The Access Board published Dec. 8 a revised draft of the rule requiring federal agencies to procure electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. The draft (.pdf) updates Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

As part of the process, the Access Board hosted the first of two hearings on the refresh Jan. 11 in Washington, D.C., with the next hearing scheduled for March 1 in San Diego, Calif. The proposed rules are out for public comment until March 7.

The Access Board will review the comments over Summer 2012 and aims to submit the draft text of a  notice of proposed rulemaking to the Office of Management and Budget by Fall 2012, according to Tim Creagan, senior accessibility specialist at the Access Board.

The board released a previous draft of the rule in March 2010 and received almost 400 comments. Given major changes to the document due to the incorporation of comments, the board decided to re-release the rule in draft form. The revision simplifies and streamlines the document, increasing usability and eliminates redundancy by referencing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, according to a statement from the Access Board.

"Simplifying the standards and harmonizing more to WCAG 2.0 are the best things that the Access Board can do," Ken Nakata, director of the accessibility consulting practice at HiSoftware, said in an interview with FierceGovernmentIT. Keeping the rule simple will increase the likelihood that agencies can implement it correctly; meaning they will be able to "deliver a ‘good' level of accessibility 90 percent of the time, rather than to provide 'perfect' accessibility only 10 percent of the time," he said.

Some sections of the revised document may have been over simplified, however. "The structuring that was done was a major overhaul, a total reorganization and it has many benefits. Some unintended problems were also introduced," said Gregg Vanderheiden, co-chair web content accessibility guidelines working group at the Worldwide Web Consortium, during the Jan. 11 hearing.

"The current version of edits made [the closed-product section] worse. It's likely that many of the products that are designed following just the closed-products guidelines would not be accessible to many of the people intended," said Vanderheiden.

One addition in the draft could grab the attention of federal web managers. The latest version of the proposed rule emphasizes back-end website authoring technology. In the past public-facing website accessibility has been a major focus of 508 standards, but in the latest version the content management side is also considered.

"Emphasizing better tools and backend technologies obviously make it easier to make compliant content.  And, it also drives the market to make these technologies available to everyone," said Nakata.

The latest version also clarifies what specific technology must be Sec. 508 compliant. Covered electronic content includes:

• content that is public facing;
• content that is broadly disseminated within the agency;
• letters adjudicating any cause within the jurisdiction of the agency;
• internal and external program and policy announcements;
• notices of benefits, forms, questionnaires and surveys;
• emergency notifications;
• formal acknowledgements; and
• educational and training materials.

Archival copies stored or retained solely for archival purposes to preserve an exact image of a hard copy, and draft versions of documents, were exempted from the proposed refresh--an exception Lauren McLarney, government programs specialist with the National Federation of the Blind took issue with during the hearing.

"What if an agency has a blind employee that needs access to a draft or is working on the draft before it's released to the public. Even though most drafts are internal, they still need to be accessible to disabled employees," said McLarney.

Dave Porter, chief executive and accessibility consultant at CompUnique, urged the board to revise the rule to cover certain technologies that are growing in popularity and limit access. These technologies include self-service machines and kiosks, which are becoming more prevalent at federal agencies and digital or biometric identification technology, which is emerging as an alternative to password protection

For more:
- see the Access Board announcement
- download the latest Sec. 508 refresh draft (.pdf)

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Q&A: Tim Creagan on the 508 refresh and agency compliance