More info on this event here: 
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2011/11/lazar

Male speaker:	Welcome to Professor Jonathan Lazar. Jonathan is a professor at Towson University where he is a professor of computer science and information sciences director on the undergraduate program and information and systems and director of the universal usability laboratory. He is here today to talk to us about accessible web design welcome.
Jonathan:	Great thank you very much thank you to everyone for coming out today I am thrilled to be here talking to you about web accessibility and the so what? People sometimes ask me well so website is accessible, so what? What does that mean? So I’m going to tell you the results of some studies about the so what, what does it mean, how does it impact on people, how does it lead to societal discrimination? 
	So let’s just start out with a quick sort of background. The term assistive technology is used very often with different meanings, there are a lot of different categories that people could consider to be assistive technology that includes things like augmentative communication for people who have trouble speaking right? Assistive technology for transportation so power wheelchairs, prosthetics. What I’m going to be talking about though is assistive technology for access to information.
So we are talking about access to web information, using different types of input or output methods but to access the same web based information and computer applications. We talk about web accessibility what does that mean? Let me just ask how many people by show of hands would consider themselves pretty familiar with web accessibility? How many people consider themselves very familiar with web accessibility? Come on Judy the hand should be going up, you know your hand should always be going up here. So, what you are now running on a reserve battery power it says did the, did someone not plug it in?  Okay well someone will take…
Male speaker:	 We’ve got to keep you on your toes.
Jonathan:	Okay someone will take care of that I assume, so we are talking about assistive technology though that people use to access same content. So different input output devices things like screen readers, like jars and window eyes and voice over on the Mac. You’ve got refreshable Braille displays you have got different types of pointing devices, alternative keyboards, speech recognition. Someone here earlier said they use Dragon right people who use keyboards but don’t use pointing devices or people who rely on captioning or transcripts. 
So we just want to make sure that people have equal access to the same information if they are using a different input or output approach.  So websites just need to be flexible enough to work with all these different input and output approaches right. One of the sort of urban legends you here is oh if I have to make website accessible that means text only, that means it will look horrible no it doesn’t. But that’s one of the urban legends you often hear, it doesn’t mean text only. Most accessibility is in the backend coding so some without disability should be able to tell whether or not a site is accessible or not, right it should just look like a good site. 
But it’s not enough to say make it accessible you can’t just say we will make it accessible what does that mean? That’s why we have design guidelines.  We have guidelines for instance from Section 508 of the reader violation act, we have WCAG the web content accessibility guidelines from the World Wide Web consortium, we have someone in this room who is responsible for that in fact. So there are other design guidelines that exist but really the guidelines that most people are familiar for web content are either the WCAG or the laws like Section 508 of the Rehab Act in the United States that really are based on WCAG in many ways. 
They still primarily deal with perceptional and motor impairment, So both the laws and the guidelines still focus more on perceptional and motor than cognitive not as much on cognitive that’s starting to change, that’s definitely starting to change. So what does it mean, what does it mean if it’s inaccessible? What inaccessible websites can lead to employment discrimination, can lead to a lack of access to educational opportunities or to reading materials. You may wind up paying higher prices there could be some pricing discrimination, you can’t join in social communities right, you can’t access emergency information.
I actually saw this first hand I was giving a talk you remember in August there was a big earthquake on the East Coast. I was actually giving a talk about web accessibility and so they introduced me and said here is Jonathan Lazar he is going to talk about web accessibility and all of a sudden the earth started shaking. Now this first of all let me say first time ever in my life that I started talking about web accessibility and people literary fled in fear of their lives, everyone literary started running out of the room, the timing was just a bit odd.
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	But what happened is as we were sitting outside under a tree and everyone is kind of trying to calming down and determining when we can go back in the building they were all checking for updates on Twitter, they are checking on Facebook that’s how they are getting their information about what the appropriate steps are to take. Well what happens if suddenly you can’t take part in that, what happens if those social networking tools are inaccessible? What happens if the information sources you are expecting in n emergency situation are not accessible? That definitely puts you at a disadvantage that’s the “so what?” 
	So I’m going to talk about three recent studies that we have done at the University of Usability Laboratory. Typically my research over the last 10 or 15 years has been much more sort of mainline human computer interaction. You know which widgets work best and which menu structure work best and how to change security features so they will work better, audio captures will work better for blind users and things like that. But more recently I have been a lot of work related to the, the sort what? The societal outcomes, the impact. If you are winding up trying to use technology that’s inaccessible what does that mean, how does that impact on your life? So there are three studies one is about government information, one is about employment discrimination and one is about the airlines.
	So one of the big problems is that Section 508 of the Rehab Act requires that all federal technologies including federal websites be accessible to people with disabilities. Now most websites are not, the federal government has not really done a great job in this area, having the laws and the regulations don’t mean that they are actually followed. So just some background people who have looked at this over the last 10 years, looking at federal homepages to get a sense for how accessible or inaccessible they are. And generally federal websites have not done well. The first study found that over half of them were accessible but they looked bad but since then it’s been between about 10 to 20% of federal websites examined were actually in compliance with 508.
So last year April and May we actually evaluated 100 federal homepages for Section 508 compliance. And we basically just went to usa.gov and sort of took a sampling of different executive grand sites, judicial, legislative these new open government sites that are always being pushed you know like data.gov. And what we did is we basically for a start with the human inspection. So we first went through and inspected it using multiple assistive technologies, inspected the code and then after that we also used two automated evaluation tool. And automated evaluation tools we are talking about things like DQ world space where you have got SSB in focus, you have got high software compliance share there are a number of tools out there.
How many people are familiar with some of the automated software tools out there? Okay so about three or four of you. The tools aren’t perfect you really need more than the tools but at the same time you have to be realistic if your government agency monitoring a million web pages you are not going to be able to actually do a manual inspection of one million web pages. So you know automated tools need to be a part of the overall accessibility plan. But this is how we evaluated the 100 federal pages.
	Now here is what we found according to our human inspections 96 out of 100 federal homepages violated Section 508, 96 out of a 100 did not do well. And if you actually use the automated tools they both found that 92 out of 100 violated Section 508. But the thing is most of the problems were actually very easy to solve technically. So things like there was no skip navigation, there were graphics informed without appropriate markup, there were flash without equivalent, there were a lot of links with meaningless names. 
And so if you want know an example lets jump ahead here is one from The White House. So the links at The White House if you have got a link list in with things like hero underscore image under slash hero underscore first lady dash mother underscore SA dash 0437 I don’t know what that means. And things like 1234. If you want to look at ready.gov as in the middle of 2010 when we did the study blind users actually could not get access to information about hurricanes and floods. All they heard was 01 02 03 that was it. And let me say again we actually looked at it for 508 compliance not just for blind users but part of our evaluation technique is we go with the screen reader. 
