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TEXAS GOVERNOR’S COMMITTEE ON PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

ADVANCING DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY IN TEXAS: WHAT YOUR GOVERNMENT ENTITY NEEDS TO KNOW

FEBRUARY 25TH, 2026
11:00 AM TO 12:00 PM CST

Services provided by:
Visual Language Professionals
957 Nasa Parkway #914
Houston, TX 77058

Phone ‑ 832‑564‑0844
Email ‑ visuallanguagepro.com

This text, document, or file is based on live transcription.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, and/or live transcription are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.  This text, document, or file is not to be distributed or used in any way that may violate copyright law.

>> OPERATOR: Recording in progress.  
>>  MELINDA CROCKER:  	To good morning, everyone, and welcome.  Thank you for joining us today.  For advancing digital accessibility in Texas and what your government entity needs to know.  
     My name is Melinda Crocker, and I'm the community outreach and information coordinator for the governor's committee for individuals ‑‑ about the governor's committee, so we are composed of 12 members appointed by the governor, and we are also the leading agency that looks at disability issues from cross‑disability perspective, and this does include digital accessibility.  
     Today's webinar is timely.  The April 2026 deadline is quickly approaching for Title II entities.  Smaller entities follow just one year later.  
     Our goals today are to clarify what is required under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title II, hear real world implementation strategies from Texas cities, and share practical resources that you can take back to your own agency.
     This session is about moving awareness to action.  
     In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice finalized a rule clarifying digital accessibility requirements under Title II of the ADA.  This rule requires accessible web content and mobile applications, compliance with web content accessibility guidelines be also known as WCAG, 2.1, level AA standards, and it applies to state and local governments.  
     Now, the deadline is April 24th, 2026, for large entities.  That's 50,000 or more of a population.  And April 2 of, 2027 ‑‑ April 26, 2027 for smaller entities.
     And as you know this is not a recommendation.  This is a compliance issue.  
     So municipal websites and digital services are not optional, and they are essential access points.  They affect public services and benefits, emergency information and communications.  Permits and listening, public meetings and citizen engagement, and employment opportunities.  
     When digital systems are inaccessible, people with disabilities are effectively shut out of civic life.  This is why this work matters.  
     We are fortunate enough to have a wonderful panel today.  From all over Texas, so first I'd like to introduce Angel Ponce, who is the senior division manager for the City of Houston's office for people with disabilities.  
     We also have Martha Foote who's the digital accessibility compliance lead for the City of Austin, and we have Deborah Scharven, who's the accessibility compliance manager for the City of San Antonio, and finally, we have Marie Cohan, who's the statewide digital accessibility officer for the Texas Department of Information Resources.  These are practitioners doing the work, and they are here to share what has worked, what has been challenging and what they would recommend.
     Today's discussion will focus on implementation strategies.  Procurement considerations.  Challenges and lessons learned and resources and next steps.
     We will move from how it started to how it's working now and finally what should you prioritize next.
     If your agency has not fully implemented digital accessibility yet, what should you prioritize now.  On the screen you'll see a few immediate action steps.  They're establish an accessibility policy, and detailed remediation plan.  Conduct accessibility audits and testing.  Establish internal ownership and leadership and define roles and responsibilities.
     Integrate accessibility into procurement, and train staff and content creators.
     Take note of what is actionable in your agency.
     Now, we're going to transition to the panel.  I will start by asking briefly each of the cities to share how they got started with digital accessibility and what role you personally played in that implementation.
     I will start with Angel, if that works.  
>>  ANGEL PONCE:  Absolutely, thank you, Melinda.  Hi, everyone.  I'm happy to be on this panel to discuss this ‑‑ this new rule and what we're doing, at least in Houston.
     So I'll start by saying that back in January of 2024, we began our ADA self‑evaluation, and transition plan in Houston.  We started with a very small budget.  We went through the procurement process, and we hired a consultant to know just look at our digital space but also our right‑of‑way, our parks and facilities, but I will say that this was ‑‑ this ‑‑ this first phase was the discovery phase, and it was with a very small budget, and so on the digital space what we did we focused on our websites that were visited the most and that being our main website for the City of Houston, and then also our public library website.  
     We did some test samples and found‑some significant issues with the assistance of our consultant, and then we provided these ‑‑ these results to the Houston information technology services department, and so one way that we did this was that we prioritized with the mayor.  We have a strong mayor ‑‑ we're a strong mayor city, and so we worked with our city to work with directors, and then bringing those directors to the table ‑‑ we met with our chief of staff, our city directors and thought director of the HIST department.
