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`

Public Hearing held by the

UNITED STATES ACCESS BOARD

On the

2011 ICT ADVANCE NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING 

(ANPRM).

January 11, 2012

Washington, DC

NEIL MELICK: Good morning, everybody, we will start in about 3 

minutes. 

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our first public hearing for 

the second Advance Notice of Public Rulemaking for Section 508 

standards and 255 guidelines. 

Anyway, just real quick, my name is Neil Melick, and I'm the 

chairman of the ICT ad hoc committee, and will moderate this 

meeting. We want to welcome everybody and are glad to have you 

here and that you are participating. We hope that we receive some 

great comments. Before we actually get started, we just want to let 

everybody have a chance to introduce the Board that is here, and the 

staff. We will start on my left all the way down the table, and come 

across. Just introduce who you have. 

DAVID MURPHY: David Murphy. Department of Defense liaison. 
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DEBORAH RYAN: Deborah Ryan, public member. 

KAREN BRAITMAYER: Karen Braitmayer, public member. 

PHILLIP JENKINS: Phil Jenkins, public member, Austin, Texas. 

TIM CREAGAN: Tim Creagan, Access Board staff. 

NANCY STARNES: Nancy Starnes, public member. 

HANS VAN WINKLE: Hans Van Winkle, public member.

CHRIS HART: Chris Hart, public member. 

JOHN BOX: John Box, public member. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Rose Marie, Access Board staff. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you. I just want to recognize that to my 

right is Nancy, who is the Board Chair so she normally takes charge of 

everything and does a great job, but since this is an ICT issue she is 

going to let me take charge of this one. 

I will at this time turn it over to Tim to go over some slides on the 

rules and procedures. 

TIM CREAGAN: Good morning, everyone. This morning we are 

scheduled to have our public hearing, and the rules that I'm putting up 

on the wall are pretty straightforward, they are supplied at all of the 

public hearings. This is the Second Advance Notice of Proposed 

Rulemaking for the ICT rule. This was originally published in the 

Federal Register on December 8th, 2011. We are now in a public 

comment period which will go through March 7th. This is the first of 

two public hearings which are scheduled for this. The hearing today is 
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scheduled to last from 9:00 a.m., until noon. The other public 

hearing will be held March 1st, at the CSUN conference in San Diego. 

We currently have registered speakers on the docket. We do 

have available spaces. We ask that the public speakers today limit 

their remarks to 5 to 7 minutes each until we get through the list. 

Once we get through the list, we will open the comments up to anyone 

in the room, and to anyone on the phone who wishes to speak. 

You should notify the staff at the registration desk in the back of 

the room if you want to testify and you have not preregistered. 

And please, turn off or silence your cell phones. As much as we 

are talking about technology, we don't want it to interrupt your 

testimony today. 

(Laughter.) 

TIM CREAGAN: We will be keeping a transcript of today's 

proceedings. The captioning which you see, is a real time 

accommodation which is being provided for the duration of the hearing 

only. The remarks which people make will be posted on 

Regulations.gov which is the official docket for this proceeding. For 

more information and the specific docket number, you can go to the 

Access Board website, and you can follow the links to Regulations.gov 

to follow the proceedings on line. We ask that you refrain from 

reacting to the public comments today. We appreciate all of the 

comments we hear. We appreciate that many of you have made time 
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to come here or call in. 

So with that, I would like to turn this back over to the chair. 

NEIL MELNICK: Thank you, Tim. I too want to thank everybody;

we are really excited about these public hearings. Again this is our 

second Advance Notice. We held public meetings for the first Advance 

Notice. If it wasn't for the input and the comments, the standards

and guidelines would not be as advanced as they are. We take this 

seriously and want to take those comments. That is why we will be 

listening today and not really getting involved in discussions, so we will 

be listening and taking in that input. We really seriously use that 

input. At this time we want to also recognize that we wouldn't be 

where we were if it weren't for the efforts of those involved in the 

TEITAC. And I believe we have some of the TEITAC members here. 

I believe both chairs are here today. Would you stand up and be 

recognized those that actually helped us get started in the ad hoc 

committee. Thank you. 

TIM CREAGAN: Mike Paciello and Jim Tobias were the co-chairs of 

the TEITAC. And thank you to those members of the TEITAC who are 

present or calling in today. 

NEIL MELICK: They did a tremendous amount of work and made 

our job a lot easier, so at this time we will go ahead and start with the 

public comments. Again, we will not be reacting and responding, we 

are just taking the stuff in. So Judy Brewer, I think is the first one, 
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and she is on the line. 

JUDY BREWER: [No connection. A ringing noise is heard.]

NEIL MELICK: There is a technical issue. We are trying to figure 

out where the ring is coming from. Is Judy there? Is Judy on? 

Judy, can you hear us? 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: It is disconnected, I don't even see 

Judy's name on there. This is the Access Board. Operator. 

Operator, come in. 

NEIL MELICK: Lost the call. 

NANCY STARNES: We are working on it. 

TIM CREAGAN: This is Tim; I just got a text from Judy saying

that they just lost sound on their end, so this is a technical glitch. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Mark Richert are you in the room? If 

you are ready, please take the witness stand. 

MARK RICHERT: Is this it? Is this fine? 

NEIL MELICK: Yes. 

MARK RICHERT: Good morning, my name is Mike Richert. I am 

the Public Policy director for the National Foundation for the Blind and 

it is a pleasure to be here this morning. 

NEIL MELICK: Move the mike just a little closer. 

MARK RICHERT: Thank you. Before I begin, I just want to thank 

all of you who have been involved in this, particularly, folks who have 

been in the leadership in TEITAC, all of the folks who participated in 
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that process, and certainly, the Access Board staff, who do yeoman's 

work and are often forgotten when it comes time for offering thanks. 

So it is a tremendous amount of work. It has been literally years’

worth of incredible efforts, so thank you very much for that. NFB is 

going to be offering written comments in addition to hopefully 

testifying at CSUN. The purpose today is not to only address specifics 

within the ANPRM, but frankly to address the Access Board. Really it 

is more about addressing, we feel, the posture that frankly this 

administration seems to be taking with respect to rulemaking when it 

comes to technology. 

We are now dealing with a second ANPRM, in as many years. We 

hear that the process moving forward to develop an NPRM and 

ultimately to wind our way to a final rule is going to take eventually 

even maybe even a couple more years. This is not so much the 

Access Board’s problem --coming up -- what I'm going to mention, but 

it is worth noting here--- there are pending rule makings in a number 

of areas which overlap with the work that the Access Board is trying to 

do with respect to Section 508. Justice is still wrestling with an 

equipment rulemaking. That too was posed as an ANPRM and we 

were promised that there would be some sort of movement with 

respect to equipment accessibility by late last fall. There was an 

ANPRM that was done with respect to web accessibility. That was put 

off, we feel unnecessarily, until December of this year, and God knows 
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if we will see that. 

Over and over again, there seems to be a posture being taken 

which is to say, let's make the most of the rulemaking process instead 

of trying to get to a final rule. We hope that that is not the 

motivation. But all indications seem to be that there isn't the kind of 

dispatch being taken with respect to getting ourselves to a point where 

we have concrete rules in this area. 

And we feel that is a real problem. We are very disappointed by 

that. Now, I began these remarks by thanking everyone for their 

work, and we realize that over the course of the next 6 to 9 months to 

try to get to an NPRM, let alone farther down the field is going to be an 

incredible task. But we strongly, with all that we -- with all that we 

have, urge that we move that process forward. We feel there is 

absolutely no reason, none in the world, why we shouldn't be looking 

at, at least an NPRM within 6 months, and anything that can be done 

to coordinate that effort, to the extent that coordination is necessary 

with other branches of this government, particularly Justice as they 

hopefully move forward with all deliberate speed on their rulemaking 

processes, we hope that that happens as well. 

Thank you very much for listening. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you for your comments. Do we have the 

lines back up? 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: If you pause one second we do need to 
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dial back into the main teleconference room. 

NEIL MELICK: Okay. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, could you locate Judy Brewer, 

and unmute. 

OPERATOR: And you wanted me to locate whom? 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Judy Brewer. 

OPERATOR: Do you want to talk to her or let you know that she 

is here. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Unmute Judy Brewer: 

OPERATOR: They will hear you, I will join you now. 

NEIL MELICK: Great. 

(Music) 

NEIL MELICK: Judy, are you there? 

JUDY BREWER: This is Judy Brewer are you able to hear me? 

NEIL MELICK: Yes, Judy, could you go ahead. 

JUDY BREWER: Okay, thank you for this opportunity to comment 

with regard to the U.S. Access Board's 2011 Advanced Notice of 

Proposed Rulemaking on Section 508, 255 and the Americans with 

Disabilities Act guidelines. My name is Judy Brewer. I direct the web 

accessibility initiative at the Worldwide Web Consortium, W3C which is 

the standards organization for the web. I would like to express my 

appreciate to the Access Board for its careful attention to W3C’s June 

2010 comments on the Access Board's 2010 ANPRM, and for the 
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Board's attention to the many comments received with regard to web 

accessibility and electronic content. 

My preliminary comments today will be followed by more detailed 

written comments before the end of this comment period, and I 

wanted to just check for a moment that you can hear me okay. 

NEIL MELICK: Yes. 

JUDY BREWER: Okay, thank you. Many commenters on the 

2010 ANPRM expressed concern over the Board's initially proposed 

approach to web accessibility, which had changed some wording in 

some provisions from the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 

2.0, that is WCAG 2.0, and in places had mixed some conformance 

levels. That approach would have fragmented international web 

accessibility standards and created conflicting requirements for 

industry implementers. In contrast, the 2011 ANPRM proposes 

incorporation of WCAG 2.0 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 2.0 at a double A level provides significant 

accessibility for people with disabilities and older people. This 

approach provides a more feasible conformance scenario for industry, 

and it increases opportunities for efficiencies among government 

organizations that can more readily share training and technical 

assistance resources. 
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I want to acknowledge some variability in use of the term 

"harmonization". In the 2011 ANPRM the preamble contains 

subsection 6, “WCAG 2.0 Incorporation by Reference Rather than 

Harmonization”. I would like to clarify that many people in the field 

consider “incorporation by reference” to be one of the best approaches 

to achieving standards harmonization rather than being something 

other than harmonization. Incorporation of WCAG 2 by reference 

would help protect against fragmented interpretations of web 

accessibility provisions by federal and state governments as well as 

governments of other countries. 

We urge other organizations to replicate “incorporation by 

reference” as a preferred approach to harmonization wherever 

possible. We note with interest the Access Board's question number 5 

regarding potential overuse of the WCAG 2 provision for conforming 

alternative versions and hope to provide a pro perspective on this in 

later comments. We also note with interest the Board's question 

number 9 regarding accessibility guidance for user interface 

components and content platforms and applications and note the 

availability of relevant guidance in W3C User Agent Accessibility 

Guidelines 2.0. We also note and appreciate the Board's attention to 

the important role of accessibility supporting web authoring tools in 

leveraging more efficient production of accessible web content and 

electronic content by federal agencies. Again, I would like to sincerely 
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thank the U.S. Access Board for this opportunity to make preliminary 

comments on the 2011 ANPRM, and look forward to providing 

additional comments in writing. Thank you. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you, Judy. We are looking forward to those 

comments as well. Okay. 

