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Public Hearing held by the

UNITED STATES ACCESS BOARD

On the

2011 ICT ADVANCE NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING 

(ANPRM).

March 1, 2012

CSUN Conference

San Diego, CA

 MICHAEL PACIELLO: Ready to get started? My name is 

Mike Paciello, Chair of the 2012 CSUN Conference. We're very 

proud to be hosting the final hearing on the ANPRM, the draft ICT 

we'll hear at the CSUN Conference on Technology for Persons 

with Disabilities. As many of you know, the U.S. Access Board

conducted a public hearing back on January 11th on a revised 

draft of the updated requirements for Information and 

Communications Technology covered by Section 508 of the 

Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Telecommunications 

Act. Now what we would like to do is introduce our host and 

Chairman today, presidential appointee and Access Board 

Member, Mr. Neil Melick.

 NEIL MELICK: Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Neil

Melick. I am a presidential appointee, public member of the US 

Access Board and the Chair of the Information and 

Communication Technology ad hoc committee -- whew! A 
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mouthful, isn't it? So we're here today and I want to welcome 

everybody to our second hearing on the Board's 2011 advanced 

notice of proposed rulemaking for the information and

communications technology standards and guidelines. We're 

delighted to be here at the 21st -- is it 21st? 27th CSUN 

Conference as we know that the technology and persons with 

disabilities is important to this conference. So we're excited to be 

here to present this ICT ANPRM. Also, I want to welcome my

fellow board members and we have a staff member up here and 

I'll ask him at this time to introduce themselves.

 KAREN BRAITMAYER: My name is Karen Braitmayer. I'm 

also a public member of the Access Board from Seattle, 

Washington.

 JOHN BOX: Yes, my name is John Box. I'm from Corona, 

California, and I'm also a public member.

TIM CREAGAN: My name is Tim Creagan. I'm a U.S. Access 

Board staff member.

NEIL MELICK: Also, Gary Talbot is supposed to be here, and 

he's not here yet so we'll introduce him when he comes in. I just 

want to set sort of the ground rules of our hearing process today. 

Those that have preregistered will be speaking, and if you haven't 

preregistered, you still have an opportunity to register today. We 

have two staff members at the back corner by the door with a 

table that you can register to be able to speak today. 
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 So we ask if you have not registered to please do so. Each 

of those that are registered to speak today will be given five 

minutes. As you get close to the end of the five minutes and it 

doesn't look like you're about to wrap up, I will remind you to

summarize your thoughts so we'll give everybody an opportunity 

it they want to speak today. After everybody that's registered 

speaks and if we have any time left to go over, we will invite 

those that want to add additional information come on up to do 

so. We want to let everybody know that this is scheduled for two 

hours. However, if you still have opportunity to make comments 

even if you don't speak today or you're not submitting comments 

today, you still have till March 7th to submit under

Regulations.gov so please do so if you want to do that. 

 We will have a transcript of everything will be kept today 

and be entered into the Docket. Also, if you have any written 

comments or PowerPoints or anything that you want to present, 

please give that to the staff at the table, and they will also be 

entered into the record. We'd also ask everybody at this time 

please to refrain from reacting publicly to comments from those 

that will be testifying today and presenting, as well as any 

comments or questions from the Board. My colleagues and I are 

here to listen and learn from you today to taking information that 

we need to move forward with our notice of public rulemaking 

which is the next step. We're not here to debate the issues today. 

Again, this is just an opportunity for us to listen and learn and 
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gather information as part of the public hearing process to be 

able to further our work. Before we get started, I want to remind

everybody to please put your phones on silent or vibrate so we 

will not distract from those that will be speaking today. I thank 

you for your cooperation. At this time --

TIM CREAGAN: We've just had one more request. If you go 

all could refrain from using Flash because there are some 

members of the audience for whom Flash is a triggering event. So 

we'd ask you to refrain from using Flash and from using cell 

phones. Thank you.

 NEIL MELICK: Thanks, Tim. So at this time we'll go ahead 

and we'll start with our first witness and I'll let Tim introduce the 

people.

 TIM CREAGAN: Thank you. Good afternoon. We have a full 

slate of speakers today. So what I will do is I will just call the 

names in the order in which people signed up, and if whoever I 

call is not there, then I will move on to the next person and I will 

continue to call the names throughout the afternoon. I would like 

to call Mr. Rich Schwerdtfeger.

 RICH SCHWERDTFEGER: Members of the Board, it's a 

pleasure to be here today. I am the Software Accessibility Chief 

Technology Officer for IBM. I am responsible for providing 

technical accessibility direction to all IBM software products. I 

personally help develop the original graphic user interface screen 

reader for OS/2 on the IBM personal computer back in the 1990s.
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IBM has a long history of supporting people with disabilities, 

and we support government procurement regulations like Section 

508 to drive the market towards more accessible products. IBM 

itself, similar to federal agencies, employs many persons with 

disabilities and has a legacy of innovation in meeting their needs. 

Since Section 508 became effective in 2001, IBM has designed its 

products to the standard and has consulted with government 

agencies at all levels to help build conforming IT systems. Key to 

the steps of Section 508 is having requirements that can be 

objectively tested and IBM has broad experience with testing 

standards for conformance. We have been a leader in setting 

W3C Web Accessibility standards starting with the first version 

published in 1999. In particular, we personally have led the W3C 

project to make rich internet web applications accessible, also 

known as W3C's WAI-ARIA. IBM has held leadership roles in both 

the Access Board Section 508 Advisory Committees. 

IBM will be submitting written comments on the questions 

posed by the Access Board, a few broad issues and some

individual technical standards. Time does not permit me to cover 

the details or comments here today, but I would like to discuss 

functional performance criteria as one of our areas with greatest

concern. 

The 2010 ANPRM stated that the technical standards are 

sufficient for conformance and the functional performance criteria 

or FPC. They should only be consulted in order to evaluate 
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equivalent facilitation in cases where any of the technical 

standards are not met or the technical standards don't 

adequately cover the function of the product. We were quite 

surprised by the new requirement stated in the 2011 ANPRM that 

all products shall conform to the FPC. This change elevates the 

FPC to a normative requirement and has a serious impact to 

suppliers of ICT products and to federal agencies. 

Even though this 2011 ANPRM does not always state it 

explicitly, our understanding is that the FPC may be met through 

interoperability with assistive technology or AT. In context where 

users have multipurpose devices such as personal computer, 

smartphone or tablet, AT interoperability is the desired and 

expected approach. In this environment multiple components 

contribute to the complete end-to-end solution that results in a 

user with a disability being able to access electronic information 

within their work, collaborate with peers or communicate with 

their government. But these components are the device 

hardware, operating system, additional platform software such as 

web browser, application software and AT. Even the skill level the 

user has in operating their AT contributes their ability to access 

the ICT. A supplier cannot guarantee that the FPC have been met

unless the supplier controls all components of the end-to-end 

solution. In most cases, the supplier is dependent on the 

capabilities of the hardware and software platform, web browser 
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and AT support which often lags behind in implementing 

standards or support for newer technologies. 

It used to be that people with disabilities had a choice of 

only one operating system and a personal computer and maybe 

one or two very expensive AT products for their particular type of 

disability. In that former world, the supplier and agency could be 

relatively certain of the tools and end-user that would be using. 

But this is the not the case anymore. 

The good news is that the users with disabilities in most 

federal agencies now have more devices, more operating 

systems, and more ATs from which to choose, and the cost of AT 

is coming down, some smartphones that actually include AT 

providing people with disabilities the ability to use the product for 

the same price as everyone else. 

But this new world complicates things for a supplier who 

wants to declare to a federal agency under contract that their 

product meets a broad requirement such as the FPC requiring 

operation without vision. Take the case of a web application 

which can be accessed from any platform that has a web 

browser. The supplier is left to wonder if it is sufficient that the 

web application be used on one desktop platform with one web 

browser and one screener for that platform. This certainly 

demonstrates that the related technical standards have been met 

and that the product is capable of being used without vision. But 

more and more users access websites and applications from their 
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mobile devices where accessibility support is less evolved but 

improving all the time. Unlike the desktop environment where 

keyboard operation is the common denominator for accessible 

navigation, on mobile platforms web browsers don't support 

keyboard navigation, and platforms support different methods of 

navigation, such as gestures, speech recognition, or even 

assistive technology. Despite these accessibility gaps, we see 

government agencies follow the trend of increased use of mobile 

devices so we suppliers and even agencies really don't know what 

device, operating system, web browser or AT users will actually

use to access our example web application. While the web 

application may be operable without vision just fine on some 

configurations, that same web application might not be operable 

without vision on other configurations.

NEIL MELICK: You need to be closing. We're running out of 

time.

