HHS Web Council Meeting Notes - March 19, 2008

Introductions and Greetings

• The schedule of Web Council Meetings for the rest of the year: 4/24, 5/20, 6/19, 7/17, 8/14, 9/18, 10/16, and 12/11 in Room 800 in the Humphrey Building. There is no meeting in November.
• Gerry McGovern will be the keynote speaker at the Annual Web Conference on April 10 at the Voice of America building in Washington, DC.

Standards

• The Standards Committee—comprised of Dennis Rodrigues, Joni Johns, Janice Nall, and Sanjay Koyani—presented the standards process chart that outlines the proactive and reactive approach to developing standards, as proposed by the Committee or WCD. The process can be adjusted as needed.
• The following standards PASSED Council vote: Applicability; Section 508 and Video/Multimedia, and Section 508 and Email.
• The following was tabled for further discussion: Zip file standard. File size and total "weight," file names, preamble, download rates were discussed.  Please provide additional comments on the Zip file standard to Lauren Breitenother at lauren.breitenother@hhs.gov.

Archive

• HHS is going on a diet to reduce unnecessary content and to trim those items that need to be reviewed for accessibility. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to determine what should be removed and what should be archived (in the general sense of holding onto, but not deleting, content). Review the Web Records Schedule to determine if any Web items can be transitioned to the archive or elsewhere.
• With regard to the archive header and footer, it needs to be very clear that it’s archived and not updated. The HHS example shows a grayed out template with a cobweb icon and disclaimer. The archive subsite will be flat and rely on search to locate information.
• It was emphasized that the originator (office) is responsible for retaining the record; a Web page or site is not a record. It was emphasized that OPDIVs need to reach out to offices with metrics and a rationale for the reasons why certain content is being removed. FOIA might be an important consideration. Vote for "Managing Old Content" Policy PASSED.
• There was some discussion focusing on what should be done to limit 404 errors when content is taken down, such as routing users to the archive or routing users to where content has "morphed" to.

OPDIV Showcase

• Janice Nall (CDC) is leading a committee to review applications that OPDIVs are reviewing to address various issues, such as accessibility and Web content management systems. The April meeting will allow for additional discussion of resources in use or being researched.
• ACF held a meeting with its Web group and discussed Section 508 compliance. They are looking into implementing the process with each program office at the time of document creation to format for web accessibility. ACF offices are very interested in training on formatting Word, tables, and using Adobe Pro 8. Until a formal plan is in place, ACF sends out tickets when encountering documents that are not accessible. They continue with the Web content inventory.
• AHRQ briefed senior staff on Section 508 concerns; they worked with their contracts group to update contract language. They found that Watchfire errors can be greatly reduced by fixing small errors that have big impact. Watchfire glossary and Spanish text continue to pose problems.
• AoA made recent press with a technical vulnerability and that was resolved. With regard to getting a handle on problems, they purchased Adobe Pro 8. Their resources need to be stretched because they’re a small agency with a small contract staff to post content. As a result, it was not much effort to include contract language about 508. They are looking for a less-costly tool than Watchfire, and wondered about expedited procurement.
• CDC has a state of the web report every quarter. They restarted the Section 508 committee, and sent a memo requesting a list of tools, in an effort to develop business cases for which file formats to use in which instance. Their focus is on print documents, such as MMWR, so Section 508 and Web publishing may be a future Web Council discussion. CDC is looking for a full-time Section 508 coordinator, and perhaps a Web content management system.
• CMS has been working with management to investigate tools to automate testing and to have audit trails.
• FDA is working to turn its approach into one that is a comprehensive, five-year approach; it’s helpful to meet and talk through issues to see where there are problems and how to go about fixing them.
• HRSA briefed staff about accessibility scans. There’s a lot of reaction, and they want to stay connected with what the WCD is doing. HRSA was assured that there’s a planned, rational approach with more information to follow.
• IHS appreciates the guidance and checklists. They have alerted all the content managers about the standards; there’s not been any negative feedback, but they do want to learn how to do it. They randomly check logs and spot check documents.
• NIH collected URLs of public-facing sites, but also found more intranets. The previous week’s meeting was a landmark because they realized that there was no central leadership for 508; they want to develop a 508 plan that incorporates all the institutes and offices. The plan needs to figure out the scale of resources and identify dimensions of the problem. The Joe Ellis memo was the tipping point to getting people to understand the magnitude of the problem (likened to FOIA). They have a challenge with a large turnover from the fellows.
• OS formed its mini-Council (Web Board). Recent meetings indicate that 508 guidance is definitely needed, in addition to the existing standards and other online guidance. Some offices have encountered a few who are trying to circumvent the requirements, but most offices are on board.
• SAMHSA briefed executive and program staff, and will have a visit from HHS. SAMHSA is developing a 508 subcommittee, in addition to looking at AccVerify as an audit tool (they are interested in CMS’ research). SAMHSA is working closely with procurement staff to add 508 language, and are expanding this to procurement of documents, not just IT. SAMHSA would like guidance on accessible XLS and PPT files, as well as email.

