Introduction Slide: Speaker Presentation
NASA CIO Perspectives on Section 508
Implementation
by Lee Holcomb, NASA Chief Information Officer
Slide 1: Introduction
Section 508 touches all areas of Electronic and
Information Technology and its implementation is proving to be complex
For this discussion, we will consider four key
implementation areas:
Acquisition considerations
Applicability of Section 508
Web pages
Training and education of our workforce
Slide 2: NASA CIO Perspective on Acquisitions /
the first of 2 slides
The Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR)
specifies that requiring offices conduct market surveys to determine whether
products are available in the market place that conform to specific provisions
of the Access Board Standards.
Both government and industry are concerned about
potential legal action associated with Section 508-related acquisitions since at
least some of the Access Board Standards are subject to interpretation:
yes">today we lack objective measures to determine conformance.
The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)
was developed by industry to assist the Government in conducting market surveys
Slide 3: NASA CIO Perspective on Acquisitions /
the second of 2 slide
While the VPAT is a reasonable transition
approach, our early experience indicates VPAT is not the final answer.
Excessive resources expended by requiring offices
to interpret and deal with VPAT entries.
Some major vendors do not mention VPATs for their
products on their web site.
Some major vendors require contacting their sales
representatives to obtain information on Section 508 compliance of their
products.
When exception for micro-purchases expires,
problem will be greatly magnified for credit card buyers.
We believe aggressive effort to define objective
measures for determining conformance, leading to certification, is critical
Slide 4: NASA CIO Perspective on Applicability /
the first of 2 slides
Section 508 applies to all electronic and
information technology with a very few exceptions, e.g.,
Undue burden
Lack of market availability
National security crypto systems
However, there are applications of technology
where perhaps it is not reasonable or practical to expect conformance with
Access Board Standards
Inevitable given the scope of Section 508
Slide 5: NASA CIO Perspective on Applicability /
the second of 2 slides
By analogy, design of space suits for
Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) cannot practically accommodate all extremes of
physical demographics (height, weight, etc.)
We suggest that similar exceptions for electronic
and information technology applications are appropriate and should be added.
Would reduce unnecessary costs and delays.
Would allow focusing on procurements where
Section 508 can make a real difference.
Slide 6: NASA CIO Perspective on Web Access / the
first of 2 slides
NASA has huge, distributed, web resources
FirstGov cites over 4 million .nasa.gov web pages
(about half publicly accessible)
Each center operates own sub-domain with multiple
web hosts
Management of web content is distributed
Process underway to aggregate hosting of web
resources at specific locations
Effort underway to put in place strong content
management tools, at all sites, that will include evaluation of Section 508
compliance
NASA creates new and has major archives of
multimedia
Formats include Flash, QuickTime, AVI, MPEG, PDF,
PPT specialty image formats
Accessibility encoding of live data streams
technologically limited
Alternative access not always possible in same
time frame as media-rich stream
Accessibility encoding of production multimedia
hampered by diversity of media players
Slide 7: NASA CIO Perspective on Web Access / the
second of 2 slides
NASA challenges with respect to accessible legacy
web pages
Consolidation of disparate web resources
How to bring archive sites up to accessible
status
Elimination of duplication
Multiple “kids” pages, multiple “live
data” sites, multiple stale web sites
Improving web-structure hierarchy and navigation
capabilities
Space Science, Earth Science, Human Spaceflight
and Aerospace web sites located at multiple NASA centers, allied universities
Multimedia
Some multimedia content creation tool vendors
lagging
NASA solutions being worked or piloted
NASA Centers have submitted plans for web page
remediation per our policy
New content-management solutions
Portal technology
Improve navigation capabilities
Focus on different audience segments
Allows for possible major improvement in
accessibility
Slide 8: NASA CIO Perspective on Education / the
first of 2 slides
NASA has distributed management and skill sets
10 Centers, HQ, and additional facilities
Multiple IT support organizations
Despite current best efforts better awareness of
Section 508 needed
Education approaches
CIO-led training effort
Cross-cutting team includes IT groups, EEO
offices, training offices, procurement
Agency-wide awareness online training module
under development
CIO-led Agency working group
Leveraging best practices for PDF, JavaScript,
Java, Cold Fusion and other CGIs
Piloting and testing vendor solutions
Slide 9: NASA CIO Perspective on Education / the
second of 2 slides
Topics for future training modules include
improved/expanded guidance for:
Best value
Vendor self-assessment of conformance
Compliance certification
Training, purchase and distribution of vendor
tools
Site licensing and individual licensing works
against NASA with its distributed approach
Some assessment and repair tools not very useful
because of limited MIME support
Rapid evolution of tool sets mitigates against
any major investment in acquisition and training just at the time global
distribution of these tool sets would be useful
Not all tools provide operability across all
relevant platforms
Some work uniquely on Unix systems, others on NT