RICH SCHWERDTFEGER: Certainly, we don't believe that 

the Access Board expects suppliers and agencies to test all known 

configurations as that would lead to a virtually infinite test bucket 

and increased cost. In ICT products, Section 508 conformance 

simply cannot be dependent on third-party products which the 

supplier does not control. The best approach to facilitate 

interoperability with AT is a standard-based approach where the 

FPC or accessibility principles supported when the technical 

standards are met rather than normative standards which 
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suppliers must declare to conformance. The Access Board should 

provide a mapping from each FPC to the technical standards that

support it. This exercise would also uncover any remaining gaps 

in the standard. IBM has done this exercise, by the way, and 

found a few gaps which we will submit in our comments. 

Although we support the accessibility principles of the FPC, IBM 

urges the Access Board to revert back to the language in the 

2010 ANPRM around the capability of the FPC. Our product that 

conforms with all the technical standards should be considered to 

be in conformance with Section 508. The FPC should only be 

needed in cases where product fails to meet any of the technical 

standards or introduces new user interface models that are not 

covered by the technical standards.

NEIL MELICK: Please summarize. Your time is up.

RICH SCHWERDTFEGER: Okay. Do you want me to finish 

or...?

NEIL MELICK: I just want you to summarize.

RICH SCHWERDTFEGER: Okay. I'm almost done, okay. In 

these cases, the FPC that the failing technical standards support 

should be consulted as fallback to evaluate for equivalent 

facilitation. We at IBM look forward to the ANPRM and urge the 

Access Board to make it a priority to publish it as soon as 

possible. The current standard has become quite out of date, and 

work on European accessibility standards under Mandate 376 is 

moving forward. Our mutual desire to harmonize accessibility 
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requirements in the US, Europe and around the world is at risk 

with further delays in completing the refresh of the Section 508 

standards. Thank you very much.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: Alex Li, Microsoft.

NEIL MELICK: If we could, we have a request that you 

speak clearly into the microphone so we can hear. Probably, 

we're having one that's having trouble with hearing.

ALEX LI: I'll do what I can. My name is Alex Li. I represent 

Microsoft in this particular public hearing. Can you...? No? 

Louder? Okay, I'll speak from my -- I'll project my voice. Is that 

better?

TIM CREAGAN: Yes.

ALEX LI: Okay. All right, I'll do what I can to speak clearly

and deliberately with my speech. Section 508 is a very unique 

standard. I know the Access Board worked on multiple 

regulations and standards within the federal environment. But I 

want to note three different things that I want the Board to keep 

in mind of in creating good standards that would be applicable to 

this environment. First, Section 508 is mostly an instrument to 

encourage government procurement of most accessible product.

So what you want to do is create an environment where it's 

predictable, that's high efficiency, and also an opportunity for 

vendors to compete based on accessibility. So to that degree, 
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certain degree of objectivity is very much needed. That's one of 

the principles that we really look forward to, to see in the 

rulemaking process is to have objective, testable criteria. I'll 

comment on that further.

The second thing that we look at in terms of principle, in 

terms of writing the standard is that the rate of change for 

information technology is faster than pretty much any other 

industry field out there. There're more gadgets and more new 

services than previously conceived that are being provided every

day. They're been dreamed up, up here in California, mostly, and 

maybe in some parts in the Seattle area from Microsoft. But we're 

introducing them at a very rapid pace. So things change. So the 

rules that you put forward cannot be rigid. If it is rigid, it will be 

outdated, it will be obsolete and we have nothing to work with 

both for the agencies and for the vendors who are creating these 

technologies. 

And the third principle that we look for is that we need to 

put the context because the range of ICT products is very wide. It 

includes little devices that you have in your pocket to very, very 

large device that are implemented, very large rooms, things that 

only professionals use. ICT is an extremely wide scope. As you 

buy more products today you can go into any store, you see 

more and more information technology embedded in there. So 

what you previously conceived as information technologies will 

not necessarily be in the same form or shape as the world moves
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on. So the range of products and services is very wide that is 

covered by this rule. So that's something you need to keep in 

mind -- those three principles. Now, based on those three 

principles, we are going to call on some of the concerns that we 

see from the 2011 ANPRM. 

So first is about subjectivity. We see a lot of subjectivity in 

this ANPRM, and that is a concern for us. Why is that? Because if 

any government agencies, they are procuring thousands of 

procurement everyday if not more, if everybody would have to 

deal with -- imagine a government procurement officer would 

have to deal with subjectivities and have to make judgment calls, 

things would not be executed in any reliable way. What we want 

to do is encourage more procurement, more deployment of 

accessible product. So if you have to rely on judgment calls and 

oftentimes with no conclusive result, what would happen? A 

procurement officer burdened with thousands of procurement 

they have to handle, what would they likely do? Throw up their

hands or spend endless hours trying to debate and figure out 

whether they meet 508 or not, and end up with no conclusive 

result. Maybe that's not that way we want to proceed. What we 

want to have is more productivity and more results. So what we 

see here in what, for example, my colleague Rich, talked about in

functional performance criteria, functional performance criteria 

are inherently incredibly subjective. This is basically asking if you 

have a certain type of disability, you can use the product. If I 
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have a thousand people, would they have multiple answers? I 

would say yes. It's very, very difficult to determine if you have 

met the functional performance criteria with no reference point to 

the technical provisions. So the technical provisions have to be 

written objectively, testable manner, and we have to rely on the 

functional performance criteria as infrequently as possible. You 

want to use the functional performance criteria when you know 

the technical provisions are outdated and then you use it. And 

that's when Rich talked about equal facilitation, that's where we 

stop. We're talking about where there's a paradigm shift in 

technologies, we want to use that to gauge, to make sure that we 

are providing proper facilitation for people with disabilities, but 

not every time, every day, and every procurement cycle. And 

that, in this ANPRM, is what the board is proposing; that a 

procurement office has to deal with that day in, day out, 

thousands of times, and that will lead to a failure in 

implementation of Section 508. 

Next, I want to talk about keeping things in context.

NEIL MELICK: You have about 45 seconds.

ALEX LI: Forty-five seconds. Well, in that case, I wouldn't 

talk about any of that stuff. (Laughter). And you just have to 

wait for me to comment on the 7th and we'll submit that before 

midnight on the 7th, but I want to note the number of things that 

we filled ANPRM in 2011 have gone backward as compared to

what we proposed on that TEITAC report that has achieved 
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industry consensus. We think we proposed a very workable 

solution and we worry that what we have here in 2011 might 

have put us backwards in terms of advancing accessibility and 

predictability and putting things in context and make sure that

what we'd put out in the rulemaking processes is something that 

will live a long time. Thank you very much.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: Helena Mitchell, Rehabilitation Engineering 

Research Center for Wireless Technologies.

HELENA MITCHELL: Good afternoon. I am the principal 

investigator for the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center 

for Wireless Technologies, which is funded by the National 

Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research of the US 

Department of Education. Our mission is to research, evaluate,

and develop innovative wireless technologies and products that 

meet the needs, enhance independence, and improve the quality 

of life of People with Disabilities. Last week, we submitted our 

testimony on seven sections of the ANPRM. In the time allotted, I 

will comment on four. 

E102, Reference Standards: The wireless RERC commends 

the board for proposed guidelines and the incorporation by

reference of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and 

open standards. We believe that this will encourage the industry 

to comply by harmonizing regulations across federal agencies. 

However, we do urge the board to include the World Wide Web 
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consortium's mobile web-based Best Practices Guide. With the 

federal government developing a federal mobility strategy, it is 

critical that the needs of people with disabilities be addressed 

before the mobile strategy is implemented. 

E205.1, Electronic Content, Official Agency Communications: 

The wireless RERC understands and includes in these documents 

that it's burdensome. However, we recommend that federal 

agencies going forward have to be highly sensitive to the needs 

for modifications in policies, practices, and procedures to ensure 

that all electronic content contributes to an inclusive environment 

for all federal employees.

C101.2, Equivalence Facilitation: Every effort should be 

made by manufacturers of Information Communications 

Technology to build accessibility features into mainstream 

devices. The incorporation of universal design elements can make 

this process more seamless. One of the findings of the 2011

report produced by the Center for Advanced Communications 

Policy, which is the home of the Wireless RERC, that was 

produced for the National Council on Disabilities centered on 

inclusive universal design and found that many technology 

companies are still not adopting universal design principles. AT&T 

in consultation with the Wireless RERC and other groups have 

developed a universal design methodology for developers, which 

can be found on our website. In addition, the Wireless RERC

strongly encourages the board to include by reference the seven 
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principles of universal design as a guidance tool for developers 

and manufacturers. 

