During a conference call some time ago, my stress and frustration levels quickly maxed out. We were reporting issues with accessibility for an enterprise application to one of our software vendors.

Our team set up a demo to demonstrate the accessibility issues. What started out as simple annoyances quickly led me to anger and great frustration. Even though I knew our accessibility experts had found these issues. Even though they had described them to me. This was my first direct experience watching someone use assistive technology. Something I knew was very important to those who need it, but had never experienced myself.

We were watching a colleague use a screen reader on the application. At first it was intriguing to see how the desktop and browser were configured to work with the screen reader. Soon, however, the screen reader was blaring in a jarring and irritating tone. While navigating a long list of items ending with ellipses, it kept shouting “dot, dot, dot” over and over again. “Item 1, dot, dot, dot, Item 2, dot, dot, dot, Item 3, dot, dot, dot.” I just wanted it to stop. We had hardly started and already my patience was frayed and I wanted to leave. Site focus, which I could see, didn’t match navigation by the screen reader. There were menus that didn’t read the same as they looked on the screen. I just wanted it to stop. I wanted to be done. There were navigational traps where users could not escape, without closing down the application and starting all over again. I was incredulous. Wouldn’t those who depended on these features be even more angry and frustrated? How could it be this bad? Shouldn’t this work? Are they ignoring Section 508 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? What if I needed this? Wouldn’t I be even more upset? How many other applications have these same issues?

While I cannot recall all the details and issues, it was a memorable event. Very illuminating to realize how little I really understood. It was also memorable for several members of the vendor’s team. As our team finished the demo, there was a long, awkward silence. Finally, someone on the vendor’s team blurted out, “But it’s supposed to work. . . we had a third-party test it. . .” They, too, were realizing how little they understood.

From there, we increased expectations for the vendor and ourselves. And we began assessing other options in the marketplace. That, however, is a story for another time.

Our Interview With Dan

After receiving Dan’s piece, we took some time to speak with him about his work with Minnesota IT Services, digital accessibility, and how the above experience has changed the way he approaches his work.

Jennie Delisi, Accessibility Analyst, MN Office of Accessibility: What is your current position at Minnesota IT Services?

Dan: I lead the Enterprise Service Desk, a large team which includes several enabling IT service functions, to include 90 agents who take calls or tickets from end users to provide IT help.

Jennie: You have worked for many years with the National Association of State Technology Directors (NASTD), whose purpose is “to advance and promote the effective use of information technology and services to improve the operation of state government.” How do you see accessible digital technology playing a part in improving the operation of state government?

Dan: One of the things I have learned working with you and Jay Wyant, [Chief Information Accessibility Officer] is a pretty straight forward concept: equal access for all users. When you think about that, it makes sense. While I was on the board of NASTD, particularly when I was the Program Chair for the annual conference, I invited Jay to do a presentation, part of which was to help increase awareness around accessibility for colleagues in other states. As IT leaders from the various state governments, we serve partners who may have employees with requirements for assistive technology. We also very possibly have prospective job applicants or existing employees who may use assistive technology. Not to mention, that as IT leaders, we ought to model and lead the way for others.

Jennie: As a manager, how does having more accessible technology impact your hiring practices and those you supervise?

Dan: It requires you to take a step back as a manager or supervisor. If you have never worked with somebody, or you don’t have family member with a disability it takes you a little bit to figure it out. I have an adult child, 30 years old now who still lives with us, who has a disability. So that gives me a little bit of a jump start, but often when we are talking assistive technology and accessibility, there are different disabilities. And so, I’ve been learning more about some of those types of needs. The challenge as a supervisor is to understand and support needs that you maybe haven’t experienced personally yourself, and haven’t been exposed to. But none the less you have a legal and moral obligation to do so. I think it doesn’t take very long for any of us to realize that we have people with a wide range of abilities, many in our personal network. Family members, friends, coworkers. And so, over time as you become more conscious and more aware of that, I think it becomes easier to understand how to adapt your hiring process to be more inclusive.

I think if we have somebody on our staff who has a similar set of requirements as some of our partners, we are going to better understand through our own personal observations and experience, what the needs are for the larger group. We are going to be better positioned to do some thinking and testing and planning. And we will be a little bit more responsive to people with similar needs and expectations. The more diverse your group of employees, the more perspectives, ideas, and opportunities you have for problem solving. Literally, thinking out of the box, and overall having a better solution.

Jennie: You wrote a piece for this newsletter about your experiences on a particular project. How will your experiences on that project change the way you approach future projects?

Dan: I went into that project thinking I had pretty good understanding of the general topic. And I think I generally did compared to some other people, maybe a lot of folks, because of our family situation with our son. It helped me put myself more in their shoes. What I described in that article: how absolutely frustrated and unsatisfied I was with the screen reader experience [with that particular application], and I thought “there are people who have to use this to do their job.” It strengthened my commitment and passion for helping people. Part of the challenge is, as they are trying to be able to do their job, trying to live productive lives, trying to get tools that will help them do that, they run into similar barriers. Advocating for themselves, a family member, for other people, for their general community, or whatever, and they are often frustrated. The frustration I saw in some of the feedback we received on our project, and the particular application we were working was pretty understandable. It didn’t feel good to get it because that certainly wasn’t our intent. But I think it is important that when you hear feedback like that to appreciate it, as hard as it may be, and try to really understand where the other people are coming from without becoming defensive avoid the temptation to turn your ears off. You’ve got to internalize the feedback and understand it. And then use it.

You’ve got to find something that best fits the overall set of requirements. But, you’ve also got to rate those requirements. In our last evaluation, accessibility featured very prominently, as one of the very top criteria. The solution has to both serve the functional needs of service management AND needs to meet accessibility requirements. And because of that type of thinking, we had accessibility subject matter experts, you and Jay, at the table right out of the gate. How can we incorporate this expertise into our list of requirements? How do we evaluate that? Eventually we found a way to do that that worked pretty well. That was a pretty clear commitment on our part, and pretty good engagement by you as experts in the space.

Jennie: What is your perception, now, of the role of the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) in the process of procurement?

Dan: VPAT is interesting to me because a vendor might give you a VPAT and say they are accessible because they can provide you a VPAT. Then when you start looking at the detail inside the VPAT you might realize, well, this particular company for this particular product has a VPAT but it pretty clearly says it doesn’t work well for people who require assistive technology. In other instances they might say that it does, or they might stay silent on some of the challenges, but I did pick up that if a company has a third-party do the VPAT assessment for them, they have the opportunity to be pretty objective and pretty open, and to also tell you what a work around might be. I saw in our evaluation process fairly current VPATs and really old VPATs. When you get a really old VPAT and it doesn’t have much useful information, that seems to signal that vendor’s not very committed to meeting the requirement, potentially because they don’t understand it yet. They don’t have that insight, they haven’t had that “Aha” moment. And then you’ll see other vendors who will have a webpage that is saying “here’s our latest VPAT” and there might be different versions of the VPAT. You can see that they are updating it. You can see that they are identifying work arounds when they have something that doesn’t work.

Jennie: So the VPAT is really just a piece of the evaluation?

Dan: It is just a piece of the evaluation. In our case, in this last assessment of “where do we go, what application do we pick” we were able with the 2 finalists to do a hands-on evaluation and to involve accessibility in that hands-on evaluation. With one of the vendors they even explicitly asked us “hey, as you are doing your hands-on evaluation would you mind sending us a report of what you see every single day? Further, would you mind having a daily stand up call at 8:45 so that we can ask you questions about that? That sends a pretty clear signal that there is a degree of commitment to getting some feedback and of course, we would like to see some follow-up, which with that particular vendor, by the time we were done with the hands-on portion of the evaluation, they had already made three fixes.

Jennie: Thanks for your time Dan!

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