Letter of the Law

Government Leader home > June 2005 issue

June 2005; Vol. 1 No. 2

Letter of the Law

By Jason Miller

The Postal Service takes a decentralized approach to meeting accessibility mandates.

Section 508is a fairly simple rule that can create complex management challenges. The rule, part of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998, requires agencies to make sure all of their electronic information and IT systems are accessible to people with disabilities. Understanding the intent is the easy part.

But making sure every Web site, new system, modified system and piece of equipment meets the accessibility requirements is like plugging up a leaking dike. As soon as you fix one hole, another surely will appear.



RAISING THE PROFILE: Tom Russell, Brian Carnell and Gwen Harrington helped pioneer the Stewards program that keeps the Postal Service up to date on Section 508.

The Postal Service has taken an innovative approach to the challenge, by decentralizing responsibility for Section 508 compliance. USPS vice president and chief technology officer Robert Otto assigned subject matter experts, or stewards, to oversee projects to ensure all of the accessibility requirements are met.

Otto split the IT functional areas into six divisions, but kept an agencywide leader to manage policy and procedures.

“The Stewards program lets us react more quickly to customer questions,” said Brian Carnell, former 508 program manager for USPS. “If I had to figure out a problem with the telephone system, it would take a year. The program makes it so that my office doesn’t have to deal with every single individual problem that arises.”

And USPS has big systems to keep track of, with one Internet site and two intranets. The public USPS.com gets 1 million hits a day, while more than 200,000 managers use one intranet site and 750,000 employees use the other. The Postal Service also has huge numbers of other IT systems, copiers, fax machines and sundry electronic equipment at postal facilities around the country, all of which fall under Section 508’s requirements.

And good business too. Aside from meeting requirements mandated by law, postal officials also find advantages to following Section 508’s provisions.

Tom Russell, USPS manager of corporate business systems solutions and 508 Web steward, said compliance is simply good business.

“We want to put USPS in every home and every business in America, and accessibility is a critical component of that,” Russell said. “Bob Otto made it clear to everyone that we were committed to 508 and the stewards had ownership of their areas.”

USPS held a breakfast and invited vendors to talk about Section 508 issues and its requirements, which gave both contractors and federal employees a better understanding of how to meet the accessibility requirements, Russell said.

The decentralized approach was deemed the most practical way to keep track of Section 508 compliance, especially considering the size and scope of the Postal Service’s operation.

The Stewards program helps raise the profile of Section 508 in any project. Russell said the stewards have the final say before any system in their respective divisions is implemented.

“We stick with the project and program managers until they get it correct,” he said. “In my area, if it not 508 accessible, it will not go up on the Web sites.”

There are some exceptions for extraordinary circumstances, but any 508 issues become the top priority for the stewards and program team, said Gwen Harrington, 508 accessibility team leader, who works under Russell.

Aside from those rare occurrences, Harrington said every Web site change goes through a stringent approval process. USPS policy requires program and project managers to test every system using JAWS software from Freedom Scientific Blind/Low Vision Group of St. Petersburg, Fla., she said.

“We require system and software developers to create products using our standards and guidelines,” Harrington said. “We also look at software code to make sure it meets the requirements.”

She added that testing applications using JAWS gives program managers and stewards practical experience in implementing 508 requirements, and that plays a big role in the program’s success.

In all program areas, the stewards have clear input into all aspects of the system, from acquisition strategy to final implementation. Carnell said the USPS guidelines and standards are an important component of the program’s success.

Standard time. USPS recently updated its technical reference guide and manual, with the help of 508 experts from around the agency and users with disabilities. The manual outlined how the Postal Service interprets the 508 requirements, said Carnell, who managed the program for a year before shifting, early this year, to a job as communications engineer.

Carnell said the Stewards program also has saved the Postal Service money. His office used to have seven people working on 508 issues; now it has three with the addition of the steward positions, each of which is funded by the office they work for.

Most stewards don’t spend all of their time on 508 issues. Russell said he spends between 5 percent and 10 percent of his day making sure the agency meets the requirements.

Other agencies have recognized the value of the program’s decentralized approach. Carnell said he’s received requests for the reference guides from other agencies, and Russell said that, after giving a presentation at last fall’s Interagency Disability Educational Awareness Showcase, he received many inquiries about the program.

“We’ve worked very hard at getting people concerned about accessibility,” Russell said. “The focus and clarity the Stewards program provided us showed we are doing more than the basics to meet 508 requirements.”

USPS assigns a steward to each program area.

Software applications and operating systems
Telecommunications, including voice, data, equipment and systems
Enabler business systems, including video and multimedia products, and training and promotional materials
Technology support, including copiers, faxes, kiosks, mail processing equipment, scanners, point of sale terminals and other similar devices
Distributed computing environment, including desktop and portable computers
Business systems solutions, including intranet and Internet information and applications