Unexpected software updates make it harder for the blind

Cora is a customer service representative in a specialized work group that covers income from foreign sources. She is blind from birth and uses a Braille display connected to her computer. Most of the information she handles shows up in specific blocks on the screen and she has learned the keyboard commands to give those blocks focus on the Braille display as needed. Unexpected software updates to the internal cloud application sometimes change the layout and cause the Braille display to lose focus. This requires some assistance from the IT support center to get her back on track; in the meantime her productivity is compromised. The IT support people have come to expect her calls whenever there is a software update. They serve other blind users, who use a range of screen readers and Braille output devices. Cora and her blind peers have tried to escalate this problem but have had limited success.

No resources to fix a fixable problem

Garrett is a wounded veteran with a moderate cognitive disability as a maintenance technician in a remote area. He drives between work sites and uses a mobile device that lets him navigate by GPS and retrieve his work orders through the company’s app. Some work orders are confusing and he needs help. He must place a call to his supervisor and slowly read aloud the text of the order. The supervisor then explains the work order and occasionally must text him a complete, simplified order, in a regular text messaging app. Keeping track of the company’s app and the separate text messages can be confusing as well, and makes Garrett’s recordkeeping less accurate but it does let him get his maintenance work done. He and his supervisor talk about creating a simpler solution but they do not have any resources to develop software or even explore what their organization may already have that they could use.

Strict digital processes can hamper productivity

Deena is a program administrator at a federal contractor working on many projects with several agencies. She is an older worker and has been experiencing problems with her vision and memory. Her company and the multiple agencies she works with all use different management applications, some in the cloud and some not. She has trouble keeping track of her logins and passwords; she keeps a ‘cheat sheet’ in her desk drawer, which is against policy. She also has trouble copying and pasting information from an agency application into her company’s management tool – the highlight color is yellow on a white background, which doesn’t work for her. So she copies the whole page, pastes it into a word processor with higher contrast, selects the text she wants to copy and then pastes it into her company’s tool. At the end of the day, she has many open word processor pages that need to be saved or discarded and this is very time consuming. She says “in the old days” most of her work was done by phone, informally checking in with her colleagues in the federal agencies she was working with but that nowadays there is a need to document everything, which means more typing and reading than she can easily do. She gets tired and has headaches many times during the week. She attended a workshop for low vision solutions such as larger or clearer monitors and high contrast settings a few years ago but did not follow up with her supervisor.

Bad captioning leads to confusion and missed opportunities

Roberto works as a statistical analyst. He is deaf and uses video relay and video remote interpreting to communicate with his workmates. His supervisor encourages him to use direct text instead whenever possible, for budget reasons. Roberto finds sign language to be a more effective form of communication. Some of the training videos he needs to use have poor quality captions with errors and the transcripts do not let him know what is being said at what part of the video. He and his deaf peers informally exchange information about good and bad captioning training videos; some admit that they choose what training they take based on the quality of the captions. A recent problem has been an increase in the use of telecollaboration for project meetings. Sign language is not available at all on these meeting calls. Real-time captioning (CART) is not always available and the quality is mixed. When it is slow or incorrect, he misses opportunities to ask questions or make comments. Moreover, when he is reading captions he occasionally misses some content of the graphs in the main part of the screen and has to review the recording of the session to catch up. Lately, he has been using his tablet to attend these sessions. This is good for his flexible schedule but he has to balance the size of the captioning and chat panes with the size of the text in the main content pane. Depending on the content, this can be problematic.

Some dragons shouldn’t be slain

Virginia uses multiple applications plus email on a daily basis. Because of a spinal cord injury, she cannot use her hands for typing and has limited use of the mouse. She relies on Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech recognition system that lets her speak words to type and say commands to control the computer. Virginia’s component is working with a cloud service provider who plans to provide software-as-a-service and to utilize a virtual desktop as a delivery mechanism. Because the virtual desktop, Citrix Receiver, does not work with Dragon Naturally Speaking, Virginia will not be able to work unless an exception is made to continue supporting her current configuration. Virginia knows this because she works in the accessibility group.

Lack of requirements leads to work stoppage

Allen uses multiple applications plus email on a daily basis. Allen has been blind from birth. He cannot use a mouse because he cannot see the screen to follow the cursor. He uses a screen reader, assistive technology that speaks the screen information to him and lets him control the computer with the keyboard. Allen is in Virginia’s component. His group is going to the virtual desktop next week. Allen doesn’t know that his assistive technology will not work with the virtual desktop and is facing a work stoppage next week. His situation and user needs in general were not considered during the planning process. The virtual desktop vendors claim that assistive technology will work if installed on the remote desktop. Allen’s agency has tested this and found that it works poorly or not at all. However, there is no requirement in place for the vendor to fix this compatibility problem in time for the transition; there is no timetable at all built into the service contract. The current plan is to have Allen use a separate system until the problem is resolved but there is no clarity on how that will work or how long it will last.

Poor requirements leaves some out of the game

In order to make compliance training more interesting and ‘game-like,’ Jason’s agency has begun to teach courses online so that units can track progress and compete for high scores and early completion of training. These courses often use graphics and interface elements that make it impossible for Jason, who is blind, to use a screen reader to independently complete the required training. The software developers did not follow best practices regarding accessibility, as it was not part of the contract. Jason often has difficulty completing courses, due to no fault of his own. One typical problem is that as the training application calculates his work to show progress graphically, his computer freezes and no record is retained. Jason’s supervisor has to request system logs of Jason’s training instead, which is time-consuming and cumbersome.

No way to turn off distractions

Nancy is an agency financial analyst with Attention Deficit Disorder. Her agency regularly requires her to teach using webinars. While the hosting software has the capacity to demonstrate calculations and can show the impact of proposed changes on the agency’s finances in near real time, the screen cannot be modified by individuals. Nancy is often distracted by incoming questions when teaching and loses her train of thought. As a work around, Nancy tried to call into the seminar and ask a colleague to change screens for her and field questions but this has led to confusion when the slides were not in sync or when students were asking for demonstrations of calculations needed in their jobs and Nancy needed to comment on specific results.

Latest updates don’t work with old interface

The agency Tuan works at has approved apps on mobile devices to gather and support cloud-based data collection and analysis. Tuan, who has limited use of his hands, is knowledgeable about the assistive technology he needs, a switch selection system on his tablet. However, the apps his agency uses were not designed according to the accessibility recommendations for the operating system, which often change. Since the last update, Tuan is unable to perform specific key functions on the apps that let him import, compare and aggregate data from multiple cloud sources, limiting his ability to explore the data creatively. This reduces both his value to the agency and the intrinsic reward he gets from his job.

Section 508 was added to the Rehabilitation Act in 1986, and has been revised since then, most notably in 1998, when an amendment changed its prescriptions from non-binding guidelines to binding, enforceable standards.

In short, the section requires that electronic and information technology that federal agencies create or purchase must be accessible to people with disabilities unless it would pose an undue burden to do so. The agencies are responsible for ensuring accessibility of their technologies.

The Access Board sets the direction and policy for Section 508 compliance. OMB’s e-government and IT administrator helps agencies implement the standards, a role assigned to that office in the E-Gov Act of 2002. Meanwhile, GSA’s Office of Government-wide Policy provides technical assistance to agencies. The help comes primarily through Section 508 Coordinators meetings — OGP held six such meetings in FY 2015 — and through individual requests from agencies.

OGP leads the development and management of tools, such as the Section 508.gov portal and the BuyAccessible Wizard, for use by the acquisition, IT, and Section 508 coordinator communities.

Even with all that help, though, agencies can find compliance difficult. The challenges are as likely to be cultural as they are technological, said Karen Evans, national director for the U.S. Cyber Challenge and a former administrator of the Office of E-Government & Information Technology at OMB.

“When you start looking at the responsibilities that a CIO has as it relates to accessibility, a lot of times it’s not as high on the priority list as say cybersecurity or privacy, or modernization of IT,” she said. “But if you start to look at, ‘I’m going to modernize the environment that an agency has,’ that is the time to start looking at technologies that have implemented international standards as it relates to accessibility so that it becomes a natural byproduct, that you’re meeting that responsibility without really thinking about it. It’s critical, because you want to be able to address the population and you also want to be able to make sure that when you hire people with disabilities, that the environment and the products that you bought are usable by them.”

Compliance begins with acquisition, according to a GSA spokesperson. “Ensuring that IT accessibility technical requirements are properly included in IT solicitations is challenging, given the vast number of individuals preparing solicitations, the ever changing technology universe, and the resources agencies have to verify and check solicitations,” the spokesperson said via email. “Often during a solicitation, other factors (i.e. price, business alignment) take priority over accessibility concerns, even when they were included in the requirements.”

The spokesperson also noted a cultural challenge. “One of the hardest hurdles to overcome is the common perception that because there are no persons with disabilities on staff, there is then no need to worry about accessibility,” the spokesperson said. “Disabilities are not always obvious, and the number of people with disabilities is increasing along with the aging workforce and returning disabled veterans. Ultimately, there needs to be greater awareness throughout the federal community about the steps that are needed to ensure that people with disabilities have the tools they need to work in government.”

The cloud policy itself acknowledges this with a mandate to “define unique government regulatory requirements” when considering a cloud solution. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, this includes Section 508, which requires federal programs, systems and information be accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities.

Download: Cloud Computing and Accessibility Considerations

“This qualifies as a ‘unique government regulatory requirement’ and accessibility is considered to be fundamental to this solution,” according to the NIST Cloud Computing Program (NCCP). “As work progresses in cloud computing, it is important to promote, incorporate and discuss applicable standards in accessibility for cloud computing services as a discipline for investigation.”

NCCP brought together a public working group to tackle this issue and came up with five recommendations for federal IT managers to consider when looking at cloud solutions to ensure disabled employees and citizens have equal access.

Version Control

A benefit of cloud computing is automated updates from the provider that get pushed down to agency systems. While these often bring improvements and security patches, they can also disrupt accessibility apps and can be difficult to roll back.

Reliance on Browser

Because cloud apps have to be accessed through a connection — rather than the local hard drive — users often have to go through a browser, which adds another layer to the “accessibility value chain.”

“For example, conventional computing may link an operating system, a screen reader and a spreadsheet program; a comparable cloud computing chain consists of an operating system, a screen reader, a browser and a cloud-based spreadsheet,” the NCCP guidance explains. “Note that browser interposition is not always a negative; browser settings such as enlargement and browser-based screen readers are sometimes easier to find and use than other options.”

Platform Quandary

Having a unified platform is good for an organization but can cause problems for people with disabilities, who now have to become experts in that platform and the associated accessibility options. If these people are “savvy users,” this might not be an issue. But users who aren’t adept with technology “may have difficulty identifying which device — and version and workplace applications and utilities and assistive technologies… — will best fit the workplace requirements and his/her own accessibility needs.

Use of Thin Clients

Thin clients — in which the device is merely used to display information and receive inputs, while the actual computing takes place on cloud servers — are an essential part of many cloud systems. However, if a client is too thin, accessibility tools might not work as they should.

NCCP researchers note this is a particular problem with screen enlargers, which “can be almost unusable if run on the remote server.” In these cases, the assistive technologies have to be installed at the server level, rather than just the local device.

Rich Data Visualizations

Visualizations are a great way to make large data sets more digestible for the user but only if that user can see the visualization. There are tools and methods for getting around this but those aren’t always available in a cloud setup.

Similar to the thin client issue, if the associated data lives on the cloud servers and isn’t accessible to the user, assistive tools might not be helpful.

“That is, if a screen reader user had access to the data, he/she might be able to make sense of it,” NCCP explains. “But the visualization is the only access provided.”

Along with these considerations, the draft document has an extensive list of “general guidelines” to help IT managers identify issues and find the appropriate assistive tools.

The guidance also includes some solution sets, such as the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) — a program to make accessibility tools available on any platform, in any situation — and Accessibility Application Programming Interfaces (AAPIs) – a set of tools within operating systems to enable developers to build accessibility features.

The site, MyCareer@VA, provides potential applicants and current employees with job news career planning options within the department.

Related: Read the report

But following a 2014 redesign of the site, the OIG found that certain functionalities were in violation of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which governs how federal agencies make technology accessible to people with disabilities.

During testing of the website’s VA Learning University, a feature that provided career development programs for users, the OIG noted that designers and compliance staff were aware of multiple Section 508 failures and rolled out the redesigned site without fixes.

“We found that MyCareer@VA project officials did not address nearly 200 known issues and did not seek certification of compliance prior to the deployment of the Web site,” the report said.

The report said that VALU officials failed to address at least 173 high or medium-level issues, including not ensuring that valid labels for form fields that were disability accessible.

Another issue was the InterviewStream feature, which allowed users to record their answers to standard interview questions and review them for practice.

The feature did not provide closed captions, however, and a member of the VALU 508 support team said in 2014 that the feature would not be 508 compliant without an overhaul of its functionality. Knowing this, the OIG said officials did not seek a Section 508 exception and launched the site anyway.

The contractor hired to redesign the site also did not comply with contract requirements, the report found, mostly because VALU officials didn’t provide adequate oversight and policies were not specific on dealing with Section 508.

As a result, VA added $34,011 in additional costs to fix the Section 508 problems, but shifted the scope of the work on the contract so no more funding would be needed.

The OIG offered four recommendations, including:

• The VA Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration should correct all Section 508 compliance issues with the site.
• The VA Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration should develop a process to ensure compliance on other products,
• The VA Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration should develop training on how to maintain Section 508 compliance.
• The VA Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology should develop policies to ensure all Electronic and Information Technology products are Section 508 compliant prior to launch.

The VA concurred with the recommendations and had plans for implementation.