Thread Subject: Re: Buying a non-conformant test product

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From: Robinson, Norman B - Washington, DC
Date: Fri, Jan 12 2007 11:50 AM

Terry,

Thanks for that. However I would like to take this as an opportunity
to remind everyone that there are agencies that don't have to follow the
FAR (e.g., USPS) and that during this period of open discussion there
are many international participants that won't know about nor follow the
FAR.

I know that is obvious, but it bears being said. Just as references
to other technical bodies (IEEE, W3C, etc.) if you provide a summary of
the concept or link it helps us (ok, me) to participate.

This might be something we consider - taking certain clarifications
in the FAR and determining if they are appropriate for inclusion during
the refresh.

Yours in service,


Norman B. Robinson
Section 508 Coordinator
IT Governance, US Postal Service
phone: 202.268.8246

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Subject: Re: [teitac-subparta] Buying a non-conformant test
product



Following up on David Baquis's post below - I researched this
issue on the FAR because, at its root, this is a problem that agencies
need to address for lots of reasons - not only to determine
accessibility conformance. FAR Part 9 goes into lots of detail on this
and seems to provide the "permission" needed to acquire test copies of
E&IT products.




This is actually not a far fetched discussion related to
empathizing
with the government procurement perspective. Agencies want to
know what
they have to do to be compliant with the law. They look to the
regulations to spell out what is required and what is allowable.
If
something like this appears to be missing, then it causes
concern. The
agencies know that the law is enforceable and were rightly
paranoid,
even though it is obvious to all that it would not seem
appropriate for
a disabled product tester to complain about accessibility of a
sample
test product. They knew it seemed stupid, but wanted an external
hook to
hang their determination on, not their personal interpretation.
This was
a specific complaint about the 508 Standards and a specific wish
that
the next advisory committee be responsive to their frustration.
The
matter of "intent" is interesting. One of the government's
intents is
to avoid getting sued, and to avoid liability, and even the
perception
of wrong doing.

Training may not be sufficient as an answer because the
published
Standards and Guidelines will reach more people than training
ever will.
In addition, the training is easier if I can give participants
something
solid to put their finger on as a basis for their decision
making, so it
does not appear that decisions are made arbitrarily.

To be consistent, I suppose we could argue about other
provisions that
do not seem necessary to have in regulations, but could be
handled
through training. This is not the only exception or issue that
might
seem to have a weak basis. If you want the technical assistance
answer
to be "you should know because it is common sense", then that is
a
slipperly slope because leaving it up to people to figure things
out for
themselves is how we get so many different outcomes, for example
in
"best meets" determinations.

Finally, consider in this case that we would not have to make up
an
exception that does not already exist. We could simply resuse
what (I
have been told) is in the FAR.

David Baquis

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