iNARTE News: Would you please walk us through your life leading us to the position you have now.

Wakefield: Well, I am from northern Vermont, went to college in Maine and Michigan and Syracuse, and worked in public television for years. Then in the ’80s I moved down to Washington, D.C. where I worked for the government . In ’83 I founded my own company, which I ran until ’91. Then I went to work for the General Services Administration (GSA) in their technology center. When I left there I joined the Access Board in July ’98 to work on 508.

iNARTE News: Doug, detail for us the history of Section 508.

Wakefield: Section 508 first came into existence as a fairly weak law in 1986. At that time Congress had the GSA and the Education Department develop some guidelines that agencies could follow to help assure that people with disabilities in the government would have access to electronic information in the office. It didn’t have any "teeth". There was no enforcement. There was no way to say to the agencies, "You have to. If you guys are nice guys you will do this". In 1998, Congress passed a "beefed-up" version of 508 with an enforcement provision. There were other provisions under the Rehabilitation Act Amendments, of which 508 is a part. An example of one such provision is where a government agency that provides a service cannot discriminate against somebody with a disability by making that service unusable to them. That’s called 504 and it has an established complaint process for those who feel they have been discriminated against. Similarly, the new 508 covers those who feel that an agency is in violation of the new standards that have been written for 508; they can use the same complaint process that is already in existence under section 504. So they did establish a complaint process and the Access Board was asked to develop standards for information technology. These standards would help the government purchase equipment that is accessible to people with disabilities and would help agencies when they provide information to the public be assured that their information was as accessible to people with disabilities as it was to those who do not have a disability. And so that is what the Access Board did. On December 21, 2000, we published our final set of technical and performance standards for agencies to follow when purchasing electronic and information technology.

iNARTE News: Would you please comment specifically on 508 and 255?

Wakefield: 255 came out in 1996 and was part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. 255 is strictly for telecommunications equipment; it was targeting manufacturers, not the government. When manufacturers design and develop they are to consider the needs of people with disabilities in the design of their products. The, what I like to call, "threshold of pain" was set very low as shown by the phrase, "if readily achievable". "Readily achievable" basically means without much difficulty or expense. 508 is not telling the government agencies what they must procure. In sort of a trickle-down effect, it is for vendors. Consequently, it is setting new marketing standards dictating that, if a vendor wants to sell to the government, there are certain requirements that must be met. These requirements must not incur an undue burden, meaning significant difficulty or expense, on the part of the government. Undue burden is not for vendors. It is for the government. In addition, the standards are much broader than just telecommunications. In the final standards we have six categories: software, web design, telecommunications, multimedia, PCs, and what we call "self-contained closed products" like information kiosks, copiers, and so on where you generally don’t add personal peripherals to the equipment. Telecommunication guidelines under 255 are mirrored reasonably closely in the standards of 508.

iNARTE News: Please highlight 508 in laymen’s terms.

Wakefield: What I would highlight and emphasize for 508, first of all, is that it only applies to federal agencies. It does not apply to private industry. It says that when a government agency buys equipment, the equipment, according to the way we have written the standards, must be easily adaptable by somebody who uses, for example, a voice output screen reader or a specialized keyboard for a person who types one-handed. In 508, compatibility with assistive technology is probably the over-riding concern because not every computer bought by the government needs to be able to produce Braille or large print. But if the need arises every computer that is purchased must be able to accommodate the specialized software. So, 508 is about making everything else a little more compatible.

iNARTE News: Where is help available for those seeking to implement 508 and what would you say is the best source for them to access?

Wakefield: Well, let me give you a website that points to all the different directions, and talks about training: www.section508.gov. There you will find all kinds of pointers to technical assistance efforts. You can also check out: www.access-board.gov. We will be posting more and more technical assistance there as well.

iNARTE News: A few minutes ago you mentioned and quickly defined the term "undue burden". Would you elaborate?

Wakefield: Yes, "undue burden" is best defined as "significant difficulty or expense".

iNARTE News: Would you speak to the issue of "appeals from individuals who feel access has been denied them"?

Wakefield: You can either go to court or you can file a complaint with that particular agency. Complaints are filed against the agency. Let’s say you are complaining against a website. You file a complaint against the agency that is maintaining that website, but don’t plan on becoming rich over it. The complaint process basically provides that an agency can be ordered to fix the problem. You will not get an award for finding a broken website.

iNARTE News: Under subpart A, paragraph 1194.4, can you give us some limits on technology such as coffeemakers, microwave ovens, and other small office appliances?

Wakefield: Very definitely. It is limited to those products whose function is supposed to be the handling and manipulating, treating or working on information technology--not making coffee, not controlling the heating system. And there is a clear exemption. Everything today--your car, your transmission system, everything has imbedded information technology in it--but the primary purpose, for example, of a heating and cooling system is to control the environment, not to process information or to put information out. The easiest way to look at it is [to ask] "What is the end goal of this equipment? Is it to process information or is it using information to do something else?" And if it is using information to do something else, like controlling your car’s emission from the exhaust pipe, then that is not a 508 situation.

iNARTE News: Please speak specifically to telecommunications. How much equipment such as telephones, switching equipment, etc., can you see being affected?