JUDY BREWER: Thank you. 

NEIL MELICK: Are we going to go back on line? Okay. Duff 

Johnson. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, please mute Judy Brewer, and 

locate Duff Johnson. 

OPERATOR: Thank you, Duff Johnson. 

DUFF JOHNSON: [No response]

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Duff Johnson, are you on the line? 

OPERATOR: I don't have a Duff Johnson. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Okay, thank you. 

NEIL MELICK: Then we move on to Jennifer Dexter. I think she 

is here. No? 

TIM CREAGAN: No, she is not in the room. 

NEIL MELICK: Okay, let's go down to Gregg Vanderheiden. No?

Okay, Lauren McLARNEY. 

LAUREN McLARNEY: Hi, good morning, my name is Lauren 

McLARNEY. I’m a Government Program Specialist at the National 

Federation of the Blind. We are the nation's oldest organization of the 
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blind with 50 state affiliates plus DC and Puerto Rico. I would like to 

thank the Board for working so diligently on the Refresh and the 

feedback from the 2010 ANPRM. We are grateful to participate in the 

dialogue and are satisfied with the dialogue between the NFB and the 

Board since undertaking this Refresh. For blind Americans,

inadequate access standards and widespread noncompliance has led to 

a perceived systematic failure of government agencies to meet their 

legal obligations under Section 508. Our members regularly call our 

headquarters to report their frustrations. Dr. Jonathan Lasar's study 

released earlier this year illustrated the point. Because of this, it is 

critical that the Board works on this update and finalizes the rule as 

soon as possible, so there will be more robust standards and so we can 

work with 508 coordinators to ensure that they are implemented 

properly. For my testimony today I'm going to briefly touch on the 

feedback we are going to submit in more detail in writing before the 

March 7th deadline, most of which falls under the 9 questions posed in 

the ANPRM. 

First, as noted in question 1, the Board has made significant 

changes to the structure of the proposed rules and we are very 

satisfied with those changes. The draft guidelines were much more 

succinct and therefore much easier to comprehend and evaluate, so 

thank you for making my job a little easier. Second, as noted in 

question 4 the proposed guidelines require conformance with the
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functional performance criteria -- even when technical provisions are 

not met. 

We are extremely happy with this requirement. Including a 

performance standard and understanding its purpose is fundamental to 

achieving true accessibility and developing robust standards, so we 

anticipate seeing this requirement in the final rule. Third as noted in 

question 2 and in the preamble there are 9 types of official 

communications by federal agencies that are required to be accessible,

and two remaining exceptions. While we are happy that the three 

earlier exceptions were removed we still have concerns about the 

remaining 2. Exception 1 reads that electronic content of any of the 

above types of communications stored solely for archival purposes or 

retained solely to retain the exact image of the original hard copy shall 

not be required to conform to the provisions of this document. We 

urge you to edit this so only archival content that is internal, or not

public facing, is exempt. Public facing content should be accessible on 

line where the public can access them and we need to ensure that 

option of access is preserved for blind people. 

Exception 2, reads: Works in progress and drafts that are not 

public facing, and these are intended for limited internal distribution 

shall not be required to conform to the provisions. What if an agency 

has a blind employee that needs access to a draft or is working on the 

draft before it is released to the public? Even though most drafts are 
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internal it still needs to be accessible to disabled employees, so this 

exemption needs to be edited to reflect that right. Fourth, as noted in 

question 3, the Board changed the approach to functional performance 

criteria and requires a feature be provided for low vision users. While 

we are happy with the approach the language regarding “contrast” in 

Section 402.4 is too vague and therefore may not actually provide 

accessibility to low vision users. It currently reads that “characters 

shall contrast with their background with either light characters on a 

dark background or dark characters on a light background.” 

Light-on-dark and dark-on-light is too vague. We urge the Board to 

adopt the WCAG contrast ratio, which calls for a minimum luminosity

color ratio of 3:1. Fifth as noted in question 5, the Board expressed 

concern about allowing conforming alternate versions that -- that may 

facilitate two separate websites -- one for the disabled and one for the 

nondisabled. We share this concern. There is no effective way of 

ensuring that content and functionality on the alternate site will always 

be identical to the main web page. The NFB does not approve of any

approach to accessibility that perpetuates discrimination -- so we urge 

you to restrict the use of conforming alternate versions. 

The language for E205.3, and E202.6.2, requires an alternative 

means that "meets individual needs." We prefer the stronger language 

used in other parts of the ANPRM requiring substantially equivalent or 

greater access to and use of data and information. We assume that 
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that is there in spirit because it appears in other parts of the ANPRM 

but we want to make sure that that is the standard for alternative 

means. 

Sixth, we encourage the Board to address refreshable braille 

technology in section 408.6. In implementing guidelines for real-time 

text functionality the Board should revise the language to require ICT 

to interoperate outsides of its closed system with refreshable braille 

technology to allow deaf-blind users to utilize real time text systems.

Finally I would like to address the Board's decision to postpone 

coverage to self-service machines. We strongly object to this 

decision. It is critical that the Board extend the ADA guidelines to 

kiosks during this rulemaking. Technology is moving at such a rapid 

rate that every year this initiative is delayed, more and more 

inaccessible machines are deployed in more and more venues. We 

are already seeing self-service machines in restaurants and museums 

replacing traditional checkout lines at pharmacies and grocery stores. 

DOT just closed their comment period for their rulemaking to address 

airport kiosks, and the Access Board should do the same with other 

self-service kiosks. This is an urgent need for the disability 

community considering the proliferation of this type of technology. 

Honestly, the government is already behind in developing standards to 

address the inaccessibility of kiosks. 

This concludes my testimony. Thank you for your time. The 
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National Federation of the Blind looks forward to working together on 

the next steps. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you, Lauren. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Duff Johnson, operator. And unmute. 

OPERATOR: There is not a Duff Johnson on the phone. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Could you unmute “GUS Johnson” and 

ask if that is “Duff Johnson”. 

OPERATOR: I'm sorry what was the name? 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: “GUS Johnson”. And unmute. 

OPERATOR: Your line is unmuted. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Duff Johnson is that you? 

DUFF JOHNSON: Thanks very much, should I start? 

Mr. Chairman my name is Duff Johnson. I'm the U.S. chair for 

ISO 14289, the forthcoming international standard for accessible PDF, 

with a discussion of how PDF, the electronic document PDF/UA format 

relates to WCAG 2.0 and the ANPRM of the Section 508. I’m here to 

deliver the message of how WCAG can find expression in PDF

technology when PDF files and software to read it both conform to 

PDF/UA, should the Access Board adopt it as the applicable technical 

standard whenever the standards would regard WCAG 2.0 level AA, be 

applicable to a given PDF page, form or software application. 

Comments to the Proposed -- Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 

will be provided in a file communication prior to the end of the current 
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comment period. 

I last appeared before the Access Board to report on the progress 

of PDF in May 2010. ISO was finalized in December of 2011, in 

Bellevue, Washington. The final draft of the international standard or 

FDIS will be distributed shortly. A complete mapping of what WCAG 

2.0 success criteria apply, with the PDF subsections and paragraphs, is

nearing completion. Following the final completion the PDF/UA will be 

formally published in the ISO website in 2012. PDF is imminent, 

supporting the new ISO standard for -- nonetheless, some vendors are 

already planning -- 14289 as WCAG 2.0 for PDF. PDF format is no 

longer owned or controlled by Adobe Systems. Since 2008, PDF has 

been managed by the international standards process, ISO 32,000, 

that committee which I have the honor and responsibility of serving as 

project co-leader with my colleague. We expect to publish some time 

in 2013, or 2014. 

The Access Board notes PDF has a checkered past in the area of

accessibility. Prior to 2000, there was literally no way to make an 

accessible PDF file. The essential semantic structures to build up 

paragraphs from words didn't exist in Adobe's portable format 

document until PDF reference 1.3 was published by Adobe. 

In -- reliability and flexion interest, the PDF is internally complex. The 

technology includes broad capabilities that go well beyond the simple 

printed pages; PDF conceptual and operational challenges take a long 
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time to resolve. “Why did it take so long to produce 23 pages,” it is a 

fair question. The answer part is that PDF reference 1.7, which 

defined PDF in 2007, became ISO 32,000 in 2008 right in the middle 

of PDF development. The greater impact to the schedule, to the 

publication of WCAG 2.0, also published in 2008, the general 

acceptance of WCAG 2.0 -- caused the committee to rewrite major 

sections of PDF QA from scratch and entirely -- embody WCAG 2.0 in 

the context of -- I want to remind the Board of the unique position of 

PDF with respect to electronic documents in general, and government 

documents in particular. Any application that can print can make a 

PDF. It is critical to recognize that the self-contained flexible paperlike PDF includes quality that the marketplace thinks is vital, also 

making accessible PDF a challenge for software developers. It is an 

unavoidable challenge-- the needs of successful PDF reflect accurately 

the very features -- reflects accurately the features in the PDF

universal electronic document formats everywhere in Section 508 

reaches. The Access Board knows this well. The notice posted on 

the Access Board site includes a link to an appropriately acceptable 

PDF -- at the very top of the page. 

The new technology is relied on largely -- because PDF delivers a

reliable multiplatform viewing and printing experience as a “hardcopy 

reference”. It’s an objective fact that PDF is regarded as the default 

final-form electronic document format for formal or closely designed 
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content. The Association for Electronic Content Management, 

received recommendations from the US interests in international 

standards that the electronic content at the ISO level, ISO 14289 is 

not for end users -- the standard details obligations for both software 

developers and content authors. Many possible software features,

functions and user interface experiences are possible in accomplishing 

PDF requirements. PDF/UA very deliberately does not prescribe any 

specific software interface. It is up to the developer, using WCAG 2.0, 

supported by PDF/UA to comply with WCAG 2.0 level AA. A draft 

mapping detailing the correspondence at the Success Criteria level 

between WCAG 2.0 and PDF/UA is posted on AIIM’s PDF Standards 

wiki. This mapping will be available for the general public in the first 

half of 2012, and implementation guide later in the year. Two years 

ago, I told the Access Board that PDF/UA would be published in early 

2012 -- that was slightly optimistic. I cannot say with confidence that

the standard, an official mapping tool of WCAG 2.0, and the

implementation guide for PDF UA will be completed in 2012. I can say 

that the association created the -- will shortly launch a working group 

to develop validation. 

I can say that vendors agree that PDF/UA conformance is a means 

to accomplish WCAG 2.0 level AA conformance with the PDF file 

software. Several vendors have already committed to supporting 

PDF/UA, including Adobe and instant messenger. The free PDF/UA
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validator with support in donations from -- Net Centric and others, 

several -- expressed interest in PDF/UA including the British standard 

and German standard group. Organizations such as the AFB are also 

following these efforts. In my conclusion, I will say that PDF/UA in

about 20 pages, provides authoritative restrictions and affirmative 

requirements on the accessible usage of PDF, which is formerly known 

as ISO --

NEIL MELICK: Mr. Johnson. 

DUFF JOHNSON: Like PDF itself you don't have to know how it 

works to – appreciate the results. Thank you for this opportunity, 

making progress towards an international standard for accessible PDF. 

2012 will be the year of PDF/UA. I have included a list of references 

in the remarks, and as I mentioned, the proposed changes to the 

ANPRM to mention PDF/UA, and appropriate settings will be 

forthcoming before the end of the comment period. Thank you very 

much. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you, Mr. Johnson, thank you for your 

comments. Okay. Jennifer Dexter has shown up, so if Jennifer will 

come up. 

JENNIFER DEXTER: [Approaching the witness table]

NEIL MELICK: Walks in the door and we bring you right in. 

TIM CREAGAN: No waiting. 

JENNIFER DEXTER: Hi everyone. I'm going to start by apologizing 
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I'm in day one of new progressive lenses so if I'm going like this [holds 

paper at arm’s length] that is why. It happens to the best of us. 

Good morning, everybody, I know many of you but for those of you 

who don't know me, I am Jennifer Dexter. I'm the assistant vice 

president for government relations at Easter Seals. I was also a 

proud member of the ITAAC and TEITAC. And my role today will not 

be to address the technical details but more the policy objectives of 

the overall goal of Section 508, 255 and keep our eye on the ball 

about what it really means for people with disabilities. 

Easter Seals has a long history of working with government to 

assure that people with disabilities have access to all aspects of 

society, including information technology. I really do want to 

commend the work of the Access Board and the changes made in the 

ANPRM I think are very positive ones and are inching ever closer to 

having a sustainable consistent approach to access to technology that 

will always serve to help us later on. 

Ultimately, what I hope is that the goal of all of this work is that 

communication information is provided in a timely way and in a 

manner that protects the privacy, and the independence of individuals 

with disabilities. That language is kind of taken from the Department 

of Justice, and many of us in the consortium have been using that as 

kind of a gold standard. It also should lead to a status where all 

people with disabilities can have consistent expectations about what 
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information they should expect to easily access and how that access 

will be achieved, whether they are at the DMV or at the Sprint store. 

As to the specific questions in the ANPRM, I have a few points to 

share. I would like to start by saying that about question 1 I think 

the goal of streamlining and clarifying is a laudable one, and I don't 

think that the changes you made will weaken the expectation of 

access, so I do support that. 

For the question regarding the categories of information, I would 

like to say that the list is solid as long as it is interpreted relatively 

broadly -- as in many things the devil is in the details. I could not 

think of things that didn't fit into those categories that were laid out 

but if they are defined more narrowly or interpreted I could see that 

things would be excluded. There is a difference between these 

requirements and individual accommodations. 

This also came up when you were raising the issue about 

maintenance areas. For instance, it is clear that if you have an 

employee who is the network manager and needs to access the server 

farm, you might have to work with that individual in a way to make 

the maintenance area accessible for that person to achieve the job, 

but that may not be the starting point. 

So it is just kind of making clear that there are -- that individual 

accommodations are different, or that they don't get precluded by the 

things that are in the ANPRM. 
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Another area was the vision standards. I think one important 

thing here is to make sure it's clear that functional access is a priority 

and that access through assistive technology is a secondary option. 

There is a stratification there, otherwise we will have a fall back on 

assistive technology too often, and that will kind of limit innovation in 

ways to get direct access where it can be achieved. 

There is no issue in the area of the relationship between functional 

and technical provisions too. I think that we will have access defined 

as access after you go through steps X, Y and Z -- the sticky keys 

option is often used there. It is accessible if you turn on the sticky 

keys option in the kiosk -- well somebody might not be able to know 

that, or do that. It may be burdensome, and could, and again, that 

could hinder the innovation that could lead to more direct access for 

things that maybe aren't possible right now, so setting what is a goal,

what is achievable, and kind of making sure that is clear, is important. 

The alternate web pages issue is, I think, another one where the 

devil is in the details. There needs to be assurance that there is clear, 

obvious, and constant information and guidance on accessing 

alternative pages, and that there is a true strength of equality and no 

way any tearing down of the information or the experience. 

“Watering down” --that is one for the technical experts to solve in 

terms of how you achieve that, but that is kind of like what I would 

like to see as the end product. 
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The last thing I wanted to comment on was the question about 

tablet access in the back of tactilely discernible keyboards --it is a 

good question. I think it really shows that we need to recognize the 

pace of technological evolution and the need to keep up with it. For 

people with disabilities, for whom a tablet offers a good alternative, I 

think we need to recognize that there is some equivalency there, while 

not letting the makers of traditional keyboards off the hook for a 

tactilely integrated environment. 

The world of disabilities is large, and diverse, and particularly in 

the area of communications technology, where I think the emphasis 

can tend to be on those with disabilities affecting vision and hearing. 

We need to recognize that there can be a variation and we will need to 

be flexible and be responsive to that. That's a tough one but I just 

wanted to really just make that point. 

I would also like to say that we think that the work of the WCAG 

2.0 is positive and dynamic and a good thing to tie our work to. I

think it helps with the progress of technology in keeping up with it. It 

allows us to be tied to something that gives you some technical 

specifications without having to go through this process constantly. 

So those are the points I wanted to make. Thank you for your 

time. Do we have a question period now, or -- I would be happy to 

take them. 

NEIL MELICK: At this time, we are just taking comments, thanks 
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Ms. Dexter. We are going to go back to try to get Gregg 

Vanderheiden. Is he...? 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, locate Gregg Vanderheiden, 

and unmute. 

OPERATOR: His line is unmuted. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Thank you. 

GREGG VANDERHEIDEN: Hello this is Gregg, can you hear me. 

NEIL MELICK: We sure can, you can proceed. 

GREGG VANDERHEIDEN: Well thank you very much for holding 

this hearing. The re-structuring that was done was a major overhaul, 

total reorganization, and it has many benefits. It also has some 

unintended problems that were introduced, and I will highlight those in 

a minute, but first I wanted to say that overall it is much cleaner. It 

is easier to understand. A number of places, a bunch, a set of 

detailed provisions were boiled down, and to their essence, and you 

were able to capture most or all of it in the simpler format and this is 

really great. The incorporation of WCAG for documents and web 

content, and web apps, is a major improvement. You will need to 

create an application note to cover a few places where it may not be 

obvious to some people how you translate between web and 

documents. For example, a web page is equivalent to an electronic 

document. Not a page in a document. So things like that. These 

notes are fairly straightforward and relatively easy, but they will help 
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get around problems where people are looking at a document, and the 

language in the provision sounds like it is addressing only a website. 

Industry will appreciate your moving the design process 

requirements out of the requirements, if you will, and into advisory 

notes, and focusing more on outcomes rather than designating 

process. 

The FPC, the functional performance criteria, are restored where 

required. As we pointed out in the comments, this is necessary, since 

it is very easy to design inaccessible products. It needs a technical 

guideline when they are used alone. Advancing technology is going to 

cause this to happen even more. We will comment in more detail 

later but tablet computers, for example can be addressed fairly well 

with the guidelines you already have. If the -- if they are 

straightened out, if you will. 

The old guidelines would have covered it with the -- and the new 

ones will when they are fixed. Unfortunately, with the restructuring 

and the deletion of provisions, a large number of provisions were 

deleted, and when you read this over the first time, you don't notice 

what is not there. So it looked really great, and it was only on very 

careful analysis that we found some sort of structural flaws that are 

subtle, but very serious, and we need to address them. 

First there are two problems that existed before that still haven't 

been addressed. The closed product section, as we commented the 
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last time was broken, and it remains broken. This was not your fault. 

We broke it as part of the TEITAC. It was broken in the TEITAC report 

when it came in. We did work out a way to solve it, and sent text last 

summer for how to do that. 

But that may have been too late in your process and it wasn't 

used. But the current version actually made it worse. It is likely that 

most products that were designed following just the closed products 

guidelines would not be accessible to many of the people intended, 

and we will provide illustration of that and some more information on

how to do that. 

A second thing was testability. The functional permanence 

criteria were untestable. Requiring them, but not making them 

testable, is going to be a problem, because it is hard to say that you 

must follow something. Now, this is a problem even if it were used 

the old way where you said, “Well, if the technical weren’t met, we 

would use the functional performance criteria to evaluate the 

functional equivalence.” You can't do that either if they are not, if you 

can't tell if you have passed them or not. The language on the 

current ones moved it actually away from testability, and so those 

need to be worked on. In fact some of them now, if you have 

something that is very accessible, you can't meet the guidelines 

because they require, for example, if you have something with a 

digital system, has got no noise, you are required to have a 
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mechanism to reduce the noise, and if there isn't any, you know, how 

do you conform to it? Things like that. 

A number of the other provisions -- one was mentioned earlier, 

contrast, et cetera, were in a testable form, and now they have been 

changed into a form where it says that things must be light or dark. 

You can't require people to make something lighter than something 

else if you don't tell them how much, so we need to get testable back 

in there. 

Now, one of the things you did that was really good that caused a 

problem, is the -- you took the web and you pulled it and you said let's 

use WCAG, and then you said let's use WCAG for web apps and let's 

use WCAG as a test for documents, and that was great. But you then 

took all of those provisions out of the guidelines but you didn't cover 

the regular applications, so all of those provisions that you removed 

because you no longer needed them for web apps, et cetera, still 

needed to be there for software. So as a result, most, or a large 

percentage of the provisions that dealt with how to make software 

accessible are now missing. I have been trying to see if there is a 

structural way of handling that, if there is something that we can use 

to get those things back out, or if they need to be put back in 

explicitly, but in doing this very nice thing for these other three areas, 

you actually took them all out, and the accessibility provisions that are 

there having to do with AT compatibility, many of the guidelines that 
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you took out are the parts that have to be there for the AT to work. 

So if they are not there, it doesn't do any good to make what's left be 

AT compatible, because it will not, it will not work, and it is too 

technically complicated to go into here. 

NEIL MELICK: Mr. Vanderheiden, you need to wrap up as time is 

running short. 

GREGG VANDERHEIDEN: Okay, two other quick ones, all of the 

communication related requirements are related in hardware at a time 

when we are moving all of our communications to software. So it 

basically means that none of the software-related communication 

products will have to be accessible. And none of the software ones 

will work with any of the hardware ones. So if you make a phone call, 

you have to know whether or not the person at the other end you are 

calling is on a hardware, or software communication device, et cetera, 

so that needs to be fixed, also captioning, telephony support, et 

cetera. Having said all of this, I still think that the basic approach has 

great merit, and even when the needed provisions and fixes are in 

place, this organization and structure I think can work, and make it 

easier for people to apply and use. We need to be a little careful that 

we don't get back into the approach of separating things out into 

categories, because we are going to see things blending back together. 

It will be somewhat longer, but I think we can retain the modularity

that you thus deduced. I think you need to have an extended 
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comment period, however, because I think some of the issues that are 

going to be raised are going to take time to work through, and it would 

be good to have time to discuss them with other groups in the 

industry, et cetera. In coming back in, thank you very much for the 

opportunity to address you. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you, Mr. Vanderheiden. Next, I think we 

have Brian Landrigan. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, can you locate Brian 

Landrigan. Okay. Operator, can you locate Jon Gunderson. 

OPERATOR: Yes, one moment. I don't have him. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, can we go to 

Jim Tobias, then. 

NEIL MELICK: Yes, we will go to Jim, Jim is here. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Thank you, operator. 

JIM TOBIAS: Thank you all very much for the opportunity to talk 

with you a little bit this morning about the ANPRM. I'm going to be 

submitting detailed comments later, but I would like to go over just a 

few things that especially might be valuable to having members of the 

Board all here at once. I don't want to be, you know, too fear 

inducing, but I think you have to consider if the Refresh schedule that 

we are currently on is repeated the next time, we are going to be 

looking at trying to guess now what technologies will be in use 10, 12, 

15 years from now. That's pretty impossible to do. And I think we 
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have two opportunities, I guess. One is to try to get it right for that 

long a period now, and the other is to use what was suggested during 

the TEITAC process, which is kind of a rolling Refresh so that you can 

identify compliance issues with technologies as they begin to emerge, 

and either develop some comprehensive guidance materials for use by 

designers and consumers, something that says, well using the current 

provisions, this new kind of product fits under these following 

provisions, and these following design solutions are acceptable ways of 

complying, or the more arduous and probably difficult option to 

actually develop new provisions to cover those gaps. 

Also, I think it is important for the Board to understand that the 

provisions that you develop will be used in other proceedings, so we 

are already seeing references to Section 508 and 255 in proceedings 

under the ADA, and Department of Labor, Office of Federal Compliance 

Contract programs, Department of Transportation, FCC, and others. 

So you might want to talk with Judy Brewer about what it is like to 

have provisions developed for the context of use that you had in mind, 

and other people come along and say, “Yeah we are going to use those 

as well.” 

You know, there is a little unexpected extension going on. The 

other non-technological issue I would like to talk about is the technical 

assistance that the Access Board is required to provide even under the 

statutory language. So I would ask you to consider how you are 
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going to prepare for the use of these new provisions, the new 

regulations. One of the most salient points is that instead of having 

product categories, you now have basically provisions sort of by 

feature, or by characteristic of a number of different products, and 

while this I think, everyone agrees is a better approach, a more 

approach that is easier to extend to products that are similar, or 

products that may be emerging, it makes it a problem for people who 

are new to the domain. So if I am a junior designer in company X, 

and I'm told to deal with 508, I can't look at 508 anymore and say well 

we make TVs, so where is the TV section. All right, it is spread 

throughout, hardware, software, web, who knows what. So I would 

ask you to consider who the users of these regulations are, the many 

audiences, and how you can facilitate the adoption, and interpretation, 

and rendering of the regulations in the most intelligent, and 

manageable, and accessible, if you don't mind my using that word in 

another context -- manner, so that they can figure out what it is that 

they are supposed to be doing, and do it well. 

Similarly, the Access Board is the target, or the recipient of many 

technical assistance requests, and I would ask you to consider a 

manner of collecting these requests for information and responding to 

them but also developing a repository of answers, you know, FAQs, or 

frequently asked questions from users, from designers about how they 

should interpret the regulations, and publish that information as 
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broadly as possible. 

In doing this, you might want to cooperate with other federal 

information resources on accessible technology. I'm sure you are 

aware of the FCC's information clearinghouse, and Job Accommodation 

Network, and other information resources about technology that need 

the kind of information that you will be generating, and can also 

provide information to you. 

So there are three more or less technical areas that I want to 

comment on as well. The cognitive disability issue, is a major 

problem, and it really does need to be addressed, I was disappointed 

to see it pretty much slip off the screen in the current ANPRM. I feel 

strongly that it needs to have a functional performance criterion. You 

have several suggestions already on how that could be written. 

Regarding the objections that many have made and proven that 

cognitive disabilities -- there are few techniques that are available, 

however, it should be true that one of the intended effects of the 

regulations is to drive testability, is to encourage industry and 

researchers to figure out, how do we address the needs of those 

consumers in ways that are feasible to implement in the industry. In 

the meantime there are some testable items. I would especially 

encourage you to focus on the plain language requirements, there is a 

Plain Language Act of 2010, in fact, that establishes a plain language 

lead officer in every agency. There are techniques of plain language 
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development, and testing and what have you. 

Another suggested provision is the consistent use of language 

terms and icons so that people are not confused by, you know, a word 

means something in one context and something else in another 

context. 

And I believe the WCAG 2.0 provisions include some language with 

benefit to users with cognitive disabilities. 

Handheld products are a category that existed the last time you 

went around developing provisions, but they weren't as dominant as 

they are now. You know, when I refer to handheld products it is all of 

the things that we use now, sometimes in greater frequency than 

desktop products, or you know, permanent means to all products, and 

we know people with impaired dexterity have difficulty with these 

products. You have to fish them out of pockets or purses, and you 

have to hold them into view of proper orientation, you have to hold 

them with one hand and use them with another hand and the keys are 

getting smaller and smaller, and then you have to return them to the 

pocket or purse, and none of these requirements were considered 

under TEITAC. I really do think that it is an area that you might have 

to pay some attention to, and it might be in section 407, the operable 

parts section. 

NEIL MELICK: You have about 30 seconds. 

JIM TOBIAS: Okay, let's see, I will just -- the final area is touch 
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screen and other gesture interfaces which are similarly so successful in 

the marketplace, and there are, in fact, existing, and effective 

pathways to accessibility in those products and designs. However, it 

is possible to design a touch screen interface that is inaccessible, and 

rather than relying on a functional performance criterion, I think that 

the Access Board should develop, or figure out some way through 

guidance materials, or provisions, to develop the requirements for an 

accessible gesture interface including touch screen interfaces, thank 

you. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you. I guess we are going to go back, try 

to get Sailesh Panchang. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, could you locate Sailesh

Panchang, and unmute. 

OPERATOR: I'm sorry, what was the first name? 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: SAILESH. 

OPERATOR: One moment. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Thank you. 

OPERATOR: The line is open. 

SAILESH PANCHANG: Good morning, thank you. My name 

is -- can you hear me all right? 

NEIL MELICK: Yes, we can hear you. 

SAILESH PANCHANG: My name is Sailesh Panchang, I'm the lead 

accessibility auditor, of Deque systems, a company that makes 
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accessible products and wide services in this field. Thank you for 

giving me the opportunity to address you all. 

There are basically two things that impressed me. Of course, in 

one respect was the reference to the WCAG 2 by reference. That 

really helps harmonization that affects these standards. In 255 I see 

now, there is involvement of people with disabilities in the product 

design evaluation phase, so these were doing things that impressed 

me the most. 

My comments are twenty-two or three, and basically they relate to 

the organization of the content and structure of the document. 

I am a screen reader user, and as I went through the document, I 

saw the labeling of chapters that are labeled chapter 1, and chapter 2. 

So we do have a prefix of “508” chapter 1, and “508” chapter 2, as in

Section 508. Then we have “255” chapter 1, “255” chapter 2. I 

think those were kind of repetitive, because later on in a later chapter, 

chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, there is a reference to just chapter 1. I 

understand the intent is maybe to avoid duplication, and that is why it 

has been done this way, but I think it would be better if the chapters 

were numbered all the way from chapter 1 to 8, and the first chapter 

said chapter 1, Section 508 application, and so forth. 

So the 508 and 255 should be placed after the chapter numbers. 

And the chapters should be numbered 1 to 8. 

The second thing was in chapters 3 to 6, right at the beginning of 
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chapters 3 to 6, there is a little section on scope. Now, all of those 

sections, all of those pieces seem to refer to chapter 2, but if you look 

at the chapter on platforms that is basically chapter 5, the scope 

section there refers to chapter 1. I think when I read the document I 

think the intent is to say chapter 2, so I believe that is I don't know 

whether it is a typo or what. So that is something that maybe can be 

reviewed. 

Then under the advisory section in just 3 parts of the document, I 

see references to best practices. Now, yes, I note that these are 

advisory, and they are not actual regulations, but while best practices 

are often kind of technology dependent, so whether it is appropriate to 

include these practices is something that might need to be looked at, 

and if it is appropriate, then maybe whether best practices can be 

included in other areas as well, not just 3, but throughout the 

document. My last comment was about applications. I was trying to 

see whether it applies to mobile apps, and software applications, and it 

was only when I went to -- only when I went to chapter 5, I saw the 

reference to mobile applications. I think maybe it's something that 

you might want to make more obvious by pulling it up right to the 

section on definitions of platforms, and what they include. An 

advisory there might refer to coverage of mobile applications rather 

than it being much lower down in the document. 

Those are my comments. Thank you very much for the time. 
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Oh, and lastly, there was the process of actually submitting comments 

to the ANPRM. Of course, that is not directly related to this 

document, but that process is very difficult in terms of accessibility 

and there are lots of challenges, and it is very difficult to make 

comments. Thank you very much. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you, Mr. PANCHANG. We will look into 

that. And next we have DAVE PORTER. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, can you locate DAVE PORTER. 

Or DAVID PORTER. 

OPERATOR: That line is open. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Thank you. 

NEIL MELICK: Go ahead, Mr. Porter. 

DAVE PORTER: Thank you very much. Thank you to the 

members of the Access Board for the work you have been doing. We 

are all very appreciative of the work you are doing. I'm going to 

make my -- keep my comments short. There are three areas that I 

want to address here. The first one is the -- with the exponential 

expansions of technology as a goal here. And I spoke to this board 

several years ago about the evolutions of the touch screen particularly 

with regards to phones. I had my iPhone with me and I demonstrated 

that a little bit. It is amazing how much technology has evolved even 

since then, and it is all the more daunting when I look at the 

challenges that you face in terms of trying to find ways to balance the 
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accessibility issues that the assistive technology creates. 

The first one... of course, well, let me focus on two. One is 

gesture technology. In the areas that I work, I work in development. 

The company that I work with, we are an R&D company, so we see a 

lot of our things coming down the line. The two biggest areas where 

we are seeing a huge flow of RFPs, are people looking for different 

ways to either employ the technology that they are looking for, or 

exploit the technology that they have, is in gesture technology, which 

is the act of being able to use hand gestures, not just necessarily on a 

piece of equipment, but in a lot of cases, from across the room. 

People use those gestures to elicit a particular response. As you can 

imagine, this is very difficult for people with visual impairments to be 

able to deal with. However, we are seeing them pop up in a lot of 

public places like areas where there is a workout rooms for exercises, 

places where people do modeling, where a gesture made-- a full hand 

gesture from across the room will elicit a particular response on the 

screen and expect you to either follow that response, or somehow 

interact with the reaction that the screen is making to the gesture that 

a person is making. 

This is a real challenge for the developers to try to figure out how 

to make that accessible, how to convey the information that goes on,

on that screen which is essentially attempting to elicit an intuitive 

response. It is difficult to find ways to say that in a cognitive manner 
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that doesn't distract the effort of the initiative that the technology, the 

interface and their inter-reaction with the technology is creating. This 

is becoming a real problem and is going to become more critical as 

these things occur in public places where people are expected to 

operate, to work with these screens, as a part of a series of activities 

that they would be doing. 

Secondarily, I hope that is clear, the second area is the whole 

issue of kiosks. I know now that a lot of municipalities, their budgets 

are becoming smaller, and they are finding ways to impart information 

to the public in concert with the needs of the public, particularly, and 

as the technology evolved as they lose the personnel that they use to 

be able to do that, they are going to resort more and more to kiosks. 

There are two problems created when using kiosks in a public space. 

One of them is that if you are dealing in a public building where there 

are a lot of other noise and distractions going on in the background, 

the kiosk becomes particularly difficult to work with for a person who 

is going to rely on audio output from that. 

The second problem that it creates is that the technology of kiosks 

is evolving so fast, and also the demands that people who want to be 

able to use kiosk services, is evolving so fast, that it is hard for people 

to keep up with what the expectations of that technology actually are, 

which of course, because people who work with accessibility are 

dealing in reaction to technology that is being presented. That 
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technology is constantly challenging us by trying to make ways to 

make it accessible. So for example, once you figure out how to solve 

a problem at one level, the technology continues to evolve and creates 

a whole new set of challenges, accessibility related challenges that 

exist while it keeps trying to, keeps moving us forward. It keeps 

being a challenge, for example, for municipalities that have budget 

constraints and can't make the quick adjustments. I don't even know 

what kind of standards could be established to assist this. But I see 

this as a daunting problem. 

The third and last one I want to comment about, is the other new 

elephant in the room, is the digital ID. One of the big challenges and 

one of the big goals of a lot of companies in the next couple of years is 

to find ways to eliminate the password, the traditional password that 

we use. And the number one thrust right now is to find ways to 

implement physical gestures, or some sort of physical characteristic 

identities to reflect that password. There was a lot of experimenting 

with the pupil area. And there also had been some GSA attempts, but 

one of the big goals of a lot of companies is to find ways to utilize 

parts of the physical manifestation of a person to replace the need to 

enter and to keep changing a password. There are now updated 

databases available to capture the physical essence of a person and 

the unique characteristics that that person has to be able to establish 

password patterns, and that appears to be where a lot of people are 
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headed in terms of future technology. I know that is a daunting 

challenge, but I know that once again, we are going to get into some 

serious disability related accessibility issues with that. So I just want 

to put that on the table as a -- as something to watch. I think that is 

all I have at this point. I want to thank you again very much for your 

work. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you very much, Mr. Porter. 

DAVE PORTER: You are welcome. 

NEIL MELICK: That was Mr. Porter. Let's see. See if -- is Brian 

still on the line? See if he is coming in. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator can you confirm that Brian 

Landrigan is still on the line? 

OPERATOR: Yes, he is. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Okay, thank you. 

NEIL MELICK: Please proceed. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Unmute Mr. LANDRIGAN. 

BRIAN LANDRIGAN: Good morning. Honorable members of the 

United States Access Board, my name is Brian Landrigan, and I'm the 

director of sales and marketing for the Paciello Group, a small 

consulting firm. Our headquarters are in New Hampshire and we are 

solely dedicated to providing consultant services in the area of 

application -- and website accessibility for companies needing to go

and create accessible web properties. 
Page 43 of 77

I appreciate and thank the Board for this opportunity today to 

provide public comment on the Second Advance Notice of Proposed 

Rulemaking. That includes the revised draft of updated accessibility 

requirements for information and communication technology covered 

by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, and Section 255 of the 

Telecommunications Act of 1996. 

First I would like to commend the Access Board and the 

telecommunications and electronic and information technology 

advisory committee for their diligence in developing and bringing to 

public the updated requirements. In our business, we are acutely 

aware of how the old standards lacked acknowledgment of the vast 

changes in information technology that occurred over the past decade. 

My peers and I at The Paciello Group applaud interest to make 

information technology in general more accessible in the -- people with 

disabilities. The simple act of creating new standards and opening the 

dialogue within industry is sparking a fervent interest in many of our 

clients that did not exist prior to that. We are experiencing firsthand 

a new energy, and enthusiasm for providing a more open technology 

world. The original announcement of TEITAC in 2008 was warmly

welcomed by our competitors and clients and we see that as a 

watershed -- unfortunately, nearly 4 years have passed since this 

announcement. While we all understand that government sometimes 

moves at a slower pace than commercial business, that TEITAC has 
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not been -- some of the clients are openly questioning now whether 

they needed to spend the funds necessary to implement the changes 

we at TEITAC recommended. To us, there are 3 points to be made 

regarding this. First, the delay in implementing the Section 508 and

255 ICT recommendations is having an adverse effect on our business 

and the business of consulting companies such as ours, who have 

invested in training, development, tools and other resources to 

become experts at accessibility. Second, we are not looking -- the 

cost of ownership of models or return on investment. It is our 

responsibility to link accessibility to public services. To create that 

information for our clients we need to focus on the guidelines. There 

are further delays, which are discouraging and deterring many 

companies who are accessibility proponents from implementing the 

new guidelines. I would like to take a few moments to expand on 

these points. First let me discuss the adverse effects on the business. 

I recognize this is somewhat self-serving, however, our business is 

built on the belief that companies doing business with the Federal 

Government would need services such as ours. Because several 

agencies have asked us about the new Section 508 standards, we

perceived the knowledge gap between the agencies and the vendors, 

and worked quickly to fill that gap and we have been successful. We 

continue engaging prospects and clients, learn how to comply with the 

federal -- I'm sorry, with the federal procurement mandate and how to 
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create a more accessible technological environment for their 

customers. 

However, with the delay in the adoption of the new standards, we 

are seeing the changes to the development and testing department 

based on our recommendation -- further we are now seeing clients 

postpone adoption of the recommendations waiting to see if the new 

508 guidelines will be further delayed or even canceled. Please act 

swiftly to counter this perception. Secondly the justification for 

adoption of the new Section 508 standards, we are concerned that the 

lag time is daunting -- I'm sorry, was there a question? 

NEIL MELICK: No. 

BRIAN LANDRIGAN: We are concerned that -- there are 

numerous comments and concerns regarding cost of implementation of 

the guidelines and the fiscal burden on agencies and businesses. This 

delay --mentioned by special interest groups makes us question 

whether a practical application of something is reasonable --if it 

occurred in the past and discussions were held by minorities and 

women and other special interest groups such as experts on

accessibility, those discussions are clearly capable of creating a value 

proposition, demonstrating that cost is outweighed by additional 

benefits. We can demonstrate that today and cost should not be a 

factor in the new Section 508. With further delay you are exhausting 

what support there is for accessibility at universal usability. But as to 
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the implementation of new guidelines, in our work, we come in contact 

with product managers, developers, quality assurance professionals, 

procurement specialists, accessibility, CEO, CFO, COOs, and a number 

of them are excited and enthusiastic about putting in a product in the 

companies on the front line of greater access and opportunity for 

people with disabilities. 

For a myriad of reasons, it is the right thing to do: it is the law, it 

enhances their business, and improves their marketability. A selling 

point is having people in agencies within the government that feel –

that it provides them with a satisfaction that we are all pulling together 

on the same end of the rope and sharing a common goal. This is 

immeasurably helpful – financially. As many of you can empathize 

I'm sure from your own experience, they are fighting a good fight and 

it is rewarding but when you are on the front lines fighting a good fight 

for a common cause, it is important that you have support of those 

behind the lines. Without that support the fight is empty and 

impossible, without the passage of the new Section 508 

standards --without full heartedly supporting that and that is not a 

good message. 

Once again I want to personally thank the members of the TEITAC 

committee for the enormous effort put forth to get to this point, I also 

want to thank the Access Board, and the staff, as well as other federal 

agencies who volunteered for the diligent effort, the significant 
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progress of which you should all be justifiably proud. The new Section 

508 standards will find a dramatic improvement in the lives of people 

with disabilities, particularly with respect to access to technology 

information, with respect to a more open government. In that case 

we all win. Please re-energize yourself and move this very important 

set of standards forward so that everyone can enjoy the benefits, I

thank you for your time and consideration. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you Mr. Landrigan. At this point we will 

take a 10-minute break, and the conference call line will stay open so 

please those on the line stay there. We will take a 10-minute break. 

 (Short Recess) 

NEIL MELICK: If everybody can take their seats we will go ahead 

and get started. 

Okay. I will let Rose get back to her desk and we will try to see if 

Jon Gunderson is on the line, and he will be next. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, can you please locate Jon 

Gunderson, and unmute. 

OPERATOR: Yes. This line is open. 

NEIL MELICK: Mr. Gunderson, please proceed. 

JON GUNDERSON: I guess I have some specific 

recommendations or comments. I guess some of my comments 

relate to some of the relationships to the other documents in the 

WCAG. It seems like right now, at least from my reading of it, you 
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can either choose WCAG, or the 502, and 503 sections [in the 2011 

ANPRM]. Some of my commentary relates to some of the additions in

the 502 sections, and maybe some other sections, so that people don't 

choose to say well, it looks like WCAG is requiring some things that 

502 isn't, so I will choose to do the 502 requirements. So one of my 

changes would be to modify the requirements of 502.2.4, which 

currently reads as “Label Relationships”. I think there should be a 

more general relationship requirement. I will send text to the group, 

but basically, the new requirement would read, "the relationship that a 

component has for grouping labeling, instructions error feedback, 

alternative descriptions and other programmatic dependency, to other 

components shall be programmatically determinable. So to make a 

more general requirement, another one is I'm concerned about is the 

lack of language changes. This is of particular interest. I'm calling 

from the University of Illinois. Here at Illinois, we have a lot of on line 

language courses, and currently there isn't any language change 

requirement in Section 508. Since this will hopefully eventually be 

adopted by educational institutions, I feel there is a strong need to 

have language change information. We have students who are screen 

reader users who try to take these courses, but the on line 

components are inaccessible since language information isn't, change 

information isn't available in the web documents, and it is impossible 

for them to figure out when to change from language A, to language B, 
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and back to language A. So I would like to see in section 502, a 

language change requirement. And that is a part of WCAG, double A 

WCAG requirement, I would like to see the designers of the software 

saying rather than doing WCAG, I will do section 502 requirements 

because I don't have to worry about the language changes. 

And in that same light, if something like that was going to be 

added to section 502, I would also like to see the text equivalence 

requirements of WCAG also represented in the 502 section. That text 

equivalence for graphics, video, and animation should also be 

programmatically determined so that that would also be viewed as a 

requirement of meeting 502 especially section 2 requirement. 

So additional general requirements that I would like to see are in 

keyboard documentation. We are using one -- we have been working 

with our -- currently our university is switching from analog telephones 

to voiceover IP telephones. Many of the software systems that will 

replace handset telephones are technically keyboard accessible, but 

the keyboard information is not very discoverable by either users with 

disabilities, or by people who might be helping them. So I would like 

to see stronger requirements for documenting keyboard shortcuts, 

using operating systems, and platform conventions that are often used 

to provide information about keyboard shortcuts, and various 

operating systems, or systems that support menu -- that users can 

configure menus with functionality so that they can use the operating 
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system conventions to find out what the keyboard shortcuts are, and 

also that for at least frequently used functions that users have the 

options to configure the keyboard shortcuts for those. 

And also, I kind of had a concern about people choosing the 502, 

and 503 requirements instead of WCAG. 503 talks about making, 

providing controls to turn on and off captions and to provide 

information about the availability of captions. Again, I would like to 

see a 502.2 section requiring that captions and audio descriptions be 

available. So that concludes my comments. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you very much, Mr. Gunderson. I believe 

now we are done with the ones on the phone, right? Jamal Mazrui. I 

think he is in the room. 

TIM CREAGAN: He may have stepped out. 

NEIL MELICK: Okay, then not seeing him, we will go with Terry 

Weaver. I know she is here. 

TERRY WEAVER: Good morning. I'm Terry Weaver, and I just 

want to say, for those of you who are not connected, excuse me, who 

I have not spoken to before, I am speaking for myself now as a private 

citizen of 8 days standing. I retired January 3rd. So basically, I can 

talk for myself now. 

(Laughter.) 

TERRY WEAVER: But I do want to reiterate my background. I 

worked at GSA for the last 5 years on implementation. GSA has 
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shared responsibility with the Access Board for providing technical 

assistance which is why my office, myself, and Helen Chamberlain who 

is here, spent lots of time in the whole revision process standard 

starting with attending all of the TEITAC meetings, becoming members 

of and participating in the subcommittees, and then becoming part of 

the ICT ad hoc committee following. 

We have produced a lot of rules and resources out there to help 

people in the agencies to implement 508 successfully. Most notably, 

which unfortunately, I understand is down right now, is 

Section508.gov, which is an informational site and training. One of 

our pride and joys is the Buy Accessible.gov website which provides 

information to government procurers on how to adequately and 

correctly incorporate requirements language in their solicitations for 

ICT related deliverables. These resources are out there, they are free 

and open to everybody, and we don't restrict them to anyone. Or I 

should say GSA doesn't restrict them to anyone. 

My comments are basically all going to be on two of the questions 

that are posed and I will submit these in writing as well. But the first 

one on question 4, is concerning the relationship between the 

functional performance criteria and the technical provisions. The 

question that is asked is the cost that will be incurred in doing this. 

What I want to point out is that what needs to be paid attention to --

and to the extent that it can be stressed in the final standard because 
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sometimes people have been known to read things in a gloss-over 

fashion -- is that the technical provisions, or the functional 

performance criteria, even today and in the new version, take place or 

become precedent when you do not fully meet the standards. So we 

are saying in the current day version of it you need to consider the 

functional performance criteria when you don't meet the technical 

provisions. I'm going to say that most people don't, there is very few 

products out there that fully meet all of the applicable provisions. 

So when you look at the difference in cost, I would suggest to you 

that in today's society, in fact in our tools Buy Accessible.gov, we 

always include the functional performance criteria, so the cost to 

include that requirement should not be too great, we are already 

requiring that. 

Secondarily, when you look at what it means to be fully compliant 

with the standards, I do think that the biggest question is going to be 

in looking at the WCAG methodology of determining success because 

you can be successful but not meeting all. And I think that is going to 

cause some concern issues with the review, particularly in the 

acquisition area because under the acquisition requirements in the 

FAR, which is the government's body of knowledge that directs the 

Federal Acquisition Regulation, which directs how we do procurements 

and which will have to be updated to incorporate these new standards, 

the FAR reflects the language of the law, which says the government 
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must purchase the most accessible version. If we have WCAG, 

allowing us to lose that distinction, it could cause some problems in 

making procurements. I think that is an issue that has to be resolved 

under the FAR process. 

Secondly, I recall question 5, the separate but equal question. 

And I think that the issues that are inherent with that, is again, the 

gloss-over approach. I have spoken to many government people who 

believe that they are meeting Section 508 by posting captioned videos 

on their home web page, the agency's home web page while putting 

out YouTube based videos that are not captioned or audio described. 

The rationale for that is that people can find the same video, I have 

told them and I would reiterate here, YouTube is not merely an archive 

library where you download things, it is actually a social media 

environment. Its basis of existence is interaction, so when you talk 

about functionality, you need to be stressing very clearly that when 

you look at separate but equal, and I really don't like separate but 

equal, but if you are looking at it, it has to include all functionality or it 

is not truly equal to everybody, and I think we need to make sure of 

that in the new provisions. And that is my comments. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you very much. Okay. Jamal Mazrui. 

JAMAL MAZRUI. He will correct me, I'm sure. I'm sorry if I 

butchered your name. 

JAMAL MAZRUI: My name is JAMAL MAZRUI. And I am a federal 
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employee. On leave today. I'm coming to you on behalf of a group 

of federal employees with disabilities called FedAccessibility. We are 

an informal group of about 30 at this point that started over the 

summer, at this point, mainly due to our own personal networks. We 

are people who are blind or low vision, though we certainly are 

interested in accessibility for all employees with disabilities. And we 

came together because of a sense of frustration that Section 508 and 

Section 501 by the way, have not been properly implemented by the 

Federal Government. Our work environments have been suffering as 

a result. My message to you here today is mainly on these general 

points rather than the specific provisions. I just want the Board to 

understand how there is a widespread feeling, not only among 

employees with disabilities, but people with disabilities in the public 

that Section 508 has failed. It has failed to live up to the promise 

that was envisioned when the law was enacted. It was at that point 

believed that it would lead to much greater accessibility within the 

Federal Government, and because the Federal Government is the 

largest single employer in the country, and the largest single buyer of 

goods and services that that could have a dramatic effect on the 

market as a whole in terms of the design of accessible products and 

services. 

We do understand that the Access Board's role is mainly to 

develop the standards, and at least in the case of Section 508, it 
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doesn't enforce the standards. But we just ask that the Board be 

thinking about what are ways that the standards or the regulations can 

be made more effective in the reality of their implementation? So if 

there is anything that can be done so that those standards are 

implemented on a much more consistent basis throughout the Federal 

Government, we ask the Access Board to do that, whether it is 

working with the FAR and changing some of the procurement related 

provisions, or what. And just as examples of some of the things that 

we encounter regularly, portable document format has become 

basically the de facto standard for publishing federal documents on the 

web. And yet, still today, it is more common than not that when one 

reads a PDF with assistive technology, there's significant problems. 

Problems in the reading order of the document, or of the accuracy 

whereby one can't necessarily rely on figures that one gets out of a 

PDF. One would need to have a sighted person double check just 

because of spurious errors that appear in PDFs. And we know that 

there are guidelines out there about how PDFs are supposed to be 

designed to be accessible. Unfortunately, those guidelines just have 

not been followed, so somehow there is a systemic problem that is not 

being addressed. Similarly, flash on web pages, there is guidelines 

for how to implement it accessibly. That is the most common form of 

audio video content, and yet more common than not, when one is 

using a screen reader, one encounters flash-based interfaces where 
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the controls do not have labels. So you don't have the ability to easily 

forward, or rewind or pause like other people do. 

And there are other examples too. So the main point that we 

want to make is just please be aware that the regulations were written 

with the best intentions. They were written quite sensibly, but the 

implementation has failed over this last decade. And so this time 

around, if there is anything that the Access Board can do to try to 

make sure that the implementation actually occurs, that would be 

much better, thank you. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you. 

GARY TALBOT: Excuse me. Can I ask a quick question -- a 

follow-up question? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let him leave but I 

want to make sure that I understand, I apologize. Hi, my name is 

Gary Talbot, public member. Just a follow-up question on PDFs. So 

I'm just trying to understand. Was there a problem with the interface 

between the newer PDF and the accessible format in JAWS, or is there 

some other problem? I had an employee who happened to be blind 

that we did a lot of work on posting accessible formats to our website, 

and things like that. He was extremely helpful. We did find some 

issues, and that is why we continued to post Word documents with 

PDFs to ensure that people using screen readers would be able to use 

those, but in the latest version of PDF, the screen reader that we had 

on his machine he said that it was fine. He didn't need to go back to 
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the Word documents. I was just curious. 

JAMAL MAZRUI: I think the PDF format it is capable of being 

accessible, but the steps required are really burdensome, I mean, one 

has to be an expert in knowing how to use Acrobat professional, or the 

Net Centric product to do all of the things that are needed to get it to 

behave. For example, to be WCAG compliant, for example, so it's 

commonplace, even when I download PDFs off the Adobe accessibility 

website, there is no heading structure in the document. So sighted 

people see these headings, but I have no ability to navigate by 

heading with a screen reader. If one tries to open a really large PDF, 

it can take minutes because it goes through the process of trying to 

add temporary accessibility tags. Before I can actually start reading 

the document, and often it is so processor intensive, that I can't use 

any other application at that time. And sometimes even my computer 

locks up if I'm trying to open a large PDF. 

So yeah, there are multiple problems. I'm not sure if I have 

totally addressed your question. 

GARY TALBOT: No, you have, that is helpful. So could it be one 

of posting, and how the document is posted for you as an accessible 

document, and then the other issue of once you download that even 

though you can make it into an accessible document, it is a very 

difficult task to do that requires pretty much a hot rod computer to be 

able to do that. 
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JAMAL MAZRUI: Yes. 

GARY TALBOT: Thank you very much I apologize for --

CHRISTOPHER HART: If I might ask an additional question. Are 

you -- is it more problematic when you get into documents that have 

tables, or does it occur in just straight word text documents as well? 

JAMAL MAZRUI: Definitely adding tables will be more likely to 

result in accessibility problems. So yeah, the more complex the Word 

document, the more likely that things will not translate accessibly 

when they are turned into a PDF. But even just straight text, for 

example, if it is like a newsletter where there might be different 

columns of text visually, it is just commonplace when one is reading 

the text version of that PDF that the sentences get mixed up from 

different articles because maybe visually they occur on the same line. 

