Play 11 Needs Accessibility (Section 508 Compliance) added

[normanbrobinson]

The three policy oriented items that are critical to government facing applications includes Security, Privacy, and Accessibility (Section 508 compliance, specifically). That needs to be added as it is a critical gap missing from this playbook.

It should not be assumed. Yes, it is part of standards. Yes, it is part of acquisition and selection. And yes, it is often a failure when people "choose commercial technologies" as they have not been addressing the mandate as the government has been required to do, and have not been holisticly impacted by ADA lawsuits for failiing to support the needs of people with disabilities, or the adaptation and modification of content by end users such as those using assistive techologies

[cew821]

Hi @normanbrobinson -- Play 3 includes the checklist item that we should

[x] Follow accessibility best practices to ensure all people can use the service

So I think we've got this very important point covered. Thanks for your input!

[normanbrobinson]

I'll respectfully disagree. By example, tell me which accessibility best practices should be used. CIOs need to know what do reference. The people doing these sites, including the recent in-the-news sites, are failing. Commercial best practices for this don't exist, unless one begins to address WCAG 2 Level AA, with specific testing tools.

Encouraging use of open source also is at odds with accessibility, at the playbook's level of abstraction, since people use that rationale for "we only use what is already there, and it must have been good enough" instead of coding for accessibility.

Would it be more productive use of my time if I publicly cite the failures, in order to gain the support to ensure this is accomplished? Would that help the team be clear on the issues? Or is there a better place to assign more specific standards-based references such that readers have a suitable reference?

[cew821]

Hi @normanbrobinson, let's reopen the issue for more discussion. It might be helpful if you could propose some specific language to update that checklist item I referenced above in Play 3 (while keeping the item at the same level of specificity as the rest of the Playbook). Or perhaps suggest a new checklist item?

We are also considering ways to add some Resources / "How To" material to back up each play, and I can speak from experience that having a list of good accessibility testing and compliance tools would be REALLY helpful.

cc/ @mollieru, @ErieMeyer, @rypan, @nicoleslaw