C207.2, Inclusion of People with Disabilities: The inclusion of 

People with Disabilities in the research and development of 

products and services would help to ensure accessibility is built 

into the result and product and/or service at the front end,

precluding the need for expensive retrofitting of devices by 

manufacturers and aftermarket add-ons by the consumer. Built-in 

accessibility could be a cost savings to both government agencies 

and the private sector as would result in a decrease in reasonable 

accommodations request for specialized equipment. The Wireless 

RERC we test all of our prototype devices with end-users with 

disability, and we utilize these findings to refine our prototypes 

and products. This has resulted in technology that is usable by a 

wide variety of people with variant abilities. We recommend that 

language within the section be strengthened by replacing the 

words "shall consider including" with the words "shall include" 

individuals with disabilities in all phases of product development, 

testing, and marketing.

In closing, the guidelines can have a significant role in 

ensuring accessible ICT equipment and services. The final 

sections represent important language to support ICT standards 

and guidelines. Platforms and software applications are constantly 

evolving and entering or leaving the marketplace at a rate far 

surpasses ICT research and development. The Wireless RERC 
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proposes it would be valuable for forthcoming standards and 

regulations to include a caveat for open architecture language to

support the creation of technology yet to be developed that would 

be accessible and usable by all individuals with disabilities. Thank 

you.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you. We'll just take a quick break. Gary 

will introduce himself as he came in here just now.

GARY TALBOT: Sorry, I was late. Gary Talbot with the 

Access Board from now Wilmington, Delaware.

TIM CREAGAN: I would like to call up the next witness. Ed 

Summers, SAS Institute. Ed Summers. All right, we'll move on. 

Ken Salaets, ITIC. Ken Salaets, ITIC.

KEN SALAETS: Good afternoon. My name is Ken Salaets, 

Global Policy for the Information Technology Industry Council or 

ITI, no C. We're based in Washington, D.C. We have had the 

privilege of working very closely with the Access Board staff from 

the very beginning of this process with Section 508. We

appreciate the openness and the opportunity that we have to deal 

directly. It's been a real pleasure. I represent companies many of 

whom already represented in this room and have already spoken 

that essentially develop and market the products and actually 

make accessibility possible. Section 508 would be essentially a 

piece of paper if it weren't for the companies that step forward 

and create the technology and innovate to make the tools for 

people with accessibility. So it's always important to keep in mind 
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that there's a transaction that occurs in that process and we 

applaud considerable and significant investment of the Access 

Board in addressing these issues. 

A couple of things I want to address here. We will submit 

comments next Tuesday, and we appreciate that opportunity as 

well. One is timing. This has been a long iterative process and 

delivery process. We appreciate it takes a lot of time, but it 

affects -- the amount of time this is taking is holding a lot of 

technology in abeyance in the sense the industry is really ready 

to move forward on this to take the new revised 508 and

implement it and put it in the marketplace. So to the extent that 

there are additional resources that the Board could commit to 

this, we would strongly encourage it. We realize again that it's a

significant task and this is not serving up the only area that the 

Board addresses and the staff address in their responsibilities. 

But nevertheless, accessible ICT is such a critical tool for people

with disabilities and enables a lot of the other opportunities that 

are out there. So we would encourage, if there's a possibility of 

speeding up the process, to find a way to do so. To that extent, 

we are talking about the possibility -- very preliminary the 

possibility of putting together a roadmap of what manufacturers 

have to go through in terms of looking at the changes in 508 and 

marry that up to our design cycles which are continuous and 

never really hesitate as has been mentioned.
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Technology essentially moves at the speed of light, and 

there are a number of products that are already on the drawing 

board in the development process and being built right now that 

will be on the marketplace tomorrow, the next day, and the date 

thereafter. So to the extent that we can put something together 

that would be useful not only for the board to look at but also for 

the FAR council that will have to implement this by regulation. 

That's something that we're willing to take a look at. We're 

possibly partnering with some government agencies to put their 

process together as well. 

In terms of issues, a couple already have been covered. We 

will address an array in our document that we submitted, but one 

is the functional performance criteria as it's been mentioned. We

view them as somewhat subjective and therefore not easily 

testable and particularly not in a consistent basis. When you're 

selling a product to the government across the array of agencies, 

it's critical that you be able to have a consistent experience in 

terms of marketing that product and the government have the 

consistent experience in terms of buying it. To the extent that 

from the functional performance criteria are made normative, 

that creates a significant challenge for us and, as has been 

mentioned, we believe that the language in the 2010 ANPRM --

I'd like to say ANPRM 1 --was probably more constructive in that 

regard and we will offer some recommendations addressing that

issue. 
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The second is the WCAG conformance. We strongly support 

and highly endorse the adoption of WCAG 2.0 or by reference 

within 508. We think that's an excellent move that will harmonize 

across a number of borders, a number of regions and 

governments. I mean the Internet has no borders. So to the

extent that we can have a single approach, we think that's 

extremely helpful, and we applaud the board and the staff for 

moving in that direction. On the other hand, within the current 

WCAG, there's reference to applying 2.0 to applications outside 

the web realm, so to speak. 2.0 is designed for web pages, web 

content, and web-based applications, and that it works extremely 

well in that regard. Right now, we think it's premature to start to 

look at other areas like non-web-based applications and applying 

it there as well. But having said that, we understand there some 

processes under way to address that issue. We're not foreclosing 

it by any means. We just want to make sure that there's the

experts that can really make that process evolve and pursue that 

to the extent possible or engage and you'll hear more about that 

from a speaker later on today. I'm really going fast. So rather 

than read all of these, we have enough number of better issues 

that we will outline. We will address in addition to the functional 

performance criteria, the WCAG 2.0 implementation, some 

concerns of chapters 4 and 5, AT and equipment facilitation, realtime text and others. 
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We, as always, welcome an opportunity to respond in 

questions and clarify comments to the extent that we maybe 

aren't clear. But again, we think this is a highly constructive 

process and harmonization, not only within the basic standards 

that are already widely adopted in marketplace, but also cross 

geographies with the European Union's M376 effort that's critical, 

not only for manufacturers, but particularly for consumers as they 

continue to travel around the world and need to have those 

devices work everywhere.

So thank you so much for your time and your commitment 

on being here, and we look forward to further interaction. Thank 

you.

TIM CREAGAN: Thank you. Ed Summers? Is Ed Summers 

present? No? Johnson -- Duff Johnson, NetCentric US.

DUFF JOHNSON: Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Duff 

Johnson. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you 

again. It's an honor to testify before you today at CSUN 2012, the 

world's premiere conference for Persons with Disabilities and 

developers of the assistive technologies. I've been working to 

make the electronic documents accessible since 1999. I've 

chaired the U.S. Committee for ISO 14289, the forthcoming 

international standard for accessible PDF since 2004. By way of 

disclosure, my day job is as President of NetCentric Technologies, 

makers of the Common Look suite of applications and software 

for accessible PDF documents. I'd like to use this occasion to 
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present the Access Board with a concrete proposal detailing how 

the U.S. Committee for PDF/UA feels that PDF should be 

addressed in the refreshed Section 508.

Previously, I've stated that WCAG 2.0 level AA conformance 

finds expression in PDF technology when the PDF file and the 

software used to read it both conform to PDF/UA. As such I 

recommended that the Access Board adopt the PDF/UA as the 

applicable technical standard whenever the ICT standards and 

guidelines with regard to WCAG 2.0 level AA, is applicable to a 

given PDF page document form or software application, and to 

otherwise regard PDF/UA as appropriate technical standard for 

electronic documents and software using the PDF format. Today, 

I'd like to tell you why. 

A PDF is not a web page. I want to remind the Board of the 

unique functionality of PDFs. Capabilities set PDFs apart from 

other electronic content, notably web pages, the subject of WCAG 

2.0. Entirely unlike HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the other 

technologies forming the primary focus for WCAG 2.0, PDF is a 

self-contained format. This is a quality that the marketplace 

understands very well and regards as entirely vital because it 

enables the following principles: 1) any application that can print 

can make a PDF; 2) PDF is reliable delivering the same results, 

regardless of platform or context; and 3) like paper, PDF pages 

are interchangeable with other PDF pages. When compared to 

any other format, PDF files may contain an enormous variety of 
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types of content, many of which contain irreducible complexities 

from construction blueprints to sheet music, from annotations to 

archives, from a highly designed single page brochure to a million 

page clinical record submission to the FDA. PDF provides real 

world features that often are non-amenable with the same

considerations as web pages or simply go unrecognized in WCAG 

2.0. I'd like to illustrate the point with several examples that 

demonstrate how PDF/UA differs in concept and emphasis from 

WCAG 2.0, and therefore how a PDF's specific standard is 

appropriate for PDF content. The point, as I hope will be made 

clear by this way of these examples, is that applying WCAG 2.0 is 

non-straightforward at all except insofar as parties can agree on 

the terms by which the standard is understood by implementers.