So this is serious information White House information and emergency preparedness information that was not accessible.
	Now we also looked at what information on accessibility do these federal sites have? Do they have accessibility statements because very often reading what a federal agency says publicly is very important. Unfortunately though most federal agencies don’t say much so 58 of them said that they had, excuse me, 58 of them had an accessibility statement, 42 of them said we are 508 compliant, 22 of them said some of the specific features related to accessibility but only 3 out of a 100 said either the tool they used to test the site for accessibility, the process they used or how often they check
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 	And this is a major problem it’s very hard to get federal agencies to talk about what they do related to accessibility. They don’t want to talk about it, they are not open about it, they don’t want to share with others. To quote one 508 compliance officer in a federal agency he told me there is no reason to because we can’t learn anything from the other federal agencies. What we do at our agency doesn’t relate to what they do although I won’t say which agencies because obviously I will identify who said this. But he said they have nothing to do with each other, each agency does something totally unique yeah. But they all use HTML they all use the same coding standards, they all use the same so really it’s not that unique but the federal agencies are very hesitant to share and this has been an ongoing problem of federal of compliance.
	Now one of the things that’s happening soon, in December The White House has indicated that they are going to be releasing a comprehensive 508 improvement plan which is a good thing because really it’s been very bad. And part of that might be that for instance the justice department has the responsibility for every two years doing right compliance studies and monitoring compliance and for almost a decade they stopped doing that they just stopped doing it. You could go to the website and it says we are posting data later this year in 2003 about what we found and it was already like 2009. So they have really fallen down on the job as well.
 And again just to give you an example we are here to talk about whitehouse.gov we talked about ready.gov when section 508.gov was redesigned in middle of 2010 it was not 508 compliant. Does that kind of give you a sense of the scope of the problem? So if that’s not compliant you are really in trouble. Now I would say they have made improvements and ready.gov, whitehouse.gov they have all made improvements since we did the study but I think in many cases it’s only because we kind of named and shamed them that they made the improvements that this information was out there. And it was like wow, emergency information that is important.
	Section 508.gov that should be 508 compliant that will always be my first guess it should be 508 compliance. So that’s the first study it means that people with disabilities very often can’t get access to government information when we move on now to the airlines. So there has been a department of transportation regulation in effect since May 2009 it was actually issued in 2008 saying that airlines don’t need to have accessible websites. But if the website is not accessible you have to be able to call the airline and say hi, I have a disability and then get the same price that’s available on the website at that time you know because very often when you call airlines what do they say? Lower fares may be available on our website, right. 
And you can’t be charged the call centre fee. You just have to identity yourself as having a disability which is a separate question as to whether you should have to do that but basically that’s the regulation. So what we did is we examined websites of the ten largest airlines at that time found that four of them had major accessibility problems. Alaska, Jet Blue, United and US Airways and juts to give you an example here is one example of the Jet Blue site at that time which is you could not actually type in your destination without using a pointing device. And you say well can I just type in I’m going from BWI to MCO Orlando no actually you….so that was a-problem right there if you couldn’t use a pointing device. 
So what we did is we created 60 travel itineraries, 15 for each airline involving a specific flight that we wanted to take. The time of day only you know no flights that were complex overnight just basically things like we want to go from Baltimore to Chicago, we want to go from Baltimore to San Diego. You know round trip flights a date, a general time.  We made sure that there is only one flight that fit that criterion and we did a one pilot study just to get a sense of how it would with work with the airlines. And so basically what we wanted to do was get a sense for if we called on the phone what was the price we got quoted and how would that relate to what was available on the website.
	So I had this project with my students, one student called the airlines and identify themselves as being blind and saying your website is inaccessible. And they noted the regulations and aid here is when I want to fly, here is where I want to go can you give me a price quote? And so we just want to get a comparison, how are the airlines doing and the students by the way repeatedly checked, the ones who were checking on website repeat checked because you know airlines say flight prices change every minute so they were checking throughout the length of the call, oh just in could you can say it changed
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	Here are the results so here is what we found, there were some cases where airlines did actually quote a higher fare, two cases for US Airways one from Jet Blue. But bit the bigger problem was where the airline refused to waive the call centre fee. So what happened is that you find with United and US Airways it was over a third at the time. The reason who there are two percentages there is actually there was one phone call that resulted into two different price indiscriminations where they charged a higher fare and also refused to waive the call center fee. And so depending on how you want to mark that that could be one violation or two.
But the interesting thing that happened is when we cited the regulation they say said well we are going to charge the phone center fee and we said well that’s you can’t do that the regulation says since your website doesn’t work you can’t charge us of that. Generally what happened was something like they would say, well hold on a minute let me check with my manager they put you on hold right they come back on yeah we don’t follow that regulation. No seriously there are airlines that actually said that. So we marked down the name of the, who we spoke to and the time of day if we could get them to give their name you know who we spoke with. 
And so this kind of gives you a sense, this is part of my argument of why I’m saying we are going to set up these separate accommodations for people with disabilities, oh you are disabled okay go use this, go use a call don’t use our website you know, use the phone or use this other website that’s text only. Inherently, and you know this from the history of US civil rights law, inherently accommodations that are separate they tend not to be equal. So we started calling it separate but unequal when you have accommodations for inaccessible websites, so here is an example right here. 
	Now if these were actual blind people who called up right they would have been charged more. They would have had to pay a higher fare and of course the process you have to through to file a complaint with the DOT are not easy, are not simple they have six months to respond. But guess what you just want to book your flight and go on you are not going to get a whole legal battle you know you just have things you have to get done during the day. So that’s the example with airlines.
Moving on to another example these ones are very recent we just finished data collection in the middle of September on this one and this one is about employment discrimination. Now most jobs if you apply for jobs you generally have to apply online, online applications required its non-option it’s not, you’re required to apply online. So what happens if the online employment application is inaccessible? Before you can even apply for the job and be discriminated against you are shout out from even applying for the job. 
We know that historically the unemployment rate for people with disability is very high. A number of statistics have set around 70 to 80% unemployment for working age adults with disabilities. And so we were interested in studying this in determining okay how were these online employments, these applications were how are they? Are they accessible, what barriers do people face? Yeah I have become fascinated with this idea of the “so what”? If an website is inaccessible what does that mean, what does it lead to, what types of discrimination, how does it impact on the quality of your life? 
So for this one we actually had 16 blind users these were not students of mine these were blind working age adults who all of whom at one point either had been employed. But all of them were actually looking for employment right now, so all of them were seeking employment. So these are motivated group of expert users. Sometimes people say oh that’s because you didn’t pick the right user to have disabilities let me tell you these were all working age adults, these were all people who are searching for jobs currently. These are people who are motivated. And most of them had been employed at one time or another.