But they are supposed to be logically separate. So even with regular 

documents there are just regular significant problems of accessibility

with this format, and just the answer has always been, well, you know, 

they need to go to the Adobe site and follow these authoring 

guidelines, and then it will be okay. Well, I challenge it on two fronts. 

Even when people follow the guidelines, like I would expect for 

example Adobe would follow all of the guidelines and yet I still 

encounter PDFs from their site that have significant problems. 

But stepping back from that, if it is so difficult to follow those 

guidelines, and PDF is such a widespread format that everybody all 
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over in agencies is producing, it is not just some central shop that can 

be experts in accessibility, then there is something inherently wrong 

with the system, because everybody is not going to be an expert in 

producing accessible PDFs. 

GARY TALBOT: If I could this is Gary Talbot again, public 

member. Just one final follow-up. On the previous version, I think it 

was OCR text recognition, where you could take the document and do 

that, and it was a pull down. Was that -- is the newest version more 

difficult to use for you, do you think than the previous versions? And 

the reason I ask is because I agree with you. I have downloaded a 

couple of things that I assumed were accessible, forwarded them on, 

and then got hollered at because they weren't. And I took them down 

from the accessible -- from Adobe. So I know what you mean. 

JAMAL MAZRUI: The Adobe reader, so there is two issues. There 

is the format, and then there is the reader software, which is usually 

the default, although there is various things that can read PDFs, most 

commonly people who use the free Adobe reader. 

It's, I don't think it is any worse, or better than it has been in the 

last 10 years. In fact, it is surprising to me, ever since Adobe reader 

6, and we are now at 10, I have seen no significant improvements in 

the software. And it is just -- so over the whole lifetime that Section 

508 has supposed to have been in effect, I haven't noticed any 

improvements in the level of the PDF accessibility. So I'm not -- I 
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don't think it is worse, but I don't think it is better either. 

GARY TALBOT: Okay, thank you very much. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you. Okay. We have some time left. We 

do have one last speaker but he asked to be last, so do we have 

anybody else that would like to, that is not registered to come forward 

and give testimony? 

MATHEW McCOLLOUGH: Neil, may I make a few comments 

regarding today's public hearing, quick comments? My name is Matt

McCollough, and I'm a public member. I also work for the D.C. 

Government within the Office of Disability Rights. I’m sort of like the 

point person of Section 508 for the D.C. Government. The D.C. 

Government and the Office of the Chief Technology Officer has not 

been perfect in terms of their accessibility, but there is a sincere 

commitment in making sure that all people with disabilities within the 

District of Columbia and other people have access to the D.C. 

government information and services. The theme that -- I had a very 

vested interest in this particular topic, because there's that perspective 

separate but equal, and I don't support it, and I find it quite offensive 

that some of my colleagues champion that perspective. Now, what 

I'm most interested in is in terms of accessibility to documents. It is 

primarily education. Like I know Adobe is not a be all in terms of 

making their documents accessible, but it is all about education and 

having the advocates, the employees step up and say this is what is 
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going on with this document, and simply start educating the 

employees, their colleagues, their agency -- that all of us have 

full-time jobs, and you may not have all the time in the world to 

actually do that, but basically, taking the time to simply educate the 

folks around you, and Title I of the ADA to support your rights within 

the work environment to make sure that you have full access to 

your -- what is the term I want -- all of the supports that you need in 

order to do your job successfully and effectively. While I noticed, I 

appreciate all of the diverse comments made today, and I go back to 

Jim Tobias's comments. He really emphasized the technical guides, 

the information guidelines. The fact sheets or what have you. It is 

really, I see a critical point that even though the technology is 

advancing, as long as we can keep Section 508 as a living document to 

use as a baseline of how to operate, and provide those fact sheets, 

those quick sheets or whatever you call them, I think we will make a 

world of difference. But it is all about communicating and simply 

keeping those ideas open and simply stepping up for your rights. All 

people and employees with disabilities should have the same access to 

information. And so with that in mind, I do want to extend my great 

appreciation to the community that have a vested interest and rely on 

us -- my outreaching to the American Foundation For the Blind, and 

the National Federation For the Blind, and the employees with 

disabilities as well, so they see that we are not there quite yet, and we 
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need to progress further. And so with that in mind, thank you very 

much. 

NEIL MELICK: Okay, Matt, thanks. We will get back to the public 

hearing portion of this, and again, if there is anybody in the audience, 

or if there is anybody on the conference call that wants to talk, there is 

I guess there is a way for them to let us know, even if they are not 

registered if they want to speak, so at this time, we will open that up 

for those that have not registered that want to speak. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, can you poll the on-line 

people. 

OPERATOR: If you want to make a comment, please press star 1. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, queue when ready. 

OPERATOR: Once again if you would like to testify, please press 

star and then 1. 

NEIL MELICK: While we are waiting, just I think we had about 60 

callers on the line even after we took the break so I appreciate all of 

those that have participated and listened in in part of this. Hearing 

nobody else at this time, I guess the last one registered is Mike 

Paciello, if he would like to come up. 

OPERATOR: We do have a comment. 

NEIL MELICK: We have one, okay. Mr. Duff Johnson, your line is 

open. 

DUFF JOHNSON: I guess I pushed the button when the operator 
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allowed us to be on the call so I wanted to speak to the PDF subject 

that was -- that arose earlier. 

NEIL MELICK: We need a name if we could, please. 

DUFF JOHNSON: This is Duff Johnson, I testified earlier. 

NEIL MELICK: Okay Duff. 

DUFF JOHNSON: I wanted to comment on, there was a couple of 

questions. very legitimate questions about PDF and very legitimate 

complaints about the status of PDFs, you know, it's accessibility, and 

progress towards achieving that. And you know, to a degree, I 

addressed some of those concerns, not in my testimony but I wanted 

to mention or highlight a couple of things here. By way of attempting 

to provide some sort of an answer. And really the short version of the 

answer is the problem with PDF has been for a lack of a specific 

standard that called out in normative terms how the PDF was 

supposed to be, what PDF implementation has to be able to do. And 

that is the whole purpose to which ISO 14289 has been developed is 

to answer that question. 

But this makes it simple in the sense that you off load to the 

software developers the responsibility of delivering the conformance 

standards, and you will get, PDF/UA performing files in software, and 

those files in software will achieve levels of conformance. When the 

question such as how long an application takes to auto tag a large 

document, it is a little different than whether or not PDF is the right 
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thing to be done with the PDF. Because the real problem with having 

to auto tag a document, is just the agency failed to tag it initially when 

they posted it. 

PDF -- the second point is to say that there is no alternative for 

PDF because it handles a real world problem in electronic documents 

that if nothing else -- and it is already the accepted means for doing 

so. It includes situations like documents that originate from a 

collection or a variety of electronic sources. And – here is another 

example where the mandates have not only one version of a 

document, pretty much required as a PDF. A scanned page, you 

know, if you take a scanned page, that is clearly a you know -- a 

version of a processed document, if you extract it out to a web page in 

order to make an accessible version of the scanned page you will of 

necessity created convergence of the document, and very 

appropriately noted that is inappropriate. 

So PDF does these things. It really does these things in the real 

world. PDF/UA is a specific standard that makes it explicit for 

developers what they have to be able to hit as a target. As I 

mentioned in my testimony, large software vendors such as Adobe 

Systems – PDF/UA so there is, you know, there is clearly progress that 

has to be made, but you know, the tools are at hand and they have 

been designed to address these concerns, thank you very much. 

NEIL MELICK: All right, thank you very much. Mike, I will now 
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let you come up. 

MICHAEL PACIELLO: Good morning. And thank you again for an 

invitation to be able to speak here before the Access Board. It is 

always a privilege to be part of this process. If it were possible on 

record to just simply say ditto Jim Tobias, that is probably what I 

would do. He is a good friend and colleague and it was kind of 

interesting that while we only had a brief moment this morning to talk 

to each other, that we both are of the same mind-set and the same 

things that are of concern to us are on a -- are literally, are of equal 

form and of equal concern, almost in reference to preference and 

priority. 

But I wanted to start off by saying this morning, that I think it is 

important to commend the Access Board and its staff in particular, 

because I know Jim and I are well aware of the hard work that has 

gone into this mandate, which is clearly a very critical mandate, one 

that again, as Jim referred to earlier, serves as a model. And you 

have fundamentally recognized that model by this revision including 

the industry standards by reference. I think that was a remarkably 

good and important change because it emphasizes something that we 

in technology don't. We don't want to reinvent the wheel, and we 

want to adopt the standards that industry at large already recognizes 

and works with. So that I thought is something very much to be 

commended for. 
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I think overall this document is a cleaner, better, or better 

organized document, but I think Gregg Vanderheiden also raised a 

concern that I have, and will have the next month or so before the 

CSUN hearings to look at, certainly folks in my technology staff will be 

doing that. 

And that is I'm afraid of what is left out, or what was left behind, 

or what was in the previous version, and the TEITAC recommendations 

that were not included. Some of those points were brought up this 

morning, so I hope between the transcript and the notes that you have 

taken, that will go back and revisit them. 

I also echo both Jim and Gregg's points about the inclusion of the 

functional performance criteria as mandated technical requirements. 

This was something that I know Jim and I were concerned about; was 

something that many of us who were advocates for individuals with 

disabilities really felt was necessary and important and crucial to 

ensure at bottom line, as a principal, fundamental principle, that 

whatever the technology is regardless of the platform, that it will be 

usable as well as accessible to individuals with disabilities. So I really 

applaud that effort. I was very glad to learn that it had been 

included. 

I think also, it is important to recognize the inclusion of the web 

content accessibility guidelines level AA compliance, because again, it 

is an industry standard. It has been around for a couple of years, 10 
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years of work went into get it to that point, and it is something 

important that I think we all recognize, more importantly, on an 

international level, it is a recognized standard, and as one of my folks 

earlier this morning, Brian Landrigan, indicated almost all of our 

businesses with industry, and this is what they are looking to do, they 

are looking at the WCAG compliance for web applications, and web 

services where we work with them. So these things are all good in all 

things to be commended for. David and I had a conversation about a 

month ago. I was down here and he and I were talking, and one of 

the things that he impressed upon me was that his mind-set is to 

move this mandate forward. I realize as member and staff and 

director, he only has so much that he can influence. But I think that 

what we heard today was that mind-set reiterated many times and in 

many forms not the least of which Matthew referred to earlier this 

notion that we have a living document, a rolling Refresh kind of notion. 

Technology is always going to move forward. Worse, from our 

perspective, that is from the perspective of individuals with disabilities, 

it moves faster than we can keep up with, and AT can keep up with. 

And oftentimes, that is because the technology, the technology 

companies themselves, or those organizations that work on behalf of 

them, are not privy to what is going on in the labs, or in industry. 