Forms

• The Program Support Center (PSC) reported on its progress to convert forms into accessible formats. PSC uses JetForms to create the forms but is eventually moving to transferring to Adobe LiveCycle.
• Forms guidance will be provided once PSC resolves its issues.
• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported on its inventory of over 400 forms and found that while a small percentage passed, functional accessibility (the quality of alt tags, for example) was even lower. FDA has launched a Section 508 task force and is working with file originators to determine if a form is relevant before expending money and resources to fixing the form.
• When testing forms or other PDF documents, the recommendation is to avoid using the Adobe screen reader tool, but rather using a screen reader, such as JAWS, and viewing the document in Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Section 508 Training

• An overarching concern is that OPDIVs may develop training that does not provide consistency across the Department. Please alert WCD if your agency is developing training – or if you feel additional training topics are needed – so that Department-wide training efforts can be coordinated and we can reduce unnecessary expenditures.
• A needs survey was conducted to identify a number of areas where training is needed. HHS is working with Mark Urban to develop and prioritize; the plan is to deliver the training in person and via webinar. To support this effort, please nominate "power users" from your group so that they can attend the training and subsequently train others in your OPDIV.

Section 508 Update on Compliance & Remediation Plan

• Provide comments on the Plan by March 26, 2008, with an eye toward the "big picture." Is the structure one that you can use? Think of the plan in three phrases: first priority is moving forward; second priority is older content; the third priority is legacy content.
• Please send information about your sites as soon as you find them. If additional sites or domains are found after the fact, it may lead to penalties.
• In a future meeting, let’s plan to discuss a white paper for the next administration; it is likely it will have a much stronger Web culture.
• Suggestions on how to implement the plan:
  • Analyze information from Watchfire
  • Assess files (non-HTML)
  • Match assessments to the priorities
  • Complete plans for each of the phases
  • Estimate resources and make the first year goals match resources that you can reallocate
• In your content reviews, fix those items that can be dealt with first, such as broken links and dead pages. The unit of measurement relates to the number of issues that Watchfire finds; for example, a site could have a thousand errors; one global fix could resolve those 1000 errors.
• Part of the issue of dealing with these errors is at the source, in creating accessible documents and incorporating that process into the business plan. No standard could be written to that end; it’s important to unfold the complicated system of document creating.
• After the plan is finalized, a template and reporting system will be made available.
• SES managers will eventually have performance measures based on Section 508 compliance.

IBM Policy Tester/Watchfire

• Kristen Kayatta demonstrated the Policy Tester Tool. She also provided sample figures of errors as sites are being scanned.
• A discussion followed regarding the Policy Tester; some comments indicated that it loads very slowly, and HHS is looking into more servers. Other discussion topics focused on obtaining configuration files for individual instances of the tool and being able to update the glossary.
• A final suggestion was that training on Section 508 and testing for accessibility should be presented at new employee orientations.