     And then when we heard about the new rule, that that really gave us the opportunity to then discuss this a little bit further, and so we are now in those conversations with the Houston information technology services department as to how we're going to approach the implementation phase, which is what we call Phase 2 now, and so that's where we're at.  
     What we're doing now while we wait for our Phase 2 contractor to come on board to directly meet with those web masters and technology specialists, website specialists, is we're working with our mayor's office and our ‑‑ our communications department he to assign a lead, which will work with all the web masters across the city to provide that training as to what they need to be thinking about when they are coming this April, 2026 deadline.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Thank you for sharing.
     And, Martha, with the City of Austin, would you like to share a little bit how you got started with digital accessibility?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  I want to note the City of Austin had various accessibility efforts over the years, and they have been more ‑‑ across departments, but in a more central level in 2023, the digital accessibility policy was created, and that came out of our technology department and our CIO sent a memo ‑‑ actually a series of memos to other department directors to let them know about the policy and to let them know about the upcoming ruling coming up in 2024.
     From there in 2025 there was a strategy created for the ruling and how we were going to tackle it.  In that strategy, there was the creation of department champions who are the single points of contact for across departments.  They own the compliance data.  They support accessibility practices in their department.
     In addition there was also an information hub creation so a Sharepoint site with all the information necessary for department employees to glean on the topic of accessibility and the DOJ ruling specifically.
     We also had a formation of a committee to disseminate this information, to create the content for the Sharepoint site, to connect departments to resources.
     And then last but not least, I think, this is a big component in our efforts is the creation of an executive report or dashboard of sorts.  The champions use a power app to input accessibility compliance data, and then, you know, that generates a report that is made available to the city employees and to executives.
    , but I would say that the spearheading of the policy, the committee, the information dissemination ‑‑ all of that has been a collaboration between the technology department, the communications department, and thought ADA office.  I think you know this collaboration has really been key in the work that has been done so far.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yeah, that's great, and I know we'll get more details on the disability champions a little later.
     So, Deborah, are you with us and would you like to share about San Antonio?  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  So I'm here.  I am having technical difficulties getting into the Zoom link, but I'm here by phone.
     We actually got started when I first actually joined the city.  I joined the city in 2017.  And as we were doing kind of what I call the meet‑and‑greets whenever there's a new ADA coordinator on board, the community came to me and started to talk to me about what they liked, didn't like, what was usable, what was not usable, accessible, not accessible about our website at the time.  And from there I found this wonderful person inside ITSD her name is Louise Craig.  She's someone who's really knowledgeable about experience and human‑centered design, and we became partners in the very beginning to create this strategy how we would move forward and bring this kind of where we are today, and from there we ended up getting department executive leadership buy‑in especially from ITSD and from my chain of command, and we ended up developing all that process really from those community conversations and the looks that we were doing at the website and looking at kind of what we needed to improve once we were we were hearing from the community.
     And so that's really how San Antonio got started in the digital accessibility conversation at the level that is getting us where we be are today with the final role.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Fantastic.  Thanks for sharing, and Martha, I'm actually going to pivot back to you on this next question because in many cities, this work gains traction because someone takes ownership; right?  So did your city have an internal champion or designated accessibility lead and if so, what role did that person play in moving the work forward?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  Did and do I can kind of answer this in two parts.  We had ‑‑ I guess have still 'cause she's still around but in 2023, I need say when the accessibility policy came together we had an accessibility advocate in management.  She was a division manager at the time in the technology department, and now she's an executive leadership at Austin Water she created the policy, she created the strategy in 2025.  She, you know, was a very key person in the creation of champions across the city, and so now we have a lot of, you know, advocates across the city who are continuing the effort, but I do think having someone in management to support was key and even if their title was an accessibility officer or champion whatever they were advocating and doing the work to move this forward.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  And you helped explained this forward.  For those who don't know who a disability champion is, how would you describe that?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  So I'm think it can mean different things across different, you know, entities right but at the City of Austin in the way that we are defining accessibility champions, these folks both have the passion and drive for accessibility ‑‑ you know, they want to advocate for better, you know, accessible equitable experiences but a key component of their role at the City of Austin is they are the managers of compliance data.  They are leasing with their people across their department who's doing testing, when is that testing being done?  What were the results of those tests?  When remediation happens getting all that information and is funneling that back to compliance to manage it.  It's kind of both tactical role and just a role of kind of advisory, and, you know, championing just in the most natural way that you can think.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  How about you, Deborah, did you have an accessibility champion in San Antonio?  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  So, yes, so like I said, I started kind of ‑‑ Louise, and I started the process kind of very early.  We had immediate buy‑in from our ITSD director, Craig Hopkins, and our director kind of in my chain of command.  I am as the ADA coordinator am always kind of tasked as kind of like the lead digital accessibility person just because that's part of the city operates with our roles.