So these are motivated people, these are people with a lot of time and experience with using assistive technology. This project was actually funded by the South East Dip Tack the ADA Technical Assistance Centre and also the [0:19:10] [inaudible] institute. So we had 16 blind users and what we did is we actually had then apply to 16 South Eastern employers, why south eastern because those were the people funding the research. But it wouldn’t be any different a lot of these were big companies so it would be any different without any other region in the United States. 
There were two online applicants submitted per employer. Now when we did our pilot studies what we found is that there were so many barriers if we just used as a traditional usability test we will sit there and observe we will not assist you in any way, we will just let you attempt to apply we wouldn’t have gotten much feedback. We basically people would have gotten to the home screen not being able to get past it and we say okay thanks for your time. And we want to learn more about the barriers so we set up a methodology where essentially user could ask for assistance when they hit a barrier and we would know what type of assistance we gave, we would know what the roadblock was.
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	And so out of 32 attempts to submit applications, 24 were actually submitted but only nine of them were submitted without our help. Okay only nine of them were submitted without our help that would be less than a 30% task success rate. Why, because there were so many barriers on these websites. And again in this one we were looking specifically at blind users. And they are all using Jars they were all screen reader users, they were all very experienced. Some of our users needed as many as three we called them interventions, three interventions were in many cases things just required mouse click. There was no way without using pointing device to get past to the next page, there was no text or equivalent, there was no lick at the bottom, there was nothing. 
	So really if less you know less than 30% of the time people can submit applications, that’s very problematic. To give you some examples here is one from PNC bank the search jobs page was flash based. There were no text tool equivalents, you could not even search for a job unless you could use a pointing device. No pointing device no job. That’s really what lot of these things came down too. Now interesting enough, once you have got past that, a lot of the employment process was actually accessible at PNC bank. But until you could get past that search jobs page you could not apply for a job or even find out what jobs are available. 
Here is one of the Smithfield Foods, what you notice on here you actually have a map first of USA, Europe and Mexico and then a map of specific states. You actually had to go through two different screens at the beginning of the Smithfield Foods job search to search for a job. You first had to go to the clickable image map for the USA, click on that and then you get the USA map and then you actually have to click on a state. If you could not use pointing device you could not move forward in the application process. It was impossible, there was no way around it.
	And the progress bar is very often were inaccessible, users didn’t know how they were doing in the process very often there was only using a visual manner. So for instance up here we have four different you know these application proceeds are relatively long you want to know how you are doing, you want to realize am I in the middle, am I towards the end can I save it if I have to run, can I save it maybe you know at come back for the application at a later time? 
So what happened is that all these use either shading. And by the way the one on the bottom on the projector you can’t even tell the shading difference. This one is a little bit brighter for welcome then for resume and employment eligibility. But this is other one look they use a gray shading or change in color for the text. So you know certainly if you are color blind you may have some issues here.  There was no clarity as to here are the seven steps one two three four five six seven, you are on step three. 
Again not something that’s technically hard, most of the biggest barriers that we found were not technically hard things. You can leave the clickable image maps up there guess what just put a link on the bottom in text so that someone can use it. You don’t have to change the visual layout although actually I would suggest changing this one because this one can be very confusing on the progress bars. But these are all things that are technically easy to solve, these are not technically challenging we know how to solve this right. We know they are easy to do but people don’t do them they create big barriers.
 Now what are some of the potential causes? So right there three studies related to limited access to government information, higher prices being charged and the inability to submit a job application. So what are some potential causes of this? Well you have a number of causes such as developers often just don’t understand accessibility or maybe they are against it. Something I hear very often is well the contract didn’t specify accessibility. It wasn’t in the contract we only do what is the contract, the contract did not specify accessibility. 
That’s why a lot of federal agencies have been trying to slowly get more information into the procurement process and the contracting process about accessibility and 508 compliance, GSA has been working on that. As I mentioned earlier the justice department did not perform the required enforcement activities for almost a decade. It’s very clear in the 508 regulation they are supposed to do this and they didn’t. Now they are starting to again slowly actually this spring they sent out survey plan they were supposed to do it last fall. Has anybody read by the way the 2010 memo the July memo coming out from Vivek Kundra and talking about how yeah we essentially acknowledge that we haven’t been following the law but we are going to start doing it.
Just a show of hands how many people have read that memo? Okay two people who have read the memo. It’s really when I first read this I’m like wow, they’re kind of admitting they haven’t done it. That’s good you know the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
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	Hi I’m the US federal government I’m inaccessible you know that the first step it’s admitting you have a problem. So they said we are going to start by sending out a survey and asking federal agencies if they are accessible or not. Did anyone find a problem with that? How many of them are going to say no? And that’s how they did it back in 2001 and 2 when 508 started. They sent out a survey; is your site accessible? Um..Yeah. So they still haven’t released any data they sent out the survey spring of 2011. But again it’s a survey and what they need to really, do they really need to do user testing expert reviews automated testing. 
Government agencies do not release any data about accessibility unfortunately. It’s very hard to get them to release any data something I have been pushing forward for a year and a half, how many people are familiar with the open government dash board? How many people have seen that? Okay there are a number of people. There needs to be a 508 column on the open government dash board as they are talking about how each agency is making progress towards open government, towards meeting all those goals. How about open government that’s actually open to all people? So but there is no information on that, if you want to know how they are doing I love when I go to a, you know certainly when I go to the airport I want to know. For instance, if I have tight connection, is this flight usually late or is it on time?
They haven’t posted any information about how federal agencies are doing they won’t even post what they are doing. When you ask agencies its very problematic. There is one that I have been just banging against my head against the wall trying they do a  good job and they are involved with disability services and I have been trying to get them to post what they do and they won’t do it. They say no we are not comfortable with it, no we don’t want to do it, no we just we are too busy there is always some excuse. So agencies there is still no requirement to post what they are doing, there is no requirement to discuss what they are doing.
	Automated tools which many times policy makers rely on they only can give you limited feedback and sometimes misleading feedback. Do we need automated tools? Absolutely. But automated tools by themselves won’t tell you the full answer you need to have user testing, you need to have expert reviews. But to give an example of the problem there is one Section 508 coordinator I can’t say which agency but one Section 508 coordinator who says he is against user testing. When you bring people with disabilities into the process it only ruins accessibility, that’s actually what he said. 
I’m always surprised what people tell me I guess it’s because I never say publicly who they are but I’m always surprised what people tell me he actually said that. He said I just want automated tools I don’t want people with disabilities you bring them in they ruin the process of accessibility, that’s sort of a weird statement. Very often policy makers don’t realize the implications of inaccessible web content. Very often they don’t realize what does it mean you ask a policy maker and they will say well, you know I don’t think it’s that big a deal right, what does it really mean, people just call up and get information. That’s fine they don’t understand.
