Federal accessibility law may have broad IT impact

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- The federal government is expected to usher in new regulations next week that require all electronic and IT equipment used by federal agencies and departments to be accessible to all people. Among those who stand to benefit is Beth Ostrowski, a federal employee who is blind.

Ostrowski, a manager at the Health Care Financing Administration, uses a screen reader, which converts text to speech, to read Web pages. But she found that her agency's Web site, Medicare.gov, didn't work well with screen-reader software because the information couldn't be easily translated into a linear format. "It had no logic to it," she said.

That's been changed, and Medicare.gov now offers a screen-reader version of its Web site that's dynamically generated whenever changes are made to the Web site. "The webmaster doesn't have to maintain a second version," said Stephen Jones, project manager at American Management Systems Inc., a Fairfax, Va.-based contractor.

Web sites aren't the only things that must be accessible under the law, referred to as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Beginning June 21 (or possibly June 25, depending on who's interpreting the law), all electronic products purchased by the government, ranging from fax machines to enterprise software, must be accessible to people with disabilities, with some limited exceptions.

Although the merits and goals of this law have been widely praised, trade groups have expressed concern that the law's requirements don't give vendors clear guidance in meeting the rules. "My worst-case fear is there is arbitrary dropping of products because they are not 100% compliant," said Bartlett Cleland, a vice president at the Information Technology Association of America, an industry trade group in Arlington, Va.

For federal agencies, the law has prompted systems reviews reminiscent of Y2k projects, as well as some of the cost. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Envirofacts Web site, which provides environmental data, estimates that the cost for complying with the law is $125,000, said Jerry Carrillo, who's coordinating the Section 508 initiative at the EPA.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has been using a combination of manual and automated techniques to ensure that its 50,000-plus Web pages are compliant. The agency has taken several steps, including the modification of large data tables to enable them to be read with assistive technologies and to provide training on the law's requirements for employees who provide content.

The impact of the rule on the private sector remains to be seen, but it could be broad.

The law "is going to drive private-sector