Example 1: Headings. A single PDF document may contain 

hundreds, thousands, or even millions of pages or many 

individual documents may exist within a single PDF, sometimes 

even on the same PDF page. To ensure accessibility in PDFs 

taking advantage of this capability, the PDF/UA standard includes 

a detailed discussion of headings that goes beyond WCAG 2.0 to 

require a specific numerical sequence for heading levels h1, h2, 

h3, and so on. This requirement ensures reliable navigation even 

in the largest and most structurally complex documents. 

Example 2: Annotations. Annotations are very popular and 

commonplace feature of PDF. This feature allows for a wide 

variety of objects to be added to an existing page including notes, 
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lines, boxes, highlighting, and more. WCAG 2.0 offers no 

consideration specific to the concept of annotating a web page. 

And thus, little guidance for developers of technologies and that 

includes such features. PDF/UA, by contrast, details operational 

requirements for annotations in the PDF context, including 

annotations used for visual formatting purposes. 

Example 3: Artifacts. PDF files routinely include decorative 

graphics such as rule lines and background images. In success 

criteria in 1.1.1, WCAG 2.0 anticipates this content type and 

specifies that such objects are implemented in a way that it can 

be ignored by assistive technology. In PDF, this goal is

accomplished by use of the artifacts designation. Unlike web 

pages, however, PDF page content routinely includes page 

numbers and page headers and footers. Page numbers are not 

decorative graphics, and they are not used only for visual 

formatting, but they are clearly not part of the document's text. 

WCAG 2.0 provides no guidance on the treatment of page 

numbers. PDF/UA, however, specifies that artifacts, including 

page numbers via the pagination artifacts subtype, should not be

tagged in the structure tree. While initially counterintuitive, it's 

easy to understand this choice by considering the appropriateness 

of interrupting a word or sentence by announcing the page 

number. Instead, PDF/UA requires that the conforming reader 

provide the means of navigation, provide navigation using logical 

structure. To support successful pagination, the standard requires 
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that the reader be able to report the current page number as 

defined in the PDF page's page label value to the AT user on 

request. 

Example 4: Media clips. PDF allows for the inclusion of 

media clips, movies and audio via the annotations model. Unlike 

WCAG 2.0, PDF/UA does not make requirements of such content

beyond this requirement specific to the PDF format itself. It 

essentially protects the description of the clip. The reason is 

simple: PDF technology is not movie technology, and accessibility 

standards for PDF files would be inappropriate in the context of a 

movie, that a PDF may service a container for a movie is or 

should be no barrier to the application of the appropriate 

standard to the movie content in question. For this reason, to 

focus PDF/UA, when it comes to media clips is simply that a

PDF/UA conforming PDF reader shall not interfere with the 

accessibility features of media players and shall make any 

playback controls provided available to AT...

NEIL MELICK: You have 30 seconds left.

DUFF JOHNSON: I'm sorry?

NEIL MELICK: You got about 30 seconds left.

DUFF JOHNSON: Okay. I'm skipping ahead. I'll summarize. 

WCAG addresses web content. The standard was never intended 

to cover all formats in all contexts. The Web Accessibility 

Initiative implicitly recognizes this fact because in addition to Web 

Content Accessibility Guidelines, they are authoring tool 
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accessibility guidelines in User Agent Accessibility Guidelines. 

WCAG 2.0 is not a one-size-fits-all standard for all electronic 

content and the tools for creating and consuming such content. 

In my written remarks, I'll offer specific textual suggestions for 

the ANPRM and answers to the Section 6 questions in your 

previous rulemaking. Thank you.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: Summers? All right. Synge Tyson, 

Department of Veterans Affairs. Synge Tyson, Veterans Affairs.

SYNGE TYSON: Good afternoon. Thank you for the 

opportunity to share my comments with the board. My name is 

Synge Tyson, and I am legally blind and I also work for a federal 

government agency. The need for access is extremely important. 

We live in a world that relies on vision and hearing for our

everyday communication. Those who have disability may take 

them for granted merely because they do have the ability 

similarly to being right-handed or similarly to those who are 

right-handed and the many environmental designs that are based 

on this premise. For those of us who experience a disability, we 

understand how important it is to have access to information and 

sometimes access is interpreted in many different ways. The 

ability to have rules, procedures and regulations in place to limit 

that interpretation is extremely important. 

As a person with a visual impairment, I know and

understand the limitations of not being able to visually see 
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information as those who have good vision. As a person who 

works for a federal agency, part of the difficulty is that people in 

general cannot conceive of our abilities in the workforce. For 

example, I am a clinician and for the agency that I work with, in 

general, the mindset is that I would not be in my position. I am 

one of a few hundred who work in my profession. So because the 

mindset is not there that I have that ability, therefore, the access 

is not there. If we had general access in everything with 

accessible, it wouldn't be an issue. I wouldn't need additional 

screen readers. I wouldn't need additional products to have 

additional software. Everything from right out of the box would 

have accessibility features. I'll have access to the information. 

In my position as a clinician, I don't have the access to go to

any computer, within the agency, within sister agencies to do my 

job. I am tied to one particular computer which has accessibility. 

So the standards, the Regulations are important to address the

issues of uniformity across the board having standards in place 

across the board, and the standards are not enough. We have 

Section 508. Government agencies are supposed to follow those 

standards. However, it's still left up to interpretation. If you have 

someone in place who somewhat understand disabilities or 

someone who wants to follow the regulations, great. If that does 

not exist, it becomes a huge problem for those of us who are in 

the workforce with disabilities and for those who may not be in 

the workforce but want to enter the workforce for our future 
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generations of people who have disabilities to enter. We should 

set a standard that says accessibility is not an option, that it's 

needed for us to participate at the same level as our colleagues. 

Also, with standards and procedures in place, we also need 

enforcement. So without enforcement from agencies like the 

Equal Employment Opportunity Agency, the rules and regulations 

mean very little. We have to have something in place that says, 

"If you don't do it, this is going to be the -- if you don't follow the

procedures, there's going to be some kind of..." There's going to 

be something in place -- a fine, a rule -- something that's going 

to set a guideline, set a standard that says, "If you don't follow,

there will be -- I can't think of the word I need...

NEIL MELICK: Consequences.

SYNGE TYSON: Consequences, thank you. Thank you. 

There's going to be consequences, and based on those

consequences, you have to follow. Just simply you have to follow. 

You have to follow the guidelines that are in place. And again, I 

know that we cannot change how people think, but we can put

procedures in place so that they won't have to think about it. It 

will just be the norm. It will be the standard. Thank you.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: Eugene Borodin.

EUGENE BORODIN: My name is Eugene Borodin. I'm a 

research assistant professor at the Department of Computer 

Science at Stony Brook University, and I'm also the President of 
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CharmTech Labs, a company that I formed to develop innovative 

web browser technology. The mission of my company is to

significantly improve the effectiveness and equity of access to the 

web's vast and growing resources for people with disabilities, 

mobile users and anyone who wants to have a better web 

browsing experience. My personal goal, however, is to eliminate 

the needs for assistive technology. I specialize in web 

accessibility for screen reader users, and during the last five 

years, I have worked with and observed the behavior, the 

browsing behavior of over 100 screen reader users. 

I want to make a few points about web accessibility that I 

think Access Board should consider. There is no doubt that web 

has come to play a very important role in our society, and the 

web is even more important to people with vision impairments 

who have regained some of their freedoms that are enjoyed by 

sighted people. People with severe vision loss access computers 

in the web with screen readers, but screen readers work only as 

good as the accessibility metadata that is embedded in web 

pages. This is why standards such as WCAG, the Web Content 

Accessibility Guidelines are very important.

But there are several problems with the standards. First of 

all, they're getting progressively more complex with new 

technologies and they're getting more difficult on the standard 

implement by an average web developer. A web developer is not 

motivated to improve accessibility of their websites because they 
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think that the target audience is too small. But they may not be 

aware of the standards or they don't have the time to learn about 

them. But if you'd attempt to force the standards on these

people, they will do the minimum to comply with them, 

sometimes just without understanding the standards. 

So the standards are not really enforceable in part because 

there are too many ad hoc developers, and there's too much user 

generated content. Pretty much any of us can create a website. 

So I think if there's any chance to enforce accessibility standards, 

I think we should target the providers of the technology that is 

used by web developers, the actual tools that are used to build 

websites. 

