White House makes push for agencies, contractors to hire people with disabilities

For the first time, the White House is strongly recommending contractors and grantees join agencies in providing more employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

President Obama Monday kicked off National Disability Employment Awareness Month by detailing several initiatives the federal government will lead.

"Across this country, millions of people with disabilities are working or want to work, and they should have access to the support and services they need to succeed," the President says in a statement. "As the nation's largest employer, the federal government and its contractors can lead the way by implementing effective employment policies and practices that increase opportunities and help workers achieve their full potential. We must also rededicate ourselves to fostering an inclusive work culture that welcomes the skills and talents of all qualified employees. That's why I've asked the responsible agencies to develop new plans and policies to help increase employment across America for people with disabilities."

Mr. Obama's announcement comes as the U.S. Access Board is leading an effort to update the accessibility standards, known as Section 508, for technology. Additionally, the General Services Administration will begin surveying agencies on how they are implementing the 508 regulations.

"It's a great opportunity linked with what the President has as a new initiative to recognize there is a lot of opportunity for improvement," says Karen Pica, an analyst in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. "We will be trying to do more outreach. We want to have more collaboration within the White House team and the Office of Management and Budget. There are a lot of things we could be doing differently. I would like to take the opportunity with the President's new initiatives on increasing employment to be able to also look at how we can make improvements in the work space."

Pica spoke during a panel discussion on Section 508 and its future during the IDEAs Conference in Washington Tuesday sponsored by GSA.

The President's initiatives call for:

• The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) to sponsor a day-long government-wide job fair for people with disabilities in early spring 2010.

• OPM to develop training on Schedule A hiring authorities for human resources specialists, hiring managers and selective placement coordinators.

• OPM to create and lead an interagency task force to share model practices for recruiting, retaining and advancing employees with disabilities. The task force will report on the innovative practices agencies use to encourage the employment of individuals with disabilities.

• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to hold four town hall meetings throughout the nation to share information and obtain comments on the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act proposed regulations. All town hall meetings will consist of two sessions -- one for disability advocates and one for the employer community. These sessions will be completed by Nov. 20. The four locations are Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and New Orleans.

Meanwhile, the Access Board plans to issue an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking this fall detailing the new draft 508 standards.

Tim Creagan, who works for the Access Board on 508 and accessibility issues, says the new regulations are based, in part, on an April 2008 report by the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee.

"The current standards are set up so you look at the device as thing: Is it Web? It is hardware? Is it software? What is it?" he says. "But the real world doesn't work like that today. I can have a device in my hand that can do all of those functions. A big change the [committee] recommended is, don't look at what it is, but look at what it does. It's a question of functionality across platforms."

Another area that needs to be addresses is around content. Creagan says there is no reason for the data not to be tagged and accessible.

"It's really coming down to the grass roots," he says. "In a way that it wasn't back in 2001, everyone of us has to own the 508 standards. You can't just do a Word document and ship it off the IT people and let them worry about it. Now it's going to be everyone's issue."

He says the ANPR will be available for comments through Regulations.gov later this year, and then the Access Board will begin to redo the standards.

While the Access Board is refreshing the 508 standards, GSA will survey agencies to see where they stand in meeting the 8-year-old requirement.

Terry Weaver, GSA's director of the IT Accessibility and Workforce Division, says the analysis will provide the government with a baseline of how it's doing, and it will give each agency more data than ever before.

"It will give the agency head the ability to see down into the component how they are doing," Weaver says. "They will report the data to us, but it also is a management tool for the agency to use later on."

The Justice Department is supposed to issue a 508 report every other year, but has not issued one since 2003.

Weaver says DoJ plans on doing a new report in 2010 and GSA plans on providing them with the data from the survey.

From other examinations, Weaver says agencies aren't doing a good job meeting 508 standards, specifically when it comes to procurement.

GSA has been analyzing selected procurements to see how they mention 508, and the results have not been good, Weaver says.

She says well over 50 percent of the solicitations they look at do not mention 508 at all, even though it's for technology products or services.

Weaver says GSA also will up the ante in 2010 in how it evaluates requests for proposals.

Pica adds that OFPP is meeting with senior agency officials on the Chief Financial Officer's Council and the Chief Information Officer's Council and other similar councils about Section 508 and the new standards.

She says the goal is to integrate these functions to understand how accessibility is best implemented.

"When the new standards come out, there's clearly a workforce component," she says. "I want to put a plan in place so we don't have to play catch up on how to use the new rules."

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On the Web:

U.S. Access Board - Web site

GPO - Federal Register notice on National Disability Employment Awareness Month, 2009

White House - National Disability Employment Awareness Month release

FederalNewsRadio - GSA prepares for 2009 IDEAS Conference

FederalNewsRadio - Federal websites and accessibility, transparency and accountability

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