And I think it is very important that we really think about this process 

in finding a way to change. To a degree, it sounds like people are 
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blaming, or holding the Access Board to a higher standard, if you will, 

because it has been four years since the advisory committee turned

over its recommendations, and the process does seem slow. There is 

the old saying of slow is fast, and fast is slow. And that is really 

based on a model of effectiveness that what you do is done right, and 

done well as opposed to getting something fast for the sake of getting 

something done. 

However, what we have done is we have gone beyond at this point 

the common sense approach, if you will, of what a standard should do, 

particularly as it relates to people with disabilities. 

So what I would ask the Access Board while you have your 

meetings here, is to seriously consider how can we change this 

process? How can we complement this process of creating technology 

standards, frankly I'm not so sure that it is not any standard as it 

relates to people with disabilities, whether it is technology, or 

otherwise. But how can we complement this process, so that we have 

a Refresh, and revision process that keeps up with the pace of 

technology? 

We are a model. The European Union, the European Commission 

is looking to Section 508 and Section 255 and the provisions there, as 

a basis for Mandate 376. We can't take this lightly. We have already 

heard the WCAG guidelines, we know the Americans with Disabilities 

Act guidelines the Air Carrier Access mandate is looking to the web 
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provisions. We really need to take this seriously. Get this moving,

get it out, put it into an NPRM, and get it before Congress as soon as 

we possibly can. Please, don't forget some of the points that you 

heard that were brought out today, concerns around cognition that are 

without a doubt, have been left out of these provisions, and were a 

key theme of TEITAC. Kiosk, handheld devices, touch screen 

interfaces, PDFs, testability, and the whole point of implementation as 

Jamal Mazrui just mentioned these are key attributes. I would like to 

see all of these points considered, put into the draft if we can, but I 

would like to see that done in a Refresh process that complements the 

technology push, thank you. 

HANS VAN WINKLE: Can I ask a question? Mr. Paciello, thank 

you. I had an interesting conversation with Jennifer Dexter over the 

break, and this notion of having been on the Access Board for a while 

now, we are quite accustomed to setting a standard and they are 

typically physical standards so you have to move so far, so many 

centimeters, or two feet away and we were quite good at that, I think. 

That has really been our one of our clearer areas of expertise as a

Board, but this notion of technology in the rapid pace, is certainly an 

entirely different ballgame and I was interested in how you and a 

number of folks, Mr. Tobias and so forth, have talked about the 

Refresh possibility, and I'm not so sure that I understand from a 

regulatory, and a process and a structural way of how we in fact can 
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do that. Our regulatory process is not designed to do that. So I 

guess my question is, how do we go about thinking about that? How 

do we and it is a much, much broader picture than just a standard. It 

is an entirely different process. What would you recommend? Are 

there people that have solutions or do we need to workshop this with a 

number of assets -- both government and private sector -- to figure 

out how do we in fact design a Refresh? Presumably it is going to 

require some type of legislation at some point to allow us to do that, 

because I don't think that we have that capability right now, so how 

would you recommend that we find a way to come up with a Refresh 

process and then translate that into some type of a regulatory change, 

or legislative change that allows us in fact to do that? 

MICHAEL PACIELLO: Thank you, Mr. Van Winkle I appreciate 

that, the first thing you have to do as an Access Board is make the 

decision to look at and analyze what the process is, what it will take to 

make the change, and then get whatever political you know, lobbying, 

and processes that need to be done in place to do that. 

There are several folks here, not including myself, Jim Tobias, 

other folks that served on TEITAC, individuals who work within some 

of the federal agencies who are very familiar with the regulatory 

process, much more so, you heard earlier about the FAR process 

because that is also going to come into play. 

So you know, my first recommendation is make the decision to do 
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something because we are not sure that anything has, and second, 

feel free, I think Jim and I will be more than happy to help you get 

things started and move forward from there. Volunteering him, he is 

probably back there shaking his head. But --

CHRISTOPHER HART: Mr. Paciello, what guidelines would you be 

supportive of, or are you suggesting that in reviewing the final rule, 

that we publish a standard of when we will refresh the rules in the final 

rulemaking, or how else would you suggest that the Board 

communicate its planned Refresh cycle? 

MICHAEL PACIELLO: Well, you can always tweet it. But --

(Laughter.) 

CHRISTOPHER HART: I don't even know how. 

MICHAEL PACIELLO: I can help you do that, so I will tell you that 

I can do that, this session has already been tweeted out on social 

network, so, you know, well, you know. Mr. Hart, you touch upon the 

key thing here which is communication, communication here goes in 

many different avenues, into many different constituencies, if you will. 

Communicating with the public, certainly, communicating with industry 

is absolutely critical. Communicating to those that are involved in 

government, politicians, and legislation, is equally critical; to keep this 

out in the forefront, in the lime light, so that it doesn't lose the zeal 

that is intended to be behind it to push it forward, and get things 

done. 
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NEIL MELICK: If I could, for the Board members, some of them 

are new, but this is a Refresh. I just wanted to remind you. And 

they are talking about process. This is what we are doing right now, 

with 508 and 255 is a Refresh and it has been over 5-and-a-half years. 

So the process needs to be looked at and I think we have had those 

discussions and it was in our strategic plan, so we need to address 

those kinds of concerns, because it is a long time coming. 

Mr. Tobias --

JIM TOBIAS: I'm not a lawyer I'm not a legislative person, screen 

reader or interpreter, and somebody maybe can correct me, but I 

think the statute would permit you to refresh not all of the provisions 

at the same time. I think it says periodically, within two years of the 

passage, or something like that, and then periodically after that, so I 

don't think that there is a statutory requirement that you do them all 

at once. So if you are going to commit, and I think Mike is right, the 

first thing is to decide what -- how it is that you want to handle this 

reality, if you do want to do a rolling Refresh, you have a couple of 

problems that follow on that. One is, deciding what are you going to 

refresh when. So you know, somebody says we need better guidance 

on touch screens, okay, that is probably already you have already 

received things and you haven't even finished this Refresh, right. So 

how do you make that decision? You know, whether to go with that 

or not, and as I suggested earlier, I think you have two options, one is 
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to just develop and publish better guidance materials using the current 

provisions so that you don't have to do all of that you know, advisory 

committee, and what have you. So you just basically are interpreting 

either the functional permanence criteria, or a technical provision in 

the light of the new technology, so that is the easy and very valuable 

way. But then there are times where, and I think touch screens are 

an example and I think we had someone else I think, David Porter

commented on it, it really is a new enough technology that you are 

going to need to put some technical provisions in place. And so you 

know, that is going to be your job. You have a committee, or a 

subcommittee, I guess, the - what is it called, the scout, or frontier....? 

NEIL MELICK: “Frontier”. 

JIM TOBIAS: “Frontier”, I knew it was something “Old West”. The 

Frontier committee is a perfect venue for you to -- begin to identify 

some of these emerging technology issues and drive that process, 

even you know, develop some guidelines internally for when it is new 

provisions and when it is just guidance material. So I think you have 

the power to do it, the freedom to do it, I don't think that it is 

administratively a challenge. It is technologically necessary. I don't 

see any downside to committing to some form of a rolling Refresh. 

NEIL MELICK: And that other issue that comes into play, is the 

time, and staff resources. We appreciate those comments, believe 

me. Most of us on the Board, the new ones and those that have been 
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here for a while, like Gary, and I have only been here four, but we 

understand this, we feel it. We sit in our meetings and we wonder 

why it can't take place, and there is just you know, a certain amount 

of time. I'm visually impaired, so believe me, the technology side is 

something very you know, dear to me, and I am heavily involved with, 

and have been involved with this since the TEITAC turned it over, but 

there's a lot of other standards and guidelines that we deal with, and I 

just sometimes I'm hearing this, and I can just feel the anguish in the 

staff as they say oh, my gosh when are we going to find the time. 

These are important issues and we appreciate the comments that have 

been made today, we appreciate the information. We are going to 

take that, and we are going to take all of the comments and look at it 

as hopefully I will be appointed and finish out this, and not have 

somebody fresh come in come in here and do this, but we have a lot 

to look at. I was hoping that this was going to be a Notice of Public 

Rulemaking and not an Advance, but with the complete change that 

we did and the information that we got through the last comments of 

the ANPRM, we realized that we had to go back and ask additional 

questions, and then seek guidance, especially since we are hearing 

things today like certain things may have been missed when we did 

the consolidation of chapters and so forth. So I think it was necessary 

and I appreciate the comment about fast is slow, because we are 

actually trying to -- or slow is fast because we are trying to do it right. 
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Again, I appreciate all of those who participated today. I think our 

time is running short. I don't know if there is anybody else that has 

not registered, or have not already spoken that wants to make any 

comments, we open that up one more time. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, can you poll the listeners, 

please? 

OPERATOR: Anyone if anyone would like to make a comment, 

please press star and then 1. Press star and then 1, we do have one 

from Mr. David porter, the line is open -- oh, he just disconnected, I'm 

sorry. If anyone would like to make a comment, please press star 

and then 1. Jon Gunderson, your line is open. 

NEIL MELICK: Go ahead, JON. 

JON GUNDERSON: I guess one of my long-standing concerns 

about documents that try to be all-inclusive, is that you run into the 

problem of finding people who can participate and understand them. 

You know, I like the idea of looking at specific products or types of 

products. One of the things that made the WCAG 2.0 process so long, 

is that people wanted a document that would cover a wide range and 

even future technologies. And so that requires another abstraction, 

and I think that also excludes people because people may say well, I 

know about web pages or I may know about flash or Adobe PDF, but I 

don't know about these other technologies and they are talking about 

all of these other things so I don't know what I can contribute. So I 
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would encourage the Board if they are looking at it redefining the 

process, looking at technologies more individually, because it might 

not only produce better requirements for those technologies, but it 

may allow people to participate who wouldn't participate in more 

general guidelines. For example, when you talk about an accessible 

bathroom, you know, you don't want just general standards that work 

in a bus, in a train, and in a building. You know. The building 

standards have different standards for all of those different places. 

So I do -- and as technology changes, you know, and technology 

becomes adopted, people can say you know, well these are being used 

in the workplace, let's bring together the people with the accessibility 

problems that people building those technologies, and the accessibility 

experts to come up with solutions for those technologies that that 

industry would understand. So I just have that comment, if the 

Access Board is looking at revising the process. Thank you. 

NEIL MELICK: Thank you very much. So is there anybody else? 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, is there anybody else? 

OPERATOR: Anyone would like to make a comment? 

NEIL MELICK: Hearing none, we will close this hearing. I again 

want to thank everybody for your participation. Again, we still are 

open for comments and we are looking forward to those that have 

spoken today to submit the written documents. We will be in San 

Diego, at the CSUN conference March 1st for the second hearing. 
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Please, everybody the more comments that we get, the more 

information that we can share and communicate with each other, the 

better our standard guideline will be. So again, I want to thank all of 

those who are here today. 

ROSE MARIE BUNALES: Operator, this is Rose Marie, US Access 

Board, we are done, thank you for your assistance, close the line.