Another point that I want to make is the current screen 

readers are pretty good at making web accessible, accessible 

websites. They make websites accessible to people who use these

tools, but accessibility does not imply usability. Screen reader 

user spent significantly more time in the order of 10 sometimes 

100 times. It takes them 100 times longer to do the simple tasks 

that sighted people can do in mere seconds and minutes. So this 

affects their productivity and in turn impedes their employability 

in jobs that require online access. So I think the new technology 

needs to be developed to address this problem, and the biggest 

opportunity that I see is in development of the universal 

accessible technology that is usable by people with and without 

vision impairments. 
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So with the proliferation of mobile devices there's a growing 

need to access information, web information via voice. For this 

new technology to work efficiently, it actually requires that 

websites follow accessibility standards, and with the growing 

population of people who use this technology, the ones who use 

this technology, there's a chance to motivate website developers 

to follow the standards because there will be bigger target 

audience. With such technology, there actually will be no need for 

assistive technology because people with and without vision 

impairments will access it the same way. So to summarize, the 

guidelines are very important but they don't really solve the 

problem on their own and the universal accessibility is what 

should be the solution. If anyone wants to talk to me about this, 

I'm at booth 919. Thank you.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: Ed Summers? Gregg Vanderheiden? Okay. 

Ken Nakata?

KEN NAKATA: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and 

thank you for the opportunity to share my comments. I'll try to 

keep my comments brief, and I'll defer any of my remaining time 

to the Board's discretion. My name is Ken Nakata, and I am the 

Director of Accessibility Consulting Practices at HiSoftware. For 12 

years from 1992 to 2004, I was a senior trial attorney with the 

Disability Rights Section at the Department of Justice. In that role 

I investigated and litigated accessibility cases under the ADA and 
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the Rehabilitation Act, and I also represented the department in 

the last Access Board Section 508 rulemaking. My comments 

today are from my personal perspective, however, as an attorney 

who spent his career advocating for accessibility for people with 

disabilities. 

I would like to target my comments to one recent change 

that I believe has been covered a lot today, but I wanted to 

address it from a different perspective because I believe it has 

serious unintended consequences and will dramatically reduce the 

effectiveness of Section 508. This is a requirement in Section 

C202 of the Scoping Requirements that all EIT needs to conform 

to the functional performance criteria. This is a significant 

departure that I believe will ultimately harm accessibility. I 

believe this needs to be changed back to the approach taken into 

2010 ANPRM in which media in the technical provisions provide 

that a safe harbor for conforming to Section 508. The older 

approach I believe is better for government, better for people 

with disabilities, and better for innovation and technology.

I have four major concerns with Section C202. First, I'm 

concerned about the effect on the government. Unlike other 

guidelines like WCAG, a lawsuit literally hangs in the balance for 

federal agencies if they do not meet Section 508. The Section 508 

guidelines thus need to be as clear and as objective as possible. 

Federal agencies need a black and white answer about whether 

their products actually meet Section 508, and I believe that 
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Section C202, as is currently written, makes this difficult or 

impossible. 

Second, I'm concerned about the availability of technology 

for people with disabilities. Referred over and again at 

conferences like this one, like CSUN, the developers and

manufacturers need to create more accessible products. If 

accessibility is seen as vague or imprecise as it is in Section 

C2O2, developers will be frustrated and accessibility will stagnate. 

I believe that the structure in the current Section 508 is clear and 

is brilliant in this regard and the structure is. Technical standards 

should offer clarity for known technologies while the functional

performance criteria offers flexibility for innovation and newer 

technologies. 

Third, I'm concerned about effective enforcement. I believe 

that accessibility standards are most effective if they are clear 

and precise. Lawsuits and administrative complaints have a very 

damaging effect on companies, and they should not be perceived 

as being random or haphazard events. Section C202 makes 

enforcement more of a crapshoot making Section 508 liability 

seem random truly helps no one. Fourth, I'm concerned about 

effective implementation. Over the last 10 years the government 

has faced significant challenges implementing Section 508 and 

encountered much criticism. Because functional performance is

less precise than prescriptive standards, Section C202 will make 

implementation more difficult.
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Change is always hard. The new rules will be complex and 

will be difficult enough to implement. Adding the vagueness in 

Section C202 will make effective implementation impossible. In 

closing, I'd like to commend the Board for doing an amazing job 

at setting clear standards and architecture and technology. C202 

is a significant departure from the board's other standards and 

opens door to making accessibility subjective. And while I 

understand that the IT should be functional for people with

disabilities and that the current Section 508 standards often fall 

short of this goal, we need to be careful of these unintended 

consequences but going as far as Section C202. Thank you very 

much for your time and attention.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: Mitch Turbin. 

MITCH TURBIN: Welcome to the West Coast, ladies and 

gentlemen, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. I have no 

prepared comments so I will try very hard to be succinct. I work 

as a principal investigator at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical 

Center at the National VA Center for Rehabilitative Auditory 

Research. 

However, the stuff of my research is not the stuff of my 

comments today. I am here as an employee who's experienced a 

severe progressive loss of vision and hearing. And in my work at 

the Department of Veterans Affairs, I've been blessed with a very 

good assortment of specialized technology to help me do my job. 
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Some of these technologies has come in money from the National 

Center I worked at itself, some has come specifically from the VA 

Central Office who wanted to react proactively to hire some 

scientists with disabilities, and there's also been some money 

from the medical center, and there's been a wealth of support 

from the Department of Defense's Computer and Electronics 

Access Program. 

I just did say one of the two keywords of my comments –

“proactive”. The other word is “reactive”, and what I really want 

to speak of today is not the excellent specialized equipment that 

I've received, but the generic high-technology equipment that I 

also must make use of daily. One is called the telephone. It's this 

archaic phone that this somehow connected to the strange 

landline system although it's connected in increasingly esoteric 

ways. The medical center, when purchasing these phones and 

moving us increasingly into digitized and internet protocol

telephones, signed a contract to buy these telephones apparently 

had very little proactive attention to questions as to how 

accessible this technology was. Consequently, this technology 

was not very accessible. 

So then we come to that other word – “reactive”. So it 

becomes the burden on the employees, at least in my little corner 

of the federal government, to react to what the monolith provides 

us in the way of mainstream technology and say, "Gee, this thing 

is supposed to have a caller ID while all I can see is, like, blue on 
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blue, and it's a blur. And I feel I'm not getting the same access 

which is available to my colleagues and coworkers." The medical 

center reacts and the medical center sends technicians down to 

my office. There's a little trough in the floor outside my office for 

all the technicians that have come plodding on down there. These 

technicians, man and a woman are dedicated, gracious, 

hardworking, bright people who have done their best to cover up 

for the reactive policies of the administration. Sometimes it 

works. Usually, it involves some kind of work around and 

sometimes to work around takes so much work to get around 

that the heck with caller ID. I just accept all calls and ask them 

who they are when they call. But nevertheless, it's a little bit of a 

jarring inconvenience. 

A much more serious inconvenience represents the 

operating systems in our computer, our basic computer 

workstations. The department pushes through updates to our 

computer systems every single night it seems. Some of them are 

undoubtedly are very critical security updates. Some of them 

maybe not so critical, but they come plodding on through every 

single morning. To tell you the truth, it's an experience, it's an 

adventure to see, "Oh, what's my computer going to look like this 

morning when I log on?" I spend a good deal of time setting up 

personal settings to make my computer accessible to be, and 

whether those personal settings are going to remain or not is

indeed a flip of a coin. If I was to spend time adding up the hours 
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and sometimes days that have been lost in reconfiguring my 

system to my specialized settings, I would be very disheartened 

and discouraged, and I wouldn't have come down here to CSUN 

no doubt. Proactivity would make this medical center, would 

make this Department of Veterans Affairs or would even make 

this federal government take a more proactive approach to 

implementing and enforcing these high-tech Section 508 

guidelines. I would love to see that. I haven't seen that in this 

corner of the federal government in which I work -- no paid staff 

exists at either my medical center level or even at our Veterans 

Integrated Service Network level, basically our regional level. No 

paid staff are in place to proactively survey needs of employees 

with disabilities. Instead, the medical center uses essentially 

volunteers -- what are they called? Collaborative something or 

others. I served in that position for two years so it's something or 

other, also called a Special Emphasis Program manager, and 

money was expended to provide me retraining, to send me to a 

four-day training at a very lovely site and teach me some things 

about how the department aspired to provide accessibility to 

employees. But one of the things we learned was how far the 

aspirations are from the reality. We were told about some of the 

guidelines, some of the decisions that have been made by entities 

and boards such as yours, but the suggestions have not been put 

into place, and specifically they were not paid full-time staff who 

are going to be able to proactively establish the accessibility. It's 
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not just provided in occasional burst of wonderful energy but is 

actually sustained.

NEIL MELICK: You have about 30 seconds.

MITCH TURBIN: So my last comments -- this is unusual for 

me to be on time -- are that in your guidelines, some language 

be inserted to mandate that federal agencies and all covered by 

Section 508 need to take on proactive actions so that employees 

with disabilities are able to retain access to the standard 

technology that is available to us to do our work. So thank you 

very much. Do I have five seconds? I guess not. Thank you.

NEIL MELICK: We only have a few more that signed up, but 

we need to take a break. We've had a request to take a fiveminute break so we'll take a quick five-minute break please. Stay 

close and we'll start right after, and we have two hours to go 

through this. Okay, we're going to get started.