     But as we've been developing this process, we have been realizing how much we need these other teams, and so we have worked really strong on a process just in the city for customer experience, and we have it from the teams that are in it, so that would be our communications and engagement team, our experienced design team or UEX team and the accessibility team, and we are all kind of coordinating those ‑‑ those championed processes and not we have an governance process where, like, executive leadership is part of that from a director stand points as well as the city manager level where they become the the governance process of all the things that we're implementing, and so for us that kind of, like that three‑pronged may I approach from branding UX in a digital accessibility has been really successful to be able to create the conversations across a larger portion of our staff and citywide than it would have happened if it was just me.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yeah, and so that actually takes me into my next question, which, you know, you talked about it's cross‑department collaboration so how did you secure buy‑in from your city council or executive leadership?  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  So honestly, we were ‑‑ because we were already kind of looking at these kinds of long at all before like the role was even in process, we remember starting to develop some pilot sites, so we were actually doing an internet pilot site that kind of showed everybody if we really design with experience and branding and digital accessibility in mind, here's what you're going to get.
     It happened to time out that COVID hit at the same time as all of this pilot process, and as much COVID knocked the sails out of government work, and everybody had to pivot to handle all of the issues that came from the pandemic, one of the things that happened is it allowed us to do a public pilot site with our COVID‑19 information, and so we created a dedicated site with all of these processes kind of involved, and it really allowed the community to go:  Yes, we love this.  It showed the city council and mayor:  Wow, we really like this, and, so it allowed us to kind of get that buy‑in at a different time, and so for us, using kind of these pilot test projects really helped us get the larger buy‑in, and it helped us streamline as we've gone forward in those processes.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Perfect, thanks I'm actually going to pivot to Angel and see what the City of Houston did to get executive leadership buy‑in.  
>>  ANGEL PONCE:  So the way that it worked in Houston was when we started the conversation about our ADA self‑evaluation, one of the first things that we began thinking about is ‑‑ is how are we going to get this leadership buy‑in? , and the way that we did this was to first introduce this concept to ‑‑ to leadership, and so what we did was we brought together those directors, division managers in the ‑‑ not just the digital space, but the public rights of way so our public works director.  We brought the planning, we brought in parks ‑‑ all of those folks that directly impact as well the digital space.
     And then we got our web masters interested in this by having those one‑on‑one conversations with them, and while we are now currently waiting for Phase 2, to be finalized, one of the ways that we're doing it now is working with the Office of Innovation and performance along with the support of the mayor's communications office to take an initiative to create a more systemic approach to implementing a more organized form of communication.  That includes a lead, like I mentioned earlier, that will guide these working ‑‑ these individuals working on web pages.
     What we found was that each department had their own thing.  They were working on different servers.  They are creating their own images.  Some of them not educated or don't have the knowledge to ‑‑ to ‑‑ or the SOPs that are in place to ‑‑ to create those accessibility web pages.  
     So by getting buy‑in, specifically, ensuring that our chief of staff is redirecting that is on our side, having those ‑‑ those one‑on‑one conversations with the deputy chief of staff and the chief of staff, that realistically they're the bosses, right, so they are the ones telling the directors:  Hey, let's make sure that we are paying attention to these in this case to the digital space, and so I think because of those conversations with leadership coming down to directors, we know that the director of the HIT ‑‑ HIST department are aware and are paying very close up attention to at least right now the April 2026 deadline.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER: , and you touched a little bit on it, you know, my next question was going to be, obviously, digital accessibility is not just an IT issue.  It impacts communications, procurement, HR and elected officials.
     Can you describe how your city approaches role‑based training and what does the training look like for general staff, managers, IT teams and council members?  
>>  ANGEL PONCE:  So good question, so with the direction of our ‑‑ of our ADA consultant, being the fourth largest city in the United States, and then myself having a staff of no more than 5 people including myself, it was really hard to ensure that we are reaching as many folks in our city as much as possible.
     The way we approached this was we not only met with the directors but met with individual department leads and had those ‑‑ our consultant work with them.  In this example, we tested the ‑‑ the main website and our public library website, and then we present it to them our findings, right, and then ‑‑ and then gain feedback from them.
     A lot of the ‑‑ a lot of the folks in that area weren't aware of the usability testing where we were meeting that level AA and where we were at fail rate.
     And so I think these pilot digital results really helped open up that conversation to see:  Well, what is the next step?  What do we need to do now so ensure that we are at least close to 100 percent pass rate.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yeah, yeah.  I like how you were bringing awareness, and you were able to show them your findings because a lot of times it's what we don't know and once we do know and brought ‑‑ 
>>  ANGEL PONCE:  Melinda, I'll add to that that we learned that there are ‑‑ there are, I guess, softwares or other ways to kind of take a look at these significant issues.  We learned about site improved.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Site improved exactly yet 
>> 
>>  ANGEL PONCE:  And then those findings suggested at least for the accessibility process for the library site that ‑‑ that all sites of the ‑‑ of the main web page did not meet those adequate and ability to address the needs of all users with disabilities.
     And so because of that, we learned that while this type of, I guess, technology does help address some of those barriers, we needed to ensure that we have somebody that is manually going in there and testing those.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yes, yes, and that is a great thing that you brought up, yes, these applications definitely help with finding misspellings, right, or broken links, things of that nature but other stuff ‑‑ it's going to miss, so you definitely need to go in there yourself and be checking these ‑‑ your websites manually.
     Martha, would you like to add anything to that?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  Yes.  Definitely.
     So I think ‑‑ for us ‑‑ well, actually, can you repeat the question ‑‑ 
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yes, we're talking about how digital accessibility impacts all departments, and, you know, even elected officials, and so how did your city approach role based training or what does training look like for all different general staff managers, council members?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  Yes, definitely.
     So I would say this is not entirely centralized right now.  Meaning that it not everybody is getting the same kind of training or ‑‑ 
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  So how are you deciding, you know, who goes first?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  Well, so there are ‑‑ there's like the site improved trainings that we do have access site improved training hub I think is what it's called or learning hub, and that ‑‑ the people who gets access to those are our champions and our content authors for the city websites.
     I think that really anyone can request access but mostly those are the people who are kind of doing that work and kind of have access to that.
     Outside of that the City of Austin does have LinkedIn learning access, so the rest of our employees do have the ability to go learn through that medium.
     I will say we have recommended training on our you Sharepoint hub from both of these, both from site improve and linked and learning.
     I will also say department directors across the city can provide, you know, more support for training for individual employees, like, for instance, if anyone wants to go to AccessU they can request that.  I was able to go last year.  And really what's been happening in the last, like, in 6 months we've just been leaning a lot on free resources.  There's been many free webinars, and we recently had a free webinar from Cara Soft on PDF remediation, and I believe they're going to come back and do another one, and so honestly those things have been super helpful, and we've wanted to make it as equitable as possible and reach as many employees as possible through our accessibility Sharepoint site, and so anything that we are hosting ‑‑ if we're hosting a vendor to come do a training or an internal person is doing a training, we will post those recordings on our Sharepoint site as well.  Melissa that's great.  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  Yeah.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Well, I'm going to go ahead and go to the next question.  Prevention is more effective than remediation so does your city use a content management system with an accessibility workflow built into your web public indications?  How do you ensure content is reviewed before it's published?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  Yes, so I don't work closely in this area but as I understand it our CMS has required all text for all images.  We have site improved plug‑ins.  Users can check their pages regularly.  We're in the process of finalizing our new website which I'm really excited about so there were a lot of accessibility items and the website will have a new sort of author publishing model where CMS users can author, and then a few power users are sort of, like, publishers, and they'll be able to review the content before publishing.
     So we are embedding both organizational practices and tools within the CMS to support the content creators.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Okay.  And what about you, Deborah, what are you doing in San Antonio?  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  So we've got a couple of different process systems that we have.  We are in the process of kind of updating and upgrading our website, and so we are doing what Martha is doing in Austin.  We've got some of the backside processes where things aren't going to be released unless there's a digital accessibility check, and we're just taking that out of an option for anybody who is going to need to update their content or anything like that, so we're really moving it to the user experience, so that's one process we have.
     We also have another process where everything is going to through these triple reviews, you know?  I told you that we're working very closely with C&E on branding and the UX on our digital accessibility reviews, and so rules of, and we've been got this a acceptable practice.  We're using one system, and we're about ready to move over to a smart sheets system, so the project teams have more access to status and kind of where we are in the flow.  As a temporary solution, as we're looking at how we can get to Planview, is where we keep kind of all this master list of all our software systems, and that's where ITSD lives, and so we're looking at how we can add that to the Planview process.
     But when we were really starting this conversation and all of these directive were going out and city staff were learning a new process, it really became critical to have a very strong working relationship with our web team.  The team that actually gets to push the punishment that says:  Everything needs to be published because they were actually the team that went:  Hey, have you had this review?  Then they would loop us in, and then we would back‑do all of these type of reviews and kind of work in the system with the teams and the departments or the PIOs as we were learning ‑‑ as everyone was kind of learning the system, and so our web team has been amazing and absolutely critical in this process.  And, so I would say whoever is out there, know your web team.
(Laugh.) 
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  That's fantastic, and I really appreciate what you're sharing.  This is all really great information.
     And, did you have anything you wanted to add what you guys used.  Do you have a content management system?  
>>  ANGEL PONCE:  So like Martha, I will add that I'm not ‑‑ I'm not a leader or involved in the operations in this end, but I will say that I know that Houston is dedicating ‑‑ assigning a lead who will be collaborating with the communications team and departmental web master's to develop and implement a formalized system.
     I know that our goal is to shift from a reactive remediation to a proactive accessibility first workflow by ensuring that the lead will standardize accessibility expectations across all platforms.  Someone who will build a bridge between the technical web masters and the content‑creating communication teams to ensure that that we are in a at that unified approach system.
     And then also the emerging of a system dedicated to integrate accessibility checks directly into the publication process, so that we can ensure that content is vetted through contents and viability even before it goes live.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Also to add to that so accessibility testing is the strongest when it includes qualified testers with disability‑lived experience, so do you involve people with disabilities to find ‑‑ to validate findings and how does that feedback shape your process?  
>>  ANGEL PONCE:  That's a question for me?  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Go ahead, Angel, if you don't have an answer I'll pivot to Deborah.  
>>  ANGEL PONCE:  Part of our Phase 2 is to integrate our community members in the testing process.  We are not entirely there yet, but we will be working on that as we ‑‑ as we approach the next few months.
     And so I'll pass it over to the next ‑‑ 
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yeah, that's fine.  Deborah, do you guys /TKAO*UF do you have anything that you guys are doing in on San Antonio?  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  We don't necessarily right now have a standardized process when we will/when we won't use user testing as part of the process, but when we have we have prioritized ones that are going to have the large impacts, so the bigger the system, the bigger the product, the more when we are including user testing as the ‑‑ as part of the process.
     And it really does shape at the end of the day some of the final outcome details because it's really all about the user experience in that regard, so there's usually always changes that go with it.
     Now, when we have kind of smaller questions or smaller things as we're doing these reviews, and we're doing these project builds, a lot of times we've leaned on our disability access advisory committee.  We happen to have a couple of people over the years who have been amazing and knowledgeable in the digital accessibility field, and so we've called on them a lot to kind of do some small‑level testing for us and give us feedback about things that need to be improved or where we can ‑‑ like some opportunities that we can move forward on, maybe in the future phase.
     And so those have just been amazing.  Amazing opportunities for us.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  And for those that are listening and might not know what a disability advisory committee is, it's local committee; right?  Do you want to share a little bit about yours?  The one that's located in San Antonio?  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  Sure.  Yeah, so our disability access advisory committee ‑‑ it is an 11‑member panel all appointed by the city council as well as our mayor, and they work across different issues within the city sort of give recommendations and guidance, and they also do a lot of lived experience conversations on different topics, and they really are working hard on how they can actually help support departments in building inclusive and accessible design across all of the physical infrastructure, digital infrastructure, and so this is one of the ways that they wanted to tap into it.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yeah, I love that you're leaning into utilizing them in your efforts.
     And so we'll go ahead and move into remediation priorities how do you decide what is the most important parts to tackle first?  It going to be the archived documents, like, meeting minutes or is it going to be more important stuff?  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  Okay.  So honestly, we have prioritized over the last several years if it is a currently ‑‑ if it's a current project, so if it's a current project that's going through maybe a contract renewal, going out for bid, is it a document ‑‑ a new document that needs to be published, a new video, so anything that's new, we put a hard date on that you can't go and get published without our review process being involved.  
     And ‑‑ and, so that was kind of our first stop‑gap in that process, and then as we're going through the process of going through and auditing existing documents or existing platforms and applications and systems that we already had, we're using a prioritization matrix that basically includes:  What's our risk involved?  And basically how high‑touch it is?  A large process?  A large program that's going to touch a lot of community or is it something very ma small?  And with that we're also looking at:  Is it something that they have to do to get access to a service particularly if we're talking accomplishments for housing funding or repairs.  Those type of things are prioritized higher than let's just say an information page or an information document.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yeah, no, that's very good feedback.
     Martha, what about the City of Austin?  How do you decide what's important and what's not as important?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  So I'm will say I'm probably not the best person to answer this because I'm one of the people in my department or across the other people in the department doing this work but being the person that kind of leads the central efforts.  Generally, we advice ‑‑ the general advice we're giving departments is prioritize the service and because at the end of the day there's a lot out there that can take up your time, but, you know, if it's not fundamental to the city service, like, just start from there and start, you know, with the ‑‑ kind of ‑‑ I guess maybe for lack of a better Workday flows or just sort of the processes that our residents take to gain a city service, and then ‑‑ and then go from there but like I said, it's ‑‑ I'm not the one doing the work, and the way that our model currently is, departments are sort of deciding how they're approaching it.  How they're prioritizing, you know, who's doing what ‑‑ 
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  No, that absolutely makes sense, and that's definitely a great way to prioritize both from Deborah and from Martha.
     And so let's talk a little bit about lessons learned.  In no major implementation effort is perfect.  Looking back what lessons learned especially practices that didn't go as planned.  Can, and we'll start with Martha.  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  Yeah I'm happy to talk about this because I do think there's a lot to learn from ‑‑ 
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Always; right?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  Right, but I would say set clarity from the very beginning.  What is not possible ‑‑ like what is possible and what is not possible?
     I think one thing that I struggling with was long‑term plans versus short‑term.  What is ‑‑ you know, what we can get done now and what we should plan for in the future.  From the very beginning I wanted to be able to do everything and as we were going through the work, eventually I kind of hit a wall, and I couldn't ignore the fact that we just didn't have the resourcing and the support and everything that we needed kind of in place to be able to successfully kind of move forward, and so I worked with my leadership and scoped the rest of, you know, the short‑term work that would take us to the DOJ requirement date and our plan in the next couple of months is to develop long‑term plans to understand who's going to own the long‑term program, who's going to be responsible for each component, what department partnerships will be required.  What kind of resourcing will be needed?  All of that ‑‑ but, yeah, I think that was my biggest kind of learning lesson of and challenge, and so definitely something that I try to advise the champions and be as voc as you can the lack of resourcing you have, and, you know, just document everything as best you can and prioritize where you're able to.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yeah, that's all great advice.
     Angel, do you have any lessons learned from the City of Houston.  
>>  ANGEL PONCE:  Yeah.  Similar to Martha, whenever I first started this back ‑‑ it was actually back in mid‑2023, I wanted also ‑‑ like let's do everything, and it's going to ‑‑ I know how much it's going to cost.  It will be a couple million dollars.  It's an easy fix.  It's going to happen.  Surely we'll get approved, but I quickly got push‑back like whoa, whoa, whoa.  Let's start small, and so that's exactly what we did, but, unfortunately, that took away a few months of work that we could have accomplished, and so what I would say is that ‑‑ like Martha mentioned, kind of scale back a little bit.  What we did is we then we're not going to do the whole thing, let's do some pilot studies, so that this way then we can get buy‑in from those leaders in our city, and they can see for themselves where we're falling behind, and then so when we move into a phase 2, which is kind of a smaller scale everyone implementation process, they've already seen the results, and so they have something to use, so that they can proceed and support and back, with funding, a Phase 2.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Sure, that's great, and then Deborah, did you have some that you'd like to share from San Antonio?  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  Well, I feel Martha and Angel's experiences are comparability to San Antonio.  I'm just going to say ditto for those two but one of the things that we experienced that ‑‑ that is definitely a lesson learned is that when we were rolling out a lot of these systems we were doing kind of several things:  We knew, like, maybe policy and slave directives may take one timeline but here's all these things that we think that we can kind of get rolling in the meantime, so we worked on kind of, like these multiple past trajectories to get things done like low‑hanging fruit and what's going to take longer and the timing didn't always match more were we married at certain times but things rolled out anyway.
     And so when we were rolling out themes, it ended up that we didn't have a lot of what I would called like standardized communication or flowcharts for staff to look at, and so a lot of things came from this kind of individual one‑on‑one conversations until we could get some of those documents done and of the Sharepoint site set up and things like that, and I think it created a lot of stress on my side.
(Laugh.) 
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  And it created a lot of stress for the project teams because they want to see some of these visuals and how this works visually and work into their project planning, and that would be is have the things I would say southbound prepared for things lining.  You'll have to create more flowcharts and process documents and make things that you don't think anybody is ever going to need.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  In regard to smaller municipalities and entities that must fully be accessible by next year, how would you guide these smaller municipalities or small independent school districts on where to begin?  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  So what I would recommend is that you have to start building your team.  This is not something that one person can do one small team ‑‑ like it is going to be ‑‑ it's going to have to be a collaborative effort because you're going to have to get so much work done, but the big thing is don't get paralyzed by fear.  Just start.  Pick something, do it.  Move on to the next spot.  Figure it out and go on and if you can do parallel efforts that's even better, but it's really about how you're making progress.  It's never going to be picture of and you've got to show your good‑faith effort that you're working towards a digitally accessible environment.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yes absolutely.  Well, we are running short on time.  We have 15 minutes left, so I would like to pivot to the Texas Department of Information resources, Marie Cohan, and we are going to have her share how DIR is supporting Title II entities through T and what resources are available.  Marches thanks, Melinda.
     So DIR has a few programs in place to support state and local government.  We have been trying to support local government for the past year, and we've had a lot of success there.  
     We have a community of practice so local government entities are welcomed to join that community of practice.  And have access to experts across the state that work in public sector, ask questions we have knowledge‑sharing resources on there.  We have sample policies and templates that they can use.  The whole idea is that no one is moving slower than someone else.  The goal is that we're all moving at the same pace regardless of the size of the agency, especially, with larger agencies in Texas helping those smaller agencies or smaller local governments.  We want to make sure Texas is a leader across the country, and so we've created those resources to support both state and local government.
     The program that I lead, we have a monthly statewide meetup.  We have weekly office hour for state agencies and higher ed.  The monthly meetup is open to all public sector employees.  DIR provides digital accessibility training across the state of Texas employees, and we went cover the cost of that, and then we also have a web scanning program for state agencies in higher ed that they can participate in and DIR cover the cost of a small sampling of scanning on their website to look for any accessibility issues, especially since it's an automated scan it will be kind of what they refer to on this call low‑hanging fruit with those probability of errors.
     Yeah, DIR has gone through the great lengths to make sure that we have a lot of programs and supports in place for Texas.  We're updating our Texas administrative code right now.  To align with the new Title II rule.  Typically, Texas aligns closely with federal guidelines and rules, and there may be some little nuances there, and we are updating that so Texas will be pretty much fully aligned with the federal mandates.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  And do you know when that will be officially updated?  Marches could you repeat that.  My sound ‑‑ 
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  I said do you know when that will be officially updated the Texas ‑‑ marches we have two Texas administrative codes that relate to digital accessibility.  We have one dedicated to website accessibility, and then one that's dedicated to all electronic and information resources, and so the one that's dedicated to all electronic and information resources, the more comprehensive rule is ‑‑ I think going out for public comment soon.  Our goal is to have it finalized by the April deadline, and then we will start working on the other code in the process.  
     I will say to clarify, it really doesn't matter where the Texas administrative code is because it is currently lower than the federal standard.  The federal regulation supersedes anything in Texas so right now, to be clear, the new Title II rule is the law of the land.  It doesn't matter where your agency is from policy perspective or if your state has caught up with its own administrative code, as long as you are not below the federal standard, that it is standard.  If you want to go above it, the federal government does allow public sector entities to adopt a higher standard, so we do have some agencies in the state who have now moved up to WCAG 2.2 AA, so that is a discretion that the federal government allows but right now it's the federal standard is across the U.S.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  That's awesome to know that there's some state agencies that are going above and beyond already.  That's exciting to hear.
     And so do you have anything else you'd like to add, Marie, before I open it to questions from the audience?  Mayors marches I think 
>>  MARