HHS Web Council Meeting Notes - January 17, 2008

Greetings and Overview

• Members introduced themselves.

Section 508 Compliance and Web Inventory

• We have received 11 official notices of non-compliance, with more expected to come from the advocacy organization called Accessing Digital America (ADA). They are surveying U.S. federal web sites and serving notice to general counsel offices.
• Situation overview – The official notices from ADA are not an inventory of agency sites, but simply snapshots. We are coordinating a department-wide response for all the notices. Having access to information is the law, and it’s important to respond. It’s a lot of work, but a real opportunity to “clean out the basement” and remove legacy content that does not demonstrate the expense of maintaining it. Twenty percent of a site’s content does 90 percent of business; about 30 percent has no real value and does not contribute anything to the site. While web metrics software often tells you what’s being looked at (1 view), we really need to see what’s not being looked at.
• Rich Morey gave a presentation on SAMHSA’s efforts toward a Web inventory. This effort collects detailed information, such as the number of files, languages, technologies used, and so forth. This information is used to put resources toward managing over 90 sites. Five sites were closed down as a result of the inventory. The big question is, “What are we getting for the money?” The next steps are to finish the inventory, identify priorities for clean-up (risk, visibility, mission importance), reduce and collapse the number of sites, and plan for the implementation of the content management system. In the long term, we want to have a true web presence rather than just a collection of sites.
  • A discussion of content management systems following. HHS uses Rhythmyx; ACF uses Documentum; FDA uses Stellent. In addition, NIH has a content management workgroup in place. CDC wants to learn more about implementing a content management system. FDA invited SAMHSA to learn lessons from their implementation prior to SAMHSA’s content management implementation.
  • For more information or interest in a WCMS committee or a workgroup to put together thoughts for the March presentation, send an email to Lauren Breitenother at lauren.breitenother@hhs.gov. 

Continued 508 Discussion

• We have used accessibility compliance tools to review the sites and pages that ADA identified. We have checked the 16 Section 508 aspects, but not PDF documents for compliance. Those require a manual check. A sample results chart of compliance rates was presented; we found that are not false negatives. We also know that ADA has had people with disabilities review the site. We found that HHS problem areas are that alt tags need to be more descriptive, as well as descriptions of videos; scripts need to be accessible by being keyboard-friendly; and electronic forms need to have form submit buttons rather than images. Testing and solutions to resolve the HHS problems were discussed; in many cases, the changes could be made globally via templates. We are now in the process of developing a long-term plan and will work to have a third party review the site to make sure we’re accomplishing our goal of accessibility. In the meantime, all new postings must be compliant; old content should be reviewed, with phased-in fixes as appropriate.
  • The Watchfire roll-out has been delayed, but training has been held for some OpDivs. Contact Julie Sothoron at julia.sothoron@hhs.gov for more information. We found that you must have manual and automatic settings used for full compliance. Watchfire will give you an inventory of files that must be checked manually. Complex documents may need to be tested with JAWS.
  • We have been in the process of developing guidance and resources: contract acquisition language, video/captioning guidance; PDF training and guidance; enterprise license for Adobe Pro 8; removal of non-compliant PDF tools from refreshed computers; and awareness memo to senior staff, to name a few. If you know of press offices that have not yet gotten the message about the clearance process or the posting requirement, please do contact them. We have been updating the news release clearance process to coordinate with and include Web teams, so that when a press release come in for clearance, the sites mentioned in the release and checked for compliance. This has had an effect on the positive on business protocols. We will be developing a straw response plan, but will need to expand on it.
  • Next steps: Let us know what you’re doing and provide an update by 1/23. If you have copies of things that you’re doing, email them, as well. Please email Lauren Breitenother at lauren.breitenother@hhs.gov with your updates.
  • There was a question about linking to external (non-government) sites; those links require exit link disclaimers. It is not incumbent on the federal agency to make the external site accessible since they fall outside the agency’s policies.
  • There was another question about using zip files and how to describe them properly. A person should know what they’re downloading (file type), what file(s) they’re downloading, and whether the files contain information they need. It may be necessary to provide additional information with the set of files to indicate what each file’s purpose is, and which files should be opened first, if appropriate.
  • All videos must be captioned (see video guidance at http://www.hhs.gov/web/508/index.html#video). We have provided information about a contractor that will do captioning for you. Reconfirmed that script with video is not compliant. For the videos that you have now, if they’re not captioned, caption them or take them down.
• Forms – We have worked with the clearance team to revamp the form to include PSAs. We will send this out to you soon and make it available on the web site. If you have contracted to have fillable forms created and they are not compliant, we are working with that agency to make sure that the forms they create are fully compliant. This may affect a lot of your content. We are developing guidance for that. There was discussion of tiers of public access to content: Live, public maintained; archived, public and accessible; archived, not public, not compliant. We need to decide how to phase in or phase out content.
  • We again stress that you should use Adobe Professional 8 (7, if you have it) to create, fix, and assess PDF files for accessibility compliance. Do not use any of the non-standard plug-ins. There is an enterprise-wide license for this from; we are looking into purchasing some add-ins to the software for enterprise-wide use.
  • We have also posted myths & facts for Word and PDF documents. For example, if a document must be downloaded and filled out, Word is preferable; PDF is preferable for documents that are just printed out. It’s a myth that PDFs are required to show signature; in fact, there are other, legal was to show that a document has been signed. Moreover, the CIO’s office is looking into banning posting documents with signatures; DOJ already does this. Distribution of a file via email must be compliant; the email must be compliant.
• Contracting language – We don’t want the problem of inaccessible files to get worse. We concluded an effort just this week (one that began months earlier) to have contract language with expanded scope to be included in web sites and content for web sites, but also communication tools (reports, charts, posters, audio/video) intended for internal or public use. This new contract language will be inserted next week; it may affect option years. We have to assume that anything we produce today for the public will be carried on the web site, a major cultural change. If a contractor asks if you want "high" or "low" clearance, always say "high." You will have to make sure that what they provide you is compliant; you should consider asking for the documentation that shows it’s compliant.
• PDF training is online at http://www.hhs.gov/web/policies/pdfaccessibility/index.html. Please send comments and suggestions to lauren..breitenother@hhs.gov. We will supplement it with guidance for tables and bookmarks and tables of content in the near future.
  • Handout and discussion – In the example provided for this particular case, for the near-term future, provided a point of contact for people who can’t access the file. (The example pertains to a large report, divided by chapters, with some aspects of the report using scanned files.) Language, form, and format are being developed. For this short-term format, you must get approval on a file-by-file basis. The wording for this exception must be sensitive to individuals with disabilities.
  • If you have a PowerPoint file and want to post it, it must be converted to accessible HTML, and then the PPT can be posted. With speaker’s notes, it is all right to post it on the intranet. Guidance being developed, but beware that OPM has a prohibition against proprietary software to view files; the PPT reader is not accessible. You may also consider converting the PPT to PDF, but you still must have good speaker’s notes for the images.
  • The tagging demo showed how headers, bullets, and other formatting allow a user to navigate efficiently with a screen reader.

February Council Workshop

• The workshop has been moved to late March or early April.
• Gerry McGovern is still slated to be the keynote speaker on the first day.
• We need help from council members to make this workshop successful. We need help in suggesting a speaker for the second day, as well as panel discussions topics and presentations for the second day.
• Council members suggested: a 508 discussion, and a WCMS discussion.
• Janice Nall mentioned the "texting for (mobile) health conference."
• We will provide an email that council members can forward to promote the council’s upcoming workshop.