TIM CREAGAN: We're resuming the hearing at this point. I'd 

like to call the next witness, Judy Brewer.

JUDY BREWER: Thank you. Members of the staff of the 

Access Board, thank you for this opportunity to comment with 

regard to the 2011 Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on 

Section 508-255 in the Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines. 

My name is Judy Brewer. I direct the Web Accessibility Initiative 

(WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium which is the standards 

organization for the web. My comments today mostly reiterate 

my testimony from the January hearing of the Access Board with 
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a few added thoughts. I expect to provide more detailed 

comments in writing before the comment period closes. 

First, I would like to express my appreciation to the Access 

Board for its careful attention to the many comments received on 

the Access Boards 2010 ANPRM regarding the need for more 

direct referencing of the W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility 

guidelines, WCAG 2.0. The Board's 2010 proposed approach to 

web accessibility changed wording and thereby also changed 

meanings of some provisions from WCAG 2, and then some 

places mixed the conformance level. The 2010 approach would 

have fragmented International Web Accessibility Standards and 

would have created conflicting requirements for industry 

implementers. In contrast, the 2011 ANPRM proposes 

incorporation of WCAG 2 by reference. We commend the Access 

Board on their updated approach which we believe will benefit all

stakeholders incorporation of web accessibility provisions by 

direct reference to WCAG 2 at a double A level, provides 

significant accessibility for people with disabilities and older 

people, provides a more feasible conformant scenario for 

industry, and increases opportunities for efficiencies among

government organizations that can more readily share training 

and technical assistance resources. Noting for a moment different 

uses of terminology, many people in the field consider the 2011 

ANPRM approach of incorporation by reference to be an optimal 

approach to accessibility standards harmonization rather than 
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being something other than harmonization. We urge other 

organizations to replicate this approach of direct reference. 

Noting with interest the Board's questions regarding applicability 

of WCAG 2 to non-web things, if there are ways that W3C WAI 

could help in exploring further applicability of the WCAG 2.0 

standard in coordination with other interested parties, we would 

welcome the opportunity to help with such a discussion 

particularly given that it relates directly to interpretation of a W3C 

standard. 

I would also like to mention again the potential relevance of 

guidance and accessibility solutions in W3C's User Agent 

Accessibility Guidelines as well as in the Authoring Tool 

Accessibility Guidelines, ARIA, which is Accessible Rich Internet

Applications, Mobile Web Best Practices and more in case any of 

these may be helpful for your consideration. 

Again, I would like to sincerely thank the US Access Board 

for this opportunity to make preliminary comments on the 2011 

ANPRM. Thank you.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: Joshua Brickman, California Technologies. 

Joshua Brickman.

Joshua Brickman: Thank you. My name is Joshua Brickman. 

I work for CA Technologies, formerly known as Computer 

Associates. Computer Associates is the fifth largest independent 

software manufacturer in the world and as such has done a lot of 
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business with the US government, in particular, over the years. 

Over the last four or five years, CA Technologies has been 

working with Paciello Group on improving our products 

accessibility. CA has hundreds of products, many of them 

mainframe, UNIX products, and as well as web and desktop 

products. 

It has been extremely challenging to try and convert existing 

legacy products into meeting Section 508 1.0 and meeting the 

standards of WCAG 2 and what will be 508 2.0 is also seem 

daunting for us. Nevertheless, we have been striving to become a

company that is proud of its accessibility program, and I feel that 

every year, we have been making significant progress. It's 

therefore sometimes frustrating to us as we have been working to 

ensure that our voluntary product accessibility templates are as 

accurate as possible and share information that is not always 

positive about our products. As we present them to procurement 

officers and compare them with our competitors and can see that 

often the quality of the other VPAT's are inconsistent in compared 

to our VPAT's. We know this because we have used the other 

products, and we talked to our customers and prospects. 

So my first comment is regarding enforcement of Section 

508 as it is coming out for version 2.0. I would highly recommend 

that there be some way of validating that VPAT's content is 

correct and that we no longer take vendors at their word. We are 

prepared for this and prepared to provide test results if 
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necessary, and I would highly encourage that as 508 is rolled out 

that there is a way at least have the ability to dig further on 

product claims because it's not a level playing field right now. 

My second comment is related to adoption of accessibility

standards outside of the US government. We have seen as we 

present our products to our potential customers, for example, in 

Canada, that they are very interested in the accessibility of our

products, and they often refer to WCAG 2.0. We present them our 

VPAT's which include WCAG 2.0 test results which we voluntarily 

include even though we are not required to. We do not see this

requirement at all with US commercial companies. It's not 

something that they are interested in. And as such, it's difficult 

for me as the Director of the Accessibility Program at CA to 

encourage product teams to improve their accessibility because 

at the end of the day accessibility to them is considered just 

another non-functional requirement. Our products do not sell 

because they're accessible; their products sell because they 

provide functions that customers want. So it's competing against 

localization; it's competing against internationalizations; it's 

competing against install ability. All this what they call abilities, 

accessibility just one of them. So in order to improve the ability 

to have our products step up, I would highly encourage that 508 

harmonize with -- and I'm not sure whether it's ADA or 

something else -- to ensure commercial entities to adopt the

same standards that US government requires of any companies 
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that wish to sell technology to those agencies. This would 

encourage companies to make it a priority, and it certainly would 

encourage my own product managers to do so. 

My final comment is actually a specific comment regarding 

the ANPRM. Many folks have said some things that I agree with 

so I'm not going to repeat items that have already been said, but 

one little bone for me personally -- and Mike knows this for a long 

time -- has been around documentation section of the standard. 

The current version of Section 508 refers to documentation and 

they mention that alternative format shall be provided upon 

request at no charge. You now have changed it to say alternate 

formats shall be provided upon request which we do commend.

However, I work with lawyers and they still are going to make 

this difficult on me. In the old standard, alternative formats shall 

be provided upon request at no charge, they basically said, "We'll 

never be compliant to that," because they get -- as my lawyer 

like to say -- they get asked for you to put it on the side of an 

elephant. So alternate formats, I would highly recommend that 

simply state exactly what you're looking for. Accessible formats 

shall be provided upon request will be a much better and

appropriate approach, and examples as you provide in other 

sections of the standard would be I think quite useful for the 

reader. 

I yield the rest of my time. Thank you very much.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.
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TIM CREAGAN: Cynthia Waddell.

CYNTHIA WADDELL: My name is Cynthia Waddell and I'm 

the President of the Silicon Valley Independent Living Center in 

San Jose, California, but I'm also the Executive Director of the 

International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet. We 

want to thank you so much for having this public hearing in our 

state. 

My comments today are not being submitted in written form, 

but I will try to be brief. What I would like to draw to your 

attention, the International Center for Disability Resources on the 

Internet is a member of the International Telecommunications 

Union where we're involved in standard setting activity, and of 

course in our work we're very interested in accessibility. We 

would like to draw the Access Board's attention to the Food and 

Drug, FDA guidance that came out last year on mobile medical 

applications, and the guidance was related to the extent that a 

mobile medical application might convert a cell phone or a 

smartphone into a medical device. 

Because of the Food and Drug Administration's regulatory 

authority in medical devices and their comment on mobile 

medical apps for our work in accessibility at the International 

Telecommunications Union, there were questions being asked by 

the telecom industry, to what extent should mobile medical apps 

and cell phones and smartphones that become medical devices be 

accessible? At this point, I just wanted to bring to you to the 
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question that the developer industry is asking whether the Food

and Drug Administration guidance involving mobile medical apps 

shouldn't it involve accessibility? And especially if the medical 

apps are concerned by the Food and Drug Administration, I know 

you're not the Food and Drug Administration, they're concerned 

about the usability and the safety of cell phones being converted 

into medical devices. I will submit to you that the disability 

community is very interested in accessibility. So to the extent 

that there is anything in the Food and Drug Administration 

guidance that you can provide reference to or regarding the 

scope of telecom accessibility needs for mobile apps. I guess I'm 

bringing you to this comment, a combination of comments from -

- we've heard people talk about cell phones and web. As 

technology has quickly moved forward, here we are at this place 

where we're using the mobile medical apps to convert cell phones

into medical devices. And I would submit to you that accessibility 

also needs to be part of this dialogue and the telecom developing 

industry would like to have clarity that mobile medical apps and

smartphones need to have the accessibility to be addressed. 

Section 508 has had made a significant impact internationally I 

must say. 

I just wanted to bring to your attention that the FDA was

involving guidance in this area, so the question on accessibility in 

mobile medical apps. So clarity on the web accessibility 

standards and the need for harmonization is very important. I 
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wanted to be sure that that was before you, that the FDA was 

already doing rulemaking and the international telecom industry 

is wondering about the extent of accessibility for the design of the

telecommunication and the mobile web. 