Wakefield: Basically it’s going to be the end user equipment and services such as voicemail, because 508 can go beyond telecom. In switches, for example, there is a requirement that you have to be able to pass on, for instance, a TTY signal that if it is compressed, when it is uncompressed it has to be so that you don’t lose data. In that way, someone may have to check up on the way their switches are handling equipment. But in general the focus is on what sits on somebody’s desk.

iNARTE News: Please speak to voluntary consensus standards. How do you see those working?

Wakefield: This is something that has been somewhat misleading. 508 is not a voluntary system. 508 standards are not voluntary or consensus. It is something that the Access Board did and has been put in the Federal Register. This term has come from an effort being made by a couple of agencies to develop ways for industries to test their products. It is a set of testing protocol that they can agree upon, industries can agree upon as a way of studying to see if they are compliant. Right now that effort is on the back burner, a couple of key people have moved on to different jobs, and it is a matter of somebody waiting, akin to going out and hiring a new coach.

iNARTE News: How do you see 508 working effectually through the supply chain from manufacturer to consumer?

Wakefield: What happens is, when the government decides they are going to buy a network system or whatever, they do a market survey to see what is there. Of course, rumors get out on the street very fast. For example, the rumor might be the government is about to spend $650 million for a new network for the Department of Agriculture. And when they find what they are looking for, their specifications will have to be language addressing the need to meet the 508 standards. If it is software, for example, it will be the software standard. When contractors or manufacturers bid on the product they can either say we have those now, we can meet those now, or we can put those into the software in time to meet your requirements. We will have it ready to show you before you buy. So either way they are allowed to do that. The nice thing I think will happen is the government is paying for the development of these new characteristics in software and hardware. Industry is not just going to have two product lines, one to sell to the government and one to sell to the private consumer or industry. We will see these features in general throughout the marketplace that everybody is going to benefit by it.

iNARTE News: On January 22, 2000, the FAR Council issued implementing rules. Please comment on those standards and how they will work out.

Wakefield: They have had to decide how they are going to incorporate our standards into the rules for buying. They have to define what is a procurement. Is it at the time you accept the product or the time you actually put out the request for a proposal. The rule that they have proposed says basically the new language goes into solicitations after June 21, 2001. But they still have issues they need to solve such as what about a long-term contract where a government agency can buy off that contract for 5 years, but the contract was signed a year ago; there are still 4 more years to go on it. Are those products exempt? There’s just a lot of details that the FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulation at www.arnet.gov] has to work out, but they say they will have all of their stuff in line by June 21 also.

iNARTE News: Information technology acquisition and dissemination is moving forward in a fast-paced fashion. Implementation of government regulations moves more slowly. What procedures for amendments, clarifications, etc., are in place as these regulations are implemented?

Wakefield: The Access Board is required to periodically review and, as appropriate, amend our standards to reflect technology advances or changes in electronic and information technology. The idea is that we know that things are going to change and it is just a matter of updating standards as necessary, really. It is often slower but there is not a lot we can do about that. The website will be www.section508.gov.

iNARTE News: Would you please give us some guidelines for 2nd and 3rd generation vendors as to responsibility for compatibility.

Wakefield: If you are a vendor, let’s say you are a software vendor and you don’t make an end product, but you make a library that other programmers use to create dialog boxes or a row of radio buttons to control programs. Because there are people who just specialize in these special controls, or the install shields that run when you do set-up, they will need to know the standards that cover their particular tools. For example, if you have a library that creates controls that people might want to incorporate into their program for pushbuttons, you want to make sure they are going to meet the software guidelines. After the primary vendor receives one or two complaints that their software isn’t in compliance and they are able to identify it is because of controls they have bought from a third party, they are going to dump that third party. They are jeopardizing their sales by using a second or third vendor that doesn’t know and isn’t working to the standards.

iNARTE News: This is a personal touch question. When do you feel a sense of a "job well done"?

Wakefield: Well, of course, being totally blind I use a Braille display myself. This isn’t completely outside me. If affects me and my access too. I have a personal interest in seeing this succeed. But I have had several jobs over the years. And I’ve worked in the system technologies since 1984 . This is the perfect job for me to head toward retirement because it brings everything together that I have done in the past. My biggest sense of accomplishment is when I go out to do a presentation and I am interacting with a group that, when they start out, they are up against the most horrible setup and specifications. They haven’t got a clue as to what to do and when we are done, they say "I understand it. Yeah, we can do that". And this has happened a lot. It takes the mystery out of it and it is not rocket science.

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