And another reason is that universities rarely teach about IT accessibility if you look at ISITCS curriculum they don’t talk about accessibility, it’s not in the national curriculum models. So it really it’s an issue here are some of the reasons why accessibility can be a problem. So I’m just going to quickly give you an overview of what is going on in the next month or two related to accessibility web accessibility and what’s going on maybe in the next year or two. Because there is actually even a lot more policy activity in about the last year and a half, two years. The justice department started talking about it, GSA started talking about it more, The White house has started talking about it. So there is progress just in the fact that they are talking about it, they are paying attention to it. 
So what’s going on first of all for the rest of this year? Now later this month the AIM commission the accessible instructional materials commission will be submitting the report to congress about how to make post secondary education IT materials accessible. That’s sometime later this month, later this month also the US access board says that they are going to be releasing new draft version of the 508 refresh and they are starting a whole new ANPRM process you know an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking. On November 25th feedback is due about airline websites and kiosk you can imagine I will certainly be submitting some feedback about that. 
So basically they started a new notice of proposed of rulemaking process there for airlines and this time DOT is saying you know what airline websites are going to need to accessible and kiosks [0:29:33] [phonetic] are going to need to be accessible. And if you read the feedback from the last time around airline said we can’t do that, it will cost us millions of dollars to make everything accessible we cannot do it. It’s not really true that it’s going to take millions of dollars but that was their claim it’s too hard we can’t do it. Now one of the big things that’s supposed to happen but we don’t know yet exactly what it means in December The White House has said they are going to be releasing a comprehensive section 508 improvement plan.
 [0:30:02]
Now notice that they keep using these words like improvement the really great news is they are starting to admit that there is a problem that maybe we are not doing a great job, maybe we need to improve on this. The problem is though we have no idea what’s going to be in the plan and no one publicly said anything about it. They basically have said we are going to be releasing a draft of the 508 comprehensive improvement plan that’s going to solve everything and then we will put it out there and we will get feedback from the public. So we don’t know yet exactly what’s going to be in that plan. And what’s been going on recently that you will see for the next maybe two years there has been a lot of action related to IT accessibility in higher education.
So there was this famous letter send on June 29th 2010 how many people have heard about the letter, the dear colleagues letter? Right okay a few people probably the people in disability supports services of camps IT here because you are aware of that letter.
 It was basically it was a joint letter sent out by the office of civil rights for department education and civil rights division of the justice department basically saying you may not adopt e-book readers which are inaccessible for instance the Kindle of that time was there was a number of legal filings related to the Kindle which was inaccessible at that time. And so they basically said just know you can’t adopt this without accommodations in place and this was sent to every university president in the entire country. And generally what happens is it filtered down so I got a call from my provost hey Jonathan so I got this letter can you come to my office we need to talk about this?
 And recently the department of education actually released some new guidelines for accessible IT in education. There was a legal complaint that was filed against Penn State for just comprehensively inaccessible IT across the campus, everything from the library catalogue, registration, payment application, course teaching you name it and that was resolved actually last month. There is a lawsuit filed against Ford State University 0:31:57 for having inaccessible IT and not providing accommodations now this is related to students who are blind and who are math maters and trying to take math classes. And there has also been an investigation into NYU and North Western for using inaccessible software such as Google apps.
So that kind of gives you a sense, there has been a lot more activity in the last about a year a half to two years. So now that’s in higher education but there is also this whole other area which we didn’t address too much about the ADA. Now for a number of years the justice department has said yes the Americans with disabilities act applies to websites yes if you are a public accommodation it does apply but they never really did anything about that. And then there was that Target lawsuit how many people have heard about the Target lawsuit? Where the national federation of the blind sued Target because the website was inaccessible and yeah.
And so a judge in that case there were a number of preliminary rulings where the judge said yes the ADA does apply to websites and public accommodations not only government but it also applies to public accommodations right. So they started the rule making process in July 2010 to start that discussion going about okay we need to have specific technical specs within the ADA because it wasn’t clear even though justices and some judges said yes ADA applies to websites of public accommodations. If you are covered under the ADA as a public accommodation your website is covered too right but there are no technical guidelines. 
So they started the process to figure out what will the regulations be, what will the guidelines be and so some of the questions related to which guidelines WCAG or section 508 or maybe some combination thereof we hope not right. About how long content needs to be on the web if it was used recently or posted recently what’s considered legacy content that doesn’t need to be touched? Right what are the timeframes for compliance, how basically, how do you measure this? So this is really still in process so you see it's happening sort of ADA world of public accommodations its happening in higher education in IT, it’s happening in transportation, it’s happening in government.
So there is a lot of activity right now but still people need to understand the implications the so what, if its accessible so what does that mean? That means these barriers, that mean despising discrimination that means employment discrimination. And that’s really one of the things that I’m trying to address with my work and to talk with as many people as possible and get them to understand how this impacts on the quality of lives and how the legal environment is changing and the policy environment is changing and the university environment is changing and how we call all be a part of making that change and making improvements. Because web accessibility is technically not that hard, there are great guidelines, there are great resources. Are there some technical challenges every now and there that might be challenging? Yes visualizations things like that but 99% of the flaws, the problems are really easy to solve so we should work on solving those, we need better policies, we need better processes, we need more awareness, we need more education. Alright thank you.
[0:35:12]
Male speaker:	Thank you for bringing up these issues but I have to say I am originally  coming from Greece and  my countrymen believed for a number of decades  that the  government can solve all their problems  and we know how that has fared. So you mentioned in your talk a number of government agencies and justices and everything my head is spinning from all these things. If what you say is true that the costs are minimal and the barriers are huge and there’s presumably economic opportunity from airlines and companies to bring the customers.
Jonathan:	Right the more customers yeah.
Male speaker:	And people with disabilities why don’t you hire a consultancy and make an economic argument to corporations because government will not solve the problem. They have been it for a decade they have messed up.
Jonathan:	Let me by the way ask are the questions recorded to the people who are listening or do I need to repeat them?
Male speaker:	You should probably repeat them.
Jonathan:	I probably repeat them okay.
Male speaker:	The people at the table you can hear people at the table better but…
Jonathan:	I can hear people at the table but…
Female speaker:	People in the corner it’s hard to hear.
Jonathan:	I’m sorry in the corner it’s hard to hear, okay repeat them got it. So he was  asking about the fact that you know you are saying governments should solve this but  why not instead  sort of take the approach  of having the, an argument made about why economically this is good right? Is that a good summary of what you said?
Male speaker:	Yeah.
Jonathan:	Why economically this is good, you know there are some interesting thoughts on this. You run into  discrimination  in companies where they say I don’t  want to do it, that I  don’t want to do it and the economic argument  doesn’t make a difference to them sometimes. You run into people in federal agencies within the government who this is law I mean people often Jonathan you should go down to Congress and try and pass the law. Okay but we already have the laws, we have the regulations and it’s getting people to follow through on them and it’s getting it into   the process, it’s getting to make it a priority. Sometimes what happens it winds up being the secret thing, agencies don’t want to talk about it, and government doesn’t want to share any information.
	What happens when you make it this sort of secret hidden thing what does that say about it? Michael you have some things you want to add on that looks like you had some things you wanted to add about the economic argument.
Michael:	I wasn’t going to by  the GAO Government Accounting  Office 2002 released a survey and said you know we’ve got these tax breaks  for hiring people  with disabilities, $5000 for  every person with a disability  you hire up to $10000 for retrofitting  your place of business. The average cost of an accommodation usually is zero but when they do have costs the first janwave [0:37:43][phonetic] said it was about $500 the second one said it was in the area of $750. A rational employer looking at $750 would surely want to call $5000 in tax breaks and or an additional $10000 in retrofitting but they don’t that’s called a market failure.
Male Speaker:	You’ve got any reason for that?
Michael:	It’s called the market failure and or prejudice, and or ignorance.
Jonathan:	Yeah I want to tell just a quick story from, so this Target lawsuit which a number of you have heard about at the National Federation of the Blind Convention in 2010 this is after the lawsuit had already been settled out of court. The person who is in charge of target.com website actually I was fascinated I am still fascinated by what he said. He came up  to speak and he said  you know I want  to be honest we haven’t always been friends ,you sued us right but he said  let me tell you the story he said I only came in 2008 and again this is the person in charge of the target.com website.
I came in 2008 and I basically was told we are fighting this law suit, okay well why are we fighting this lawsuit? Well there are blind people who want to buy from us. Okay why are we fighting the lawsuit? Well they are suing for the right to buy from us. Okay and we are fighting the lawsuit to keep them from buying from us? And so he said no let me make sure I understand this right there are people who want to be customers of our company and are actually filing a lawsuit for the right to be customers of our company and we are fighting a lawsuit to keep them from being customers of our company? Am I missing something here? And he said his team said no that’s pretty much it.
	And so you  see that, you see that  pattern with business it’s  not very often they make  none rational decisions for instance there is a lawsuit against  South West Airlines almost a decade ago right and south west kept fighting  this law suit and fighting this lawsuit they  don’t want to make  their  website accessible right? Okay so fine they won in court then six months later they turn around put out a press release we are going to make our website accessible. Wouldn’t it have made sense to first make the website accessible and get all that goodwill and publicity rather than say we are fighting it, we are against people with disabilities and then six months later say okay now we are going to make it accessible. We beat you in court but yeah okay we’ve changed our mind now.
[0:40:03]
	So businesses and federal agencies, companies don’t necessarily do things that make economic sense. It could be prejudice, it could be lack of knowledge it could be I mean there are a number of reasons why. It could be that people are just unaware they don’t understand it I mean again it’s  still not something that’s talked about that openly. And I think  that leads to some societal perceptions  of disability when you are kind  of let’s talk about it quietly  let’s not—no let’s bring it out in the open. Let’s  talk about  it, let’s talk about which federal agencies are failing which are succeeding, lets you know  I always say if you want  to get on the university  campus, if you want to get  departments  to make their  websites more accessible every  month post a status  report for how they are doing  right. 
	Computer Science does not want to be beaten by any department from the humanities, you know that’s how, come on you know that’s how a university campus work.
Female speaker:	Right.
Jonathan:	They don’t want to be beaten by any department for the humanities, they are okay with the other sciences beating them but not the humanities. And so you want to get that competition going, how does that work? Openness. Yeah Judy you had something you want to say.
Judy:	Yeah so the financial argument for accessibility I think is good and by the way there’s lots of people in Greece who are interested in web accessibility, lots of work going on there. But it doesn’t seem to be sufficient and so you’ve already heard some comments on the different arguments I think sometimes it’s lack of awareness sometimes in difference sometimes deeply entrenched myths. This is one reason that we developed Work Ive Two [0:41:33][phonetic] which has many improvements over Work Ive One.
Jonathan:	Yeah.
Judy:	And so it allows developers to do much more on their sites and that message hasn’t gone out to developers so much yet. But sometimes it’s because of over discrimination as in some of Jonathan’s and Michael’s comments. But I think the financial return is significant but the return actually comes later down the road and some organizations aren’t willing to front the funds for that. So my experience we really need to put out accommodation of rationales, the social responsibility ones, the technical benefits for the site, the financial factors and the legal and policy factors together and help socialize those.
	And that’s a combination of arguments that works equally well for the public sector as the private sector. By the way Jonathan I think your comments about transparency are really great I like…
Jonathan:	Can we actually  pass this down maybe it will be more like…
Judy:	Okay.
Male speaker:	The table has mikes.
Jonathan:	The table has mikes built in oh okay never mind okay.
Judy:	Okay yeah I think your  comments about transparency about of what federal agencies are doing is very important we  find that the private sector is even less eager to be  transparent with what they are doing. But there is some very good work going on web accessibility in the private sector.
Jonathan:	Right.
Judy:	And I also think that some of  the research that  you sited about the impact individuals of encountering barriers  on sites as they are  trying to do different  tasks is very important I would love if people are looking at  projects to do for  school I would  love to see more research like that. I would love to be able to point to that research because sometimes that breaks an awareness barrier and gets developers interested and committed because it’s a stimulating technical challenge to address once they understand the social issue. But I think you need all of those arguments together to make a breakthrough on this.
Jonathan:	Yep okay should I pass the mike over to people who are sitting not at the table? We don’t need the mike okay you are hearing them okay? Okay yes go ahead.
Female speaker:	No  just  you know as a website developer you want  to make your code HTML  valid so I think the tools  like that Cynthia site where you can just—I know automated tools are [0:43:30][inaudible] but it’s also, it’s like you are writing  in English but you need to translate  it into French.  It’s how it almost feels when you don’t know French  or how you know you are translating  properly. So if I make a page and you can keyboard click to make all the controls work to access video or images, how do I know that’s sufficient for an accessibility you know to, how do I know people can use those tools and that the site is accessible [0:43:55][inaudible] how to find people to validate your sites?
Jonathan:	Right how to find people to validate your sites is essentially what you are asking? I think a great technique is to partner with local advocacy groups so if you find local groups very often they want to be part of the process, they want to part of the discussion. And so you can find local groups of National Association for the Deaf, National Federation of the Blind, National Spinal Cord Injury Association and National Down Syndrome Congress there are lots of great groups. And certainly in the Boston area you are rich with accessibility resources around here and you have the New England ADA Center I believe in Boston.