Thank you very much.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: Peter Korn.

Peter Korn: Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Access Board 

members. Oracle appreciates this opportunity to provide input to 

the Access Board regarding the proposed provisions so as to 

promote improved accessibility in ICT products. 

The 2011 ANPRM contains significant improvements 

compared with the 2010 version. These include incorporating by 

reference numerous industry consortium accessibility standards 

particularly WCAG 2.0 AA; significantly shortening and simplifying 

the provisions making it easier to digest and apply the standard, 

restoring an exception for the important situation in which service 

personnel need to physically interact with ICT for maintenance, 

repair and occasional monitoring; removing the reference to 2200 

in the low vision functional performance criteria which is more 

closely associated with blindness; and modifying most of the 

individual FPC so that they start with the phrase where a blank 

mode of operation is provided as this helps scope the criteria and

making it easier to understand when they should be used. 
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We do, however, have some specific concerns with the 2011 

ANPRM. We described these in more detail in the comments that 

we will be filing. But ahead of that I will summarize the key 

concerns here. WCAG 2.0 defines what a conformance claim is

and when it can be made. WCAG conformance applies to "full web 

pages only," and requires 100% conformance with all of the 

WCAG A, AA, and AAA criteria as appropriate. Complex 

enterprise software is never 100% perfect from any vendor and 

requiring a binary yes/no compliance statement is impractical. An 

application might receive 3,000 hours of attention to accessibility 

and be otherwise an excellent application yet fail because of one 

missing label in an obscure part of the UI. Furthermore, if

agencies are told to compress 33 provisions of WCAG 2.0 AA into 

a single pass/fail, they will be unable to execute their 

responsibility under E202 6 Best Meets in order to procure the 

ICT that is most accessible among a choice of several imperfect 

options. There is significant challenge in utilizing WCAG 2.0 AA 

outside of the web domain as has been mentioned by a number 

of people earlier today. We do not believe it is a straightforward 

task for many of the provisions, for example, checkpoint 241 

bypass blocks which requires a mechanism for bypassing blocks 

of content repeated on multiple web pages or checkpoint 245 

multiple ways which require more than one way be provided for

locating a web page with an a set of web pages. We recognize the 

attraction of leveraging WCAG 2.0 beyond the domain in web 
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pages, and we appreciate that desire. However, it is imperative 

that if WCAG 2.0 AA is to be so used, detailed technical guidance 

on how to do this is first developed by a body of technical experts 

including developers who have created accessibility frameworks, 

accessible platforms, accessible user interface components and 

accessible applications for a broad variety of computing 

environments. Oracle stands ready to participate in such an 

effort. 

With the 2011 ANPRM, the Access Board has changed the 

role of the functional performance criteria making them 

normative in all cases. It is very important that normative 

requirements be objectively testable. The phrase minimizes the 

potential from 3029 minimized photosensitive seizure triggers is 

highly subjective in contrast with the clarity of 4051 general 

where ICT emits late in flashes. There shall be no more than 

three flashes in any one second period. When a phrase such as 

limited reach and limited strength isn't defined from 3028 with 

limited reach and strength or the phrase fine motor control isn't 

defined from 3027 with limited manipulation. It is subjective as to 

whether or not someone with such a limitation can operate a 

device. Contrast this with the provisions from the 2010 ANPRM, 

3074 operation, 30741 activating force which specify the 

maximum measurable activating force and describe the 

prohibited control motions. It is similarly important the 

conformance with normative requirements be measurable without 
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relying on third-party assistive technologies and further relying

on the skill that someone may have with that AT. 

On platforms with multiple AT of the same type, e.g. window 

screen readers, functionality varies significantly from one AT to 

another. One AT may support a particular documented ICT 

accessibility technique such as WAI ARIA while another does not. 

In the web domain, one browser may convey a particular 

documented ICT accessibility technique to the underlying OS such 

as conveying ARIA information via IAccessible2 while another 

does not. 

Finally, we have repeatedly seen a lack of AT expertise on 

the part of users resulting in claims of inaccessibility where more 

experienced users are very successful with the same ICT. 

Subjectivity and dependency on factors and products external to 

the ICT itself make measuring ICT compliance with such criteria 

nearly impossible. We don't believe that these concerns with 

subjectivity and vagueness of the FPCs can be fixed in the 

language of the FPCs themselves without essentially duplicating 

the provisions that are in the technical section. 

We therefore urge the Access Board to restore the role of 

the FPC to what it has historically been for the last decade as 

non-normative performance criteria that are used as needed as 

part of equivalent facilitation claims. 

Finally, while we very much appreciate the restoration of an 

exception related to maintenance, monitor, repair of ICT, we are
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concerned the language of the exception is focused on the 

physical space of the ICT and where it is located rather than the 

function of the ICT. A copier is typically located in common 

spaces utilized by all employees, but fixing a paper jam in that 

copier is a repair function that is likely inaccessible based on the 

design of the copier and the paper path through the copier. 

Larger ICT servers are designed to meet the cooling requirements 

of data centers and the chimney effect of cooling, tall racks of 

equipment and will therefore have physical control surfaces that 

are above the height requirements of 36 CFR Part 1191 Appendix 

D Section 308. But since ICT procurements don't specify that a 

give ICT is located in a maintenance space in the RFP, we cannot 

usually claim the exception for such products. Therefore, we ask 

that this provision be reworded as follows: “Maintenance or 

monitoring functions where the design of ICT functions limits 

physical access and are only for maintenance, repair or occasional 

monitoring, such functions shall not be required to conform to the 

provisions of this document. This part does not apply to controls 

or interfaces of such products where the controls or interfaces 

could be executed remotely or externally.” 

Thank you again for this opportunity to provide comments 

and feedback on the 2011 ANPRM. For nearly 20 years, Oracle 

has been at the forefront of the ICT accessibility field developing 

and implementing accessibility frameworks in our platforms and 

products and through our work in the W3C and ISO accessibility 
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standardization efforts. We have invested literally hundreds of 

thousands of hours in engineering accessible applications. And as 

an active participant in TEITAC and as a major supplier of ICT to 

federal agencies and state governments that use these 

regulations, we are pleased by the opportunities you have 

provided us to be part of the process of developing this update to 

the Section 508 standard. Thank you.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: Okay, we're coming to the last 15 minutes 

allotted for the hearing. I'm just going to go through the list. 

There were two persons who previously signed up which were 

called a couple of times, I think at least one of them is back in 

the room. So after these people have spoken, if anyone else 

wishes to speak, please advise us, or if anyone who has 

previously spoken wishes to get up again, you may do so. Let me 

call the two names. Ed Summers. Okay, Gregg Vanderheiden.

GREGG VANDERHEIDEN: Thank you again for the 

opportunity to come and speak to you. There are a number of 

areas that I want to speak to just very briefly, many of them 

echoing the comments that you just heard and I have a lot of 

agreement with many of the different kinds of things that Peter 

just spoke about including the one about the maintenance areas, 

et cetera that he just read. 

One area where we differ in our opinions is the functional 

performance criteria, so I'll just touch on that, and we also differ 
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on the history. The functional performance criteria were in fact 

normative in the last version and if you look in the preamble to 

the 508, it says that software shall conform to the functional 

performance criteria in chapter x whichever the software chapter 

was, and that's stated right in the preamble in explaining how 

you should apply them. I know that other agencies in the

government have interpreted it separately but in fact the 508 did 

have them, and it had them for a good reason. As we did in our 

previous comments, we can give you examples of designs that 

meet all the functional performance criteria, and in fact are 

completely unusable because the technical performance criteria, 

just pick on this and that and the other thing, but they never 

actually talk about the product as a whole actually being usable 

by anyone. And that's the role of the functional. If you do the 

technical and you do them well, you run by the functional. Some 

people have suggested that the functional performance criteria 

would only be used when the technical were not sufficient. I have 

asked companies and other representatives and the only answer 

that anyone has ever been able to give me as to how one would 

determine that the technical were not sufficient is to use the 

functional performance criteria. There is no other way to tell if the 

technical. So even the interpretation that you do the technical 

and you only need to do it functional if their technical don't cover 

still asks you to go use the functional to figure out if the technical 

were sufficient. However, I agree with him that if there are 
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functional performance criteria, they have to be objective and 

testable or you cannot require somebody to do something when 

you can't tell and they can't tell either one of you if they've 

actually done them or not. And the current functional 

performance criteria may be half or so are worded in a fashion 

that are testable and the other half, as Peter correctly pointed 

out, are not testable. So if they are to be required, they have to 

be made testable. 

Other briefly things, last time I spoke with you with talked 

about WCAG and its application. This was a surprise to see it

applied to both electronic documents and to software and spent a 

lot of time and had many meetings with industry and people in 

other countries, et cetera, examining this topic. My conclusion at 

this point is that it was a rather brilliant stroke especially as we 

look at the trajectory having different rules for software, and for 

web apps, and for electronic content, and for web content; they

are merging so quickly that if you had different rules than within 

five years, people would be sitting there having no idea which set 

of rules to follow. They will be indistinguishable from each other 

soon. So bringing them together we think is a really great idea. I 

was worried that the WCAG because it says web pages and stuff. 

You said it was straightforward and so we decided to go try and

dig in. And it came to, again, the same conclusion that Peter did 

in that it's only straightforward if there is a set of guidelines or 

something that would explain it. It is straightforward to people
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who are really well-versed in all of these and I'm sure that you 

spent a lot of time staring at it and figuring it out. But to the 

amateur, it says web page and they're doing an application. So 

when we did the WCAG, we actually wrote -- it's 14, 15 pages or 

something -- we wrote like 800 pages of support documents 

before we finished writing the 14-page spec because the only way 

to determine that we did WCAG right was to create all of the 

techniques and all of the understanding documents and all of the 

"how to meet" documents, and they are literally large tomes. And 

we did them all first because then we knew that in fact the WCAG 

would work with us because we actually had gone through. 

So we likewise believe that a group should get to come 

together and you shouldn't be doing the application notes after it 

is done, but we should be working on them now. So a group from 

different countries and industry and academia, et cetera, are now 

talking about trying to actually write a manual of how you would 

interpret the WCAG in the application in these other two places as 

quickly as possible to make sure that there isn't something that 

should be reflected in the 508. So that is an activity that will be 

occurring and that will help you to inform your work going 

forward. We have found that there are terms that can be used to 

just substitute for web page and for documents and for software 

that really do seem to work, but we'll wait until we are finished 

with the process, but it does look very, very promising. 
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The closed product section, which really should be closed 

functionality section, is quite broken, and it was broken when the 

TEITAC gave it to you. It was in trouble on the last day of ANPRM 

and it continues to have problems, and so we will be turning in 

some comments to try to do that. The essence of it is if the 

product is closed, then you have to say that it doesn't have to

follow all the AT compatibility provisions and that's not really well 

done. It won't work with AT and yet you still are requiring it to do 

things for AT compatibility. So that needs to be fixed. But the flip 

of that is even more important and that is all of the functionality 

that AT is supposed to provide if it's closed and it doesn't have to 

be compatibility, you have to require that yet provide the basic 

AT functionality. Otherwise, basically, close your product and you 

don't have worry about AT and you also don't have to worry 

about accessibility. So we will figure that part out. 

The two- way voice has some just unfortunate wording 

errors that make some of the provisions not make sense, like a 

display has to be compatible with real time text rather than the 

product with a display. It has to be compatible. Displays can't do 

it by themselves. 

And there were a couple of provisions that were dropped 

that left some parts of industry having to follow it and other parts 

of the industry not having to follow it just because of the choice, 

but we'll provide comments on that. 
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And then finally, just in closing, there is one other bit that 

we think should be in there and covered and that is behavior 

doing failure and during startup and shutdown when there is no 

interaction. So there are times when you are starting the 

computer and shutting it down when you're actually not asking 

the user to interact but when it can't comply and also once it fails 

like it crashes or something like this, if it's in an uncontrolled 

failure rate. So this is just open scoping. We just need to have

something that -- there are places where it is impossible to 

conform, and you might as well just put a tight border around 

them so it doesn't get abused. But we do need to make sure that 

that's covered. 

And then finally the last comment is in organization. You 

have it; it's hardware and software. You have things in hardware 

like biometrics, which is actually that done with voice and facial

recognition and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with 

hardware. They're actually software functions. So they should be 

moved out into a general or an overall. As a matter of fact, the 

entire hardware section only a portion of it is actually hardware 

only. So we would suggest you re-label that whole section as 

being either general or something so that people realize that that 

applies. And you have WCAG provisions way, way up burying you 

in your regulatory scoping area. This should be brought down. If 

software needs to comply to WCAG and a bunch of other 

provisions, you should put that down in the software section, the 
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first provision that shall conform to WCAG. This will also make it 

easier to harmonize with the European efforts where they're 

working on standards, and there is no scoping section of the 

same kind of thing because this is not regulation yet; it's a 

standard. And that will make it easier for people to look at things 

here and things there and make them both the same. So that is 

sort of a quick view of the kinds of things that will be coming, and 

thank you very much for the comments.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.

TIM CREAGAN: We've come to the end of our list of people 

who have signed up. Is there anybody else in the room now who 

wishes to speak? There's someone who has not spoken 

previously. Is there someone putting up his hand? Yes, okay. Sir, 

will you please identify yourself and your affiliation.

Vincent Martin: Hello. My name is Vincent Martin, and I'd 

like to thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am a 

former Georgia Tech employee. Currently, I am a graduate

student. I am pursuing graduate work in Human Computer 

Interaction, but my background is I have multiple engineering 

degrees and also a degree in Engineering Psychology. I am an 

assistant technology practitioner in every sense of the word. I 

designed systems to help myself how to diagnose my own eye 

disease. 

Any rules that we have had for the Access Board or any 

rules that we are going to institute in the future are totally 
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irrelevant if the people that we make the rules for don't have

them enforced. Very few federal agencies help people that 

understand what the rules are or able to follow the rules. 

First, I make part of my living now helping people sue the 

government because the people won't listen. There's one case 

I'm involved where I could have fixed the problem in two days.

It's been going on for a year and a half. It would have taken 

maybe $2,000. It's going to cost the federal government over 

$200,000 in a lawsuit, and it could have been fixed that easy. 

There are agencies where they have no one that understands 

what any of the rules mean. They refuse to pay anybody to

understand what they mean. They could have taken someone like 

me and hired me. They could take the compliance officer that I 

know that would do it, but no one will listen to them so we intend 

to continue to sue until it gets to the point where these people 

are gone. I usuallywrite two reports. The first report is simple 

solutions and simple problems because they normally are simple. 

The second report is the one that is about 200 pages and is

entitled, "The Lawsuit Costs Less Than Accommodation Did." And

if we ever just get to the point of listening to people that know 

what they're doing, we wouldn't have to have these long 

hearings, the software would be accessible, and we wouldn't have 

any problems. Thank you.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you.
Page 59 of 61

TIM CREAGAN: Do we have anyone else in the room who 

wishes to speak? Okay. If you wish to speak, please stand up and 

approach the witness table.

Lisa Irving: Good afternoon. My name is Lisa Irving. I am an

individual. I don't represent anybody but myself. I will start off by 

saying I'm not real computer literate. I understood bits and 

pieces of what I heard today, and I want to thank everybody for 

the presentations. I have a couple of questions and my apologies 

if they have been answered. 

For the individual from Microsoft with regard to keeping up 

with technology and the rapid changes, you would increase 

employment of Persons with Disabilities by increasing your 

accessibility and I want to know with regard to, I think, 

JavaScript, what are your plans to do to tag, make the program 

so JavaScript will have tags on it? I'm sorry if the question 

doesn't make sense. 

I guess my overall comment would be, again, as it relates to

accessibility and employment. I realize a lot of our speakers 

today were commenting on government procurement and 

compliance. Government procurement works if there is money for 

procurement. I am thinking of government agencies like the 

various departments in rehabilitation where their dollars are

limited, and when they purchase semi-accessible technology, 

they're still not able to help people to go to work. There's a 

trickledown effect also of accessible technology, not only does it 
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go from affecting federal employment but it trickles down to the 

nonprofits and individuals who are self- employed. And the 

problem here is that not-for-profits don't have the money to 

purchase technology. And when they do, they want to purchase 

completely accessible technology, not partially accessible

technology. Thank you very much.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you. That is all. We've run out of time. 

We won't be able to take more testimony today. I want to say 

thank you to everybody that have spoken today and please, 

please enter those comments into...

TIM CREAGAN: www.regulations.gov.

NEIL MELICK: Thank you. Make sure those are entered. 

Again, closing for the public, for the comments is March 7th, so 

they need to be in by then. We can't do our work and if those 

that followed this, if you had seen what was in there in the 2010 

advanced notice and what's in the 2011, we made the changes

because of the comments that we've received. We want to make 

this product as good as we can, but we can't make it any better 

without the comments from those that use it, that develop it, and 

produce it. So we want everybody involved to get that 

information out, and I want to thank everybody for those 

comments. Please put that stuff in writing and submit it. Any 

other of the board members want to make any last closing 

remarks?

JOHN BOX: No comments.
Page 61 of 61

GARY TALBOT: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, everybody, 

for your time and coming in and testifying today. Thank you!

NEIL MELICK: Okay, at this time we conclude our public 

hearing, and again thank you all for being here.

End of Hearing