Thread Subject: Re: Cognitive Disability -requireremoteassistance feature?

From: Tom Brett
Date: Thu, Mar 22 2007 3:15 AM

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I think it would be up to each agency to determine if support for people
with cognitive disabilities will be through some sort of remote access or by
someone from the help desk visiting the desk of the employee with a
cognitive disability. In many cases the purchase of the software to allow
remote access may exceed the benefits that could be derived. The agency may
find that having a dedicated help desk technician would provide better
service and save the agency money.

Language should be crafted to allow the agency to determine the type of
service-automated or remote or human.

Tom Brett


-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Lybarger,
Barbara (MOD)
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 5:52 PM
To: TEITAC documentation and technical support subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-documentation] Cognitive Disability -
requireremoteassistance feature?

Massachusetts used to allow remote access from outside vendors for all
kinds of tech support including accessibility. It doesn't allow that
wide open access anymore, because we had too many bad infections from
the outside vendors. Now that level of support is only allow under
tightly controlled circumstances to the Commonwealth's help desks.

However, I'm not sure that direct access within an entity by it's own
help desk presents the same issues, since the entity has the ability to
control its own environment.

Is it possible to craft language that addresses internal help desks and
if so is that enough of a move forward for those with cognitively-based
impairments? (I know I could use that to move the Massachusetts help
desk [serving over 60,000 desktops] forward.)

Barbara Lybarger

-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of
Debbie Cook
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 3:05 PM
To: TEITAC documentation and technical support subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-documentation] Cognitive Disability - require
remoteassistance feature?

There are all kinds of conditions where an agency or other entity would
not want to support the use of off-the-shelf Remote desktop or control
apps. If the agency is providing this as part of it's systems support,
then the appropriate protocols will be dealt with. But it would create a
security nightmare for us to require this type of support. Probably not
even as a best practice.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Whitney Quesenbery" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "TEITAC documentation and technical support subcommittee"
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2007 6:41 PM
Subject: Re: [teitac-documentation] Cognitive Disability - require
remote assistance feature?


I think that this goes beyond something that we can REQUIRE. I'd have to
think very hard about the possibility for unintended consequences for
all types of applications. Are there privacy issues to consider, in
addition to security issues?

This seems like something that an agency help desk might want to
implement, rather than something that should be supplied with each
different application. Think how many different remote control programs
might end up being installed on each computer.

On the other hand, I know nothing (except how to start them) about
remote control programs, and their accessibility. Anyone else have
experience with things like VNC and GoToMyPC from this perspective?

This seems like a possible entry for a set of "best practices".

Whitney

At 03:44 PM 3/16/2007, Michele Budris wrote:


In the draft submission wiki page (
http://teitac.org/wiki/Documentation:Draft_Submission), the following
comment was added to section 3 (Other Material) item B: Issues this
subcommittee is not addressing, but which should be addressed. It was
not included in the official submitted draft #1 since we had not
discussed it.
The comment was submitted by Jim Tobias. The text is:

"In the presentation on Cognitive Disability, it was said that remote
assistance for computer software and hardware was a helpful feature.
That is, the user can contact someone over a network who can log into
the user's computer and either show him/her what needs to be done, or
actually make those necessary changes remotely. Do we want to include
such a requirement?"

This was discussed at the March 15 meeting with the following
feedback:

-Could have cost implications, especially for small businesses.
-There could be security issues, many state and federal governments do
not allow remote access to systems.
-But this would be more cost effective than having someone go to the
system to make the same fix multiple times.

I'd like input from people on this regarding:
-Should we add a requirement like this?
-If yes, then recommended text.

Thanks,
Michele

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