	So you have a number of resources here but I think partnering with advocacy groups but one of the important things to always remember is when you bring in users with disabilities pay them for their time. One of the  first things that I always notice with students when we are trying  to do accessibility related projects is that students tend to think oh  they have  a disability well they are  just sitting  there waiting for me to  come bring something to them. I say no you have to understand these are people who are employed; these are adults who deserve your respect if you are taking some of their time they need to be compensated for their time.
[0:45:03]
	You know and that’s it you want to get feedback from folks and it’s by setting up respectful partnerships you know and reaching out and certainly Judy mentioned about the WCAG 2.0. The website for 2.0 has so many great resources and so many great details. If you ever wonder why I never understood how to do that right? They have a lot of technical assistance now for how you do that. But it’s really its setting up those partnerships and we  typically try to include people with disabilities in all of our research and involve  them in user testing because very often you know what you  get in user testing  will be very different than the automated tools.	
Female speaker:	I think it was back up, I mean a developer on the bottom row road in the weeds [0:45:40] [phonetic] would have to go through management and say we need to have this as part of the development environment.
Jonathan:	Right you can and you—I’m sorry go ahead yeah.
Male speaker:	I mean I would say the first thing developers should do is turn their monitor off, turn their screen to off that’s what I am doing now. I had an intern over the summer who was blind and I started for 10 minutes a day turning my monitor off. Now there are plenty of other accessibility issues that can also be tested and you should and you can find ways to do that. You can at least start yourself and just pick away at it if you are a developer give yourself, you know try it for 10 minutes a day, try it for 15 minutes a day. Set yourself challenges and we are launching a project this winter caller the sonar challenge where we are going to be challenging sighted users to try using a free software screen reader system. 	
	
Partly we are making the argument that well there’s a huge percentage of blind users who are unemployed and find jobs without public assistance as an absurd cost. In the very least you know here is a fully free software operating system that plenty of blind users are using which costs nothing. And  we want to start challenging  sighted users so they pop in a disk, start up  the computer  and then the challenge is set  us so that we don’t specify what will be done. But we will get other  groups,  other websites, other projects to  say I am participating in this challenge here are  the things you could do to give me feedback,  to help test the accessibility  of my site.
	I think  that if you limit yourself to saying only  find people  with disabilities  then we are always going to be playing this catch up, we are always going to be setting a burden that’s high that says okay now I  certainly have to do  testing with outside users and  I have to find one through a [0:47:47][inaudible]. I have to pay them like we don’t pay other users, like we don’t pay anybody to test. The whole point we are trying to have a website that’s something going in fast. There is a whole you know we can get a lot of people testing things and it’s not necessarily the best, you know they are not expert users but with the 95% of things that are low hanging fruit and easy you don’t have to be an expert user. I mean that right  there is  going to help you take  a big step forward  I think and for helping us we have thousands of pages in several sites and we are picking away at them now…
Jonathan:	And one of the things also about  it when  you bring  in users with disabilities even  if you don’t bring them in on all projects you bring them on some projects,  your developers they  get much more familiar with what the problems are and  you know and if they have a quick  question  you are who they could call. So yeah so go ahead.
Female speaker:	Yeah it’s a slightly different topic I was curious about what  you said about that cognitive of accessibility, where do you see that problem and what are the issues there just briefly I am  just [0:48:44][inaudible].
Jonathan:	Okay yeah no absolutely but its just about cognitive impairments right accessibility for users with cognitive impairments. So there has been less work generally done than  there has been over the last let’s say  30 years where there has been a lot  of work done on perception motor  impairment  but in the last decade  there has been  a lot  more work suddenly  on cognitive impairment. And those rules are slowly starting  to make their way well I’ll say they will much more quickly making their  way into like WCAG  than they are into  some of the federal regulations but slowly its getting there.
	Slowly its getting there  I think part of the challenge  is that for some of the user  population, some of the user  groups there just really isn’t that much research  out there unlike  let’s say again 30 years of research about how blind people  interact with computers, people who are deaf, people with spinal cord injuries, people with  you name it. There aren’t  as  many studies about people with Alzheimer’s, people  with dementia, people with autism although actually  I’d say right now probably all the studies about users with autism that’s kind of the leading group of studies there’s a lot more out there.
	So that’s  going to take  a little bit longer I mean I  have said in the past that policy really doesn’t focus  on it much, that slowly is changing. But what we need is a lot of people who are very interested in those topics.  And we have started some research projects about users  with Down Syndrome and how they interact with computer  technology and as far as I know no one else  is really been working on that. 
[0:50:04]
 You know we’ve done  lots of literature  reviews typically  what happens is they will combine  them and  they will say oh yeah  we  will take  some  with Down Syndrome and some  with autistic and some with William’s Syndrome  and good we’ve  got five or six different we will group them  into one group of  cognitive impairment. And it’s so much more complex than that.
	You know it  so much more complex than  that but  yet you really have to do  the research and understand. And that’s our research involving  people with Down Syndrome has been fascinating  because a lot of what people perceive  about what people with disabilities can and can’t do is just perception, it’s just a stereotype. And so we’ve seen things that I mean here is  the  perfect example, now I was telling  the group that I  met earlier we’ve  talked with folks  in our state department of rehab services who said they will not giving  computer training to people with Down Syndrome because they don’t have a high enough IQ. That’s what someone in our state department of rehab services told us specifically okay.
	Now just keep that in mind he said that they will never give training to people with Down Syndrome on computer technology. One of the users we observed right we were just you know we want to know he is a full time employee right he  has  full time work, he works with computers  full time and when we were observing him he said hey do you Skype? I use Skype me show you me using Skype. Alright okay sure we will go with it right? So he says let me see if any of my cousins in Brazil are available to talk right now, okay he finds one he starts talking in  Portuguese right, in Portuguese using Skype. 
Now remember again that this person from the state government said we can’t give computer training to people with Down Syndrome. Why not  this person should  clearly be employed in an IT related field and so really  a lot  of research still needs to be done involving all these different aspects, involving all the different  areas of  cognitive impairment, multiple cognitive impairment , different  levels of severity of  one cognitive impairment  because there is so  little that we really  understand  in documents so a lot of  it is still based on sort of  stereotypes. But  it’s fascinating and let me please encourage all of  you that’s an area  that needs  a lot of attention please do research  projects, please study this,  please involve people  with cognitive impairments in your development it’s a  fascinating area.
	Its sort of like going into a wilderness where there aren’t too many yet and you just find really cool new stuff so please do that. Yeah?
Female speaker:	I was curious if  you could give us an update  on the 21st Century Communication and Video Accessibility Act and  I am not familiar with familiar with 508 in detail I am wondering how it relates and  just a little bit about  that because I have been hearing  about that.
Jonathan:	 Okay I actually want to point that question over there because she was involved with passage of  the 21st century communications act so I am wondering if, what was your name  again I--?
Female speaker:	Avi [0:52:44][phonetic].
Jonathan:	Avi I am  wondering  maybe if you could comment  a little bit about the progress on the 21st century and I know Judy you said  you were involved as well but I am  wondering if either one  of you could comment on that.
Female speaker:	Or maybe about the goals of it and then I will comment on the progress.
Avi:	Sure absolutely so the 21st Century Communication and Video Accessibility Act was passed in October last year and the goal, was to make sure that people with disabilities have access to developing technologies. So for example there is the 88 past in 1990 but there is this huge question of whether the internet and websites count as public accommodations.  So the CVAA, the 21st Century Video Accessibility Act has specific goals such as having television programs with video descriptions making sure captioning goes on websites, guiding developer’s technology to consider accessibility from the get go rather than as an afterthought.
Female speaker:	And also responding Barbra’s question  the Federal  Communications Commission  convened and advisory  committee the Video Programming Access Advisory Committee or VPAC which is  providing  guidance to the FCC and development of  regulations  for individual sections of the 21st Century Communications Act. And so they are moving in extremely rapid pace and they divided the committee into four different working groups. Working group one has already issued its report and that’s the report on captioning turned  that into a notice of proposed rulemaking,  the comment period has already closed on that. But I believe that the   FCC may have a route by  which you could still comment if you were interested.
And it’s a very  comprehensive  rule making, there  are rule mailing proceedings that are open on the  other sections that will be  coming up   in the next several months or that are already going. And it’s a fascinating dialogue to watch I would be happy to talk with you about it if you are looking for details.
[0:55:06]
Female speaker:	Yeah one of the  details I heard was  sort of just a practical one that was very simple that I could understand what’s  its talking about, any television programming that’s captioned on national television if they port  that programming to the web it must also include captioning  which up until this time has sort been hit or miss.
Female speaker:	Yes and this is the rulemaking that just closed last week.
Female speaker:	Okay.
Female speaker:	And so the FCC is taking that guidance and turning that into regulations I believe fairly quickly and you can see all of the postings online.
Jonathan:	Great you had a question here.
Male speaker:	Yeah my question is about, is only are you only focusing on websites because as we move to touch screen and stuff like that did you see that also being a problem for the development of the…?
Jonathan:	Right so the 21st century act actually does relate in some cases to smart phones and –
Male speaker:	Can you repeat that question?
Jonathan:	I’m sorry? Oh sorry  that’s right  so he asked  about do you see  accessibility   just happening on the web or do you also see it in hardware,  do you see it with touch screens, you know  smart phones things of that nature. So certainly the 21st century act I was talking about does address phones and telecommunication devices in terms of making those accessible. And there are ways to make touch screens accessible even ones that you might not think are immediately obvious. So for instance the iPad is all the blind users I know absolutely love it because they love how it has speech output you know you can use gesturing so there are actually ways to do that. 
	Now on the other hand some of the other smart phones are not very accessible at all. Apple has been kind of the leader in having built in accessibilities so you don’t have to do any opt ins, you don’t have to order any special features.  It’s just out of the box you buy the same one that anybody else would buy. So it needs to be included and I think that’s really part of the push of that law. Now also there is  the fact that any technology within the federal  government is covered under Section 508, not to say that they necessarily follow through on it.  But any technology, any hardware, any software, everything from copier machines  to phones to hardwired  devices they are all covered and must be accessible.
	So I think the web has been starting to get more of the attention, slowly the hardware is also getting to get you know the hardware is starting to get some attention as well. The whole process is very complex within government not only for government but also outside government and it takes a while and you are right things are moving much more quickly with some of the recent regulations that they are working on. But for instance the ADA ones maybe that will be 2014, 2015 till it will be in place, you know we’ve heard the new 508 maybe 2013 at the earliest to be in place.
	So and we are still using the 508 that was implemented in 2000. So to give you a sense I mean it had different categories for hardware devices, software devices, telecommunication devices, web. Your iPhone covers like six different categories in the old Section 508 breakdown. So the regulatory process is slow but there are developers certainly who are making progress with things like smart phones and touch screens. Yeah, other comments and questions, yes in the back.
Female speaker:	Thank you could you talk about web accessibility in other registers besides the visual?
Jonathan:	Right so when I talk about 508 compliance we were just checking for visual impairment we were actually checking against the complete 508 regulations. Now both the WCAG and 508 over multiple impairments, they cover both visual impairment, they cover hearing impairment or if you are deaf they include things like captioning, they include things like transcripting right.  So  they cover a lot of different  categories they  include if you can’t use a pointing device if you’re using use speech input. So these regulations both the regulations and the guidelines that they are based on from WCAG actually do cover a lot of different impairments. They do cover, they do an excellent job of covering perception motor impairments and they really have been doing a great job in sort of bringing to the table a discussion about cognitive impairment and how to design for cognitive impairments. 
	So  they really I wouldn’t say that they  cover everything, I wouldn’t say that  its totally comprehensive, I wouldn’t say that you will read through and  always find something  that relates  to a specific disability that you are interested in but they do address a good majority of them.
Female speaker:	And how do you test for those?
Jonathan:	Oh how do I test for those? Okay so I actually have a comprehensive testing evaluation method that I use with my students on research projects. And it’s a combination of things we actually do start with the screen reader.  And but there’s actually a good reasons  for that because testing  with a  screen reader not only gives you a sense whether  or not it works for someone who is blind  but also if  it has to be keyboard friendly to work for  someone with dexterity impairments.  So for instance again the examples that people who can’t use a pointing device. 
[1:00:04]
Now that is  blind people but that’s also people who are unable  to use a pointing  device because they are have limited  use of hands or fingers they are using speech input, they  are using eye tracking something  like that.
	So what I do is a combination. We start with a screen reader and then we use multiple searching techniques for the screen reader and then we do actually is an inspection of the code. And what we do is we go through the code and we actually inspect the code on a web page for each paragraph within Section 508. And so we look specifically for instance to see to see if okay for every video on there is there captioning, for just audio are there transcripts? You know we check for these things. We check for scripting, we check for instance one of the big common problems on airline websites and you still see, we just checked recently what is it? I think United and US Airways both still have this problem.
	It’s that detailed flight information is only available again if again you can use a pointing device. So that hurts people who are blind that also hurts who can’t use a pointing device. So if you want to find out for instance how long the flight takes, what type of plane it is you know if you are someone who really does not like puddle jumpers and you want to find out, that type of information is not available to you. So it  really depends on sort of what category of web content  you are looking at where you tend to see whether there are more violations that hurt the blind or more violations that hurt the deaf  or more violations that hurt that deaf or more violations  that hurt you know some other group right.
