conscious decision to say no to software or hardware, just so that we can demo the two. So had you said yes to those, then you would have gotten questions for each one of those, very similar to what we just did going through this particular one. So from there, it produces your output, and then we provide you with some guidance on what to do with it, instructions at the bottom. And from here, if you looked at this as Tim did and said to yourself, oh, I forgot, I did need to include software - so you can go back and do previous and you can add to it. Once you submit, you’re not able to do that, so that’s one of the reasons why we allow you to have the preview here, is what we call it. And then Mike, if we can submit.
>> And again, submit is perhaps a misnomer we need to update. It’s kind of complete. You’re not actually sending anything to us. It’s just finalizing this Turbo Taxy walkthrough for your statement.
>> So once you submit it, now you have the ability to download the contract language template in word, download the ICT requirements in PDF, or you can copy report to text. So that way, if you wanted to copy it, send it in an email, put it in Word or whatever options you wanted to do with the data at that point so that you could put it into your statement of work, statement of objectives, PWS, whatever you’re using. And then we also have a link at the bottom on the revised 508 Standards roadmap so that you get further information on what to do with the data now that you have it, if for some reason you’re still unsure about how to put it into your solicitation or what to do with it. And that’s how you use the tool. And so from there, we have about 17 minutes, and Sid, we can go ahead and take questions. We’re going to leave this up. If anybody wants us to go back to this, go back, we can walk through the tool some more. But I wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to answer any questions that you may have jotted down during our presentation. Okay.
>> We have a question here about the tool. The question is, you noted that for a service/consultant would produce documentation. What if that documentation is data models or maps? What options should be selected?
>> So it would still be applicable. The techniques in making map information accessible may be different than just a standard policy document. And for structured content, that sometimes tends to be just plain text, maybe a schema or something like that. So it would still apply. But the techniques in making that information accessible or alternately accessible in another way would still apply. So you would still select the electronic content. Let me go back to the homepage here.
>> Hi, good morning.
>> Good morning.
>> This tool is just for procurement? Just for contracting officers?
>> No, it’s not for the contracting officer. So in most agencies, your contracting officer will not use the tool. They’re going to expect their, either the cores and or the PM to provide them with, what are your requirements?
>> Okay.
>> And have you to put those requirements into your documentation. And if you happen to be at an agency where you work as a team, you may all do it together, if your agency functions that way. But 90 percent of them requires you to provide them with the requirements, and then they put it out on the street and make sure that...
>> Okay. But this tool is pretty much primarily for contracting?
>> For contracting, yes.
>> For contracting only?
>> Well, it’s to help you produce your requirements for ICT products based on the revised standards.
>> That you’re ordering out?
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> Okay, thank you.
>> Next question from the room? Would you like to see more? Has anyone had any challenges thus far getting - so who here tends to buy IT products versus other things like cars or buildings? So not a lot of IT procurers here. Okay, so hence the question...
>> My situation is really different. I create. I film. I’m a videographer. I [inaudible]. And I think there’s - later on in the day - I create videos. Right now I’m working for a new employee orientation. I film, I make the videos in a video editor. But I need to be 508 compliant. So I think there’s some sessions later on in the day that talk a little more about that.
>> So you’re not receiving a solicitation or creating that solicitation for...
>> No, I am a core, so it could happen where I would need to. But primarily, I create inhouse.
>> Okay, right, so you’re just tasked?
>> Mm-hmm.
>> So that makes a lot of sense, right? So there is a lot of work that’s done by the federal workforce. Everything isn’t contracted out or bought. Sometimes we do build things, and sometimes we do do things ourselves. Accessibility certainly applies there. And so while it may not be in a contract vehicle, certainly understanding what the requirements are and some of the information that we reference from this tool or from section508.gov can certainly help folks such as yourself understand, okay, so I’m doing multimedia video, which is video and audio together. Or it could be something other than that. It could be tactile things. But traditionally, when we talk about video, we mean sound and pictures. And so we need to have captioning available, and we need to have alternative audio descriptions where the natural narration doesn’t describe the visual information. We all get captioning, but it’s this other piece of audio description that we don’t. [LAUGHS] Well, it’s great. It’s a great day for that. Sid has set that up for you. And really, at the end of the day - one of the things - we had a meeting with some other contracting folks yesterday. We’re here to support you. Sid is here to support you guys. We really need you to make sure that the government describes to our vendors and our partners what are expectations are as far as accessibility, that it’s important to your agency that everyone be able to access that. Keep in mind that while some disabilities are evident, obvious, and perceivable, there are a lot of disabilities that are hidden. Arthur explained this morning that he has a hearing loss but he doesn’t like to tell people. He gets by. He gets by just fine. But he has to do things to accommodate for that. And some of that comes from just turning up the volume on the computer or wearing headphones. Someone who has low vision, they just change the resolution of their computer. Well, those are all accessibility features, how quick I double-click the mouse, how bright the screen is. These are all accessibility features that we’re accustomed to, but we may not understand that those things are necessary for us to do our job. So we appreciate your time here today listening to us, hearing about our tool, and we do have another question coming in from the internet.
>> Mike, we just have a follow up from the geospatial people. They’re asking if you could please demonstrate that in the tool, how you would select services regarding data models or maps.
>> So data models or map would be electronic content. And so I have highlighted here under electronic, what electronic content are you procuring? And from that dropdown, we’re saying an electronic document. So again, when I’m answering that question, I’m hearing a deliverable as a map, a map being say a PDF. If you’re talking about delivering maps and map data through an interactive website. That’s a different story. You would be selecting an internet or a web-based application that would provide that, and there are some techniques. I think there’s actually a discussion later on today, Sid, on geospatial.
>> Yes. 12:30.
>> At 12:30, so I think more specific information can be there from vendors. But kind of the quick summary I have on maps is that when you think of maps, you have to think of the functional performance criteria of the law. And what that really fancy phrase says is that we’re designing information so that there’s a mode of operation that allows someone who is blind or visually impaired to get that information through a means other than vision, getting audible information through means other than hearing, that I not require the use of my hands or mouse, that there are reach and strength requirements for how we have information. So a knob or a switch only requires so much strength or reach to get to. So in the context of geospatial - so for terrain, right? It’s pretty difficult to describe terrain, and that’s a challenge of the geospatial community to do that. Generally, what we do with geospatial systems is we take information from a table in a database, and we lay it over a map to show where it might be logistically, either through lat lon or a physical address. And so conversely, the map itself and the map controls should be made accessible. My pan and my zoom, those are necessary for people with vision but that can’t use a mouse. So they need a keyboard control that is accessible to be able to pan and zoom and search on that user interface, because they can’t use a mouse. For the person who can’t see that information overlay, you can simply provide that data in a table view that says, here’s where the water trucks are near my response center, and here’s the address for where that water truck is or the lat lon for where that water truck is. So there are different solutions for different things. And again, it depends on whether you’re providing this through a web-based system or a flat file like a PDF. But again, it’s electronic information. It’s describing something, and so we need to make our best effort to make that information available through other means. Hopefully that helps.
>> Thank you, Mike. The next question is, is the initial ART session saved so that you can modify or continue with changes later?
>> So that’s a great question. I didn’t save. We didn’t save the file in our little exercise here, but if you were to hit - let me see if I can trick this to do something. Will it go back? Yay. No. Where’s the save? So on one of the screens that we didn’t get to - and the system’s not letting me do it. It can save it out as an XML file, and if you want to resume editing that or make changes to that, you can simply from the main screen or on the left navigation select existing procurement, and it will give you an opportunity to upload that file back into the system. And then you can make modifications from there and then save that back out as well.
>> The only thing that you can’t do with that is once you submit it, you can’t save it, go back in, and then make changes, is where Mike was going. But let’s say you started it, you answered question 1 through 20. And now you have to go to another meeting. You can then save that and pick up where you left off. It would allow you to browse the file, upload it, and then each time it’s going to ask you for this captcha if you bring up another file or bring that file up again. Before we turn it back over to Sid, of course, Mike and I and GSA and the Access Board want to say thank you for your interest in Section 508, and we look forward to not only working with you, but also making sure that we ensure that 508 is something that is included in procurements in the beginning and that it’s not an afterthought. So from there, I think we’ve done - unless there’s one more question, we’re going to turn it back over to Sid. Thank you all for your time.
>> Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Okay, thank you very much Mike and Arthur for that presentation. So if any of you have questions about the ART based on today’s presentation, how to use it, you want an walkthrough of ART again, the Bureau Section 508 coordinators know how to walk through the ART and they can help you through that process, or you can contact me directly, okay? If you have any questions or if you want to go through the ART tool to identify specific accessibility requirements for your procurements of IT products and services. Okay? Well thank you very much. Thanks Arthur and Mike. And let’s take a 15-minute break, and we’ll resume at 10:30 a.m. for our next presentation. Thanks, everybody.