	But really  the important thing I always  try to point people  to are the regulations and  the guidelines  because  they really do a  comprehensive job. They really do a comprehensive job of dealing with multiple impairments because really you wouldn’t want to say oh we are going to add this feature for blind people and add this feature for deaf people and add this feature for deaf people and add this feature for –you don’t want to do that. You just want to follow the guidelines, follow the regulations and when you do that and those are just really coding standards, you are just following good coding standards. Then that is hopefully that will lead accessibility problem oh when you are trying to follow those standards, yeah.
Male speaker:	Thank you for this presentation.
Jonathan:	Okay thank you.
Male speaker:	And it seemed to me that you already did a great job trying to precisely the document, the ‘so what’ argument so what does those inaccessibility means in terms of discrimination in the labor market or things like this. But when it’s so this  is educating  the public but when it comes  to make  things change in the business industry, wouldn’t the best  strategy be to reverse that argument and say look, look at this market share that  you are actually losing now and  that everybody  is losing and this, this maybe complicated but it’s actually  not. 

You may think that  you have Information cost here but we  know  people  who can help you with that, how can—this can be made really easily and  you have a total new market share that you can access and  that competitors don’t even actually know about. And in terms of labor discrimination this is exactly the same thing you have those very diverse people who have very diverse experiences, skills and knowledge and untapped by the labor market, you could bring them in your company and benefit from them. So what about studies that try to put a  clear number on  those things so that  the businesses from a totally economical standpoint  understand what it means and  that’s in their best interest  also.
Jonathan:	I can I assume you want to add to that you were kind of—
Male Speaker:	Just neoclassical economics has not shown a single study or a discrimination being driven from the market, you know we had blacks down at the market; we have women earning 54 cents on the dollar. It’s you are right there should be in line self interest but I haven’t seen it working yet.
Jonathan:	Yeah you often see that there where you try and make arguments and again there are companies and those companies typically don’t want to say a word about disability access. There are a few companies who are doing a great job and for them they realize oh yeah we are tapping this market, we are not talking about it, you know because for them they view it to be almost a competitive advantage.
	Companies are even more hesitant I think Judy mentioned that they are more even more hesitant than the government to talk about what they are doing relating to accessibility it’s quite frustrating.
Male speaker:	But what you have seen are companies where there is a person who has a connection with someone with a disability very high up in the hierarchy. For example Walmart which has been beaten for good reasons for lots of employment discrimination. Most  home improvement both working with national  organization on disability which is one of the place that I’m on board, they are hiring thousands  of people with disabilities and they are  doing wonderful work  as far as accessibility on their ICT in house and  its making it more accessible for everyone. But the story is always about exclusion and the story, good practices that are very rarely publicized.
[1:05:01]
Jonathan:	The whole issue I mean it’s a very complex area to devolve so much, it involved sociology and understanding how we perceive disabilities. It involves law, it involves technology, it’s fascinating study but it’s so multifaceted. Yeah you have something you want to add, yeah.
Male speaker:	Alright is there any information about like public relations firm have a better at successful at getting companies to…
Jonathan:	Are public relation firms better?
Male speaker:	More convincing.
Jonathan:	 I have actually seen lawyers at been much better in convincing people to comply.
Male speaker:	Yeah I would imagine that too.
Jonathan:	I find them a little bit more effective than PR folks.
Male speaker:	Okay.
Jonathan:	They have I mean a number if advocacy groups have done very effective campaigns to bring attention to this. And in many cases they are the ones who have brought attention to t it. Yeah, yes in the back.
Female speaker:	Have you tried maybe to pursue the issue through like the association of business groups or like let’s say association of manufacturers and find if they can come together as a consortium. And then create a center that various members can pick a prototype site and then they deploy into their site. Because that way even small businesses will not argue on the economies of scale or return to investment.
Jonathan:	She was asking about for people who couldn’t hear she is asking whether or not companies could come together in some sort of federation of companies.
Female speaker:	Yeah.
Jonathan:	To share information and to learn in central places. A number of advocacy groups actually have technology centers where you can come and view this number federal agencies do as well but companies very often don’t take advantage of those. I mean certainly there are number of resources nationally again you have sort of the regional ADA technical Assistance Centers also can help with that. 
So they were set up under the ADA to basically assist as companies are trying to comply with the ADA. And so they are really great resources as well and those are actually the ones that are already in place to work with businesses. They have long standing business relationships you know with local businesses in that region, they know the local laws, they know the employers. And so I think they are ones that are in a good position to make that happen because they already have the ongoing connection to the business. Yeah you wanted to add something?
Female speaker:	Yeah if  I may just add something on that, I think  the progress  that we’ve seen in recent years  is that  if you  look back 10 years or so the business associations were sometimes the ones who  were blocking accessibility, they  were actively advocating against  some of the accessibility provisions.  A little bit in the US, quite a bit in Europe at times and that has now turned around so that some of those same business associations are now more supportive of accessibility and some of their members are very active on accessibility.
	What we found most helpful is when we get all the stakeholder groups working in a coordinated way because the business associations might tend to go for a reduced set of requirements. The disability organizations maybe advocating for an extended set of requirements and so you have some balance there. But I think Jonathan’s focus on some of the technical assistance business centers is putting them, putting the action in a place that has an interest in advocating for accessibility and has the language and the outreach to be effective in talking with business associations.
Jonathan:	And we are running out of time so maybe we have time for one more quick question, yes we’ve got one in the back.
Male speaker:	I’m from Canada I am not from the US so I am not familiar with all your legislations.
Jonathan:	Okay.
Male speaker:	But I know there are similar laws in other countries. Do you have examples of countries where maybe the federal government has succeeded in making things accessible or corporations that have succeeded and started to leverage this as a possible competitive edge or something like that?
Jonathan:	I will give you two so he asked about other countries and accessibility, web accessibility in other countries. First of all in Canada they actually have not done particularly well, are you familiar with the court case about that?
Male speaker:	No I just know it’s pretty similar to what you’ve got here.
Jonathan:	Yes its very similar, one of the approaches not to say that this is successful across companies in the country but one of the approaches I really liked is in Sweden where they include web developers from the government in the process of making their web regulations. So they are   part of it, they have become familiar with it and then they post monthly reports. They actually do for Swedish government agencies about how they are doing and so they are considered to be one of the countries that has the best government web accessibility in Europe in the EU. So I really like that approach I think openness really goes a long way.
Male speaker:	Any place for companies?
Jonathan:	I’m sorry?
Male speaker:	Any place where companies are doing well too…
Jonathan:	 I haven’t seen any place where companies are doing a phenomenal job, now unfortunately not. Okay great I think we are great thank you.
[1:10:21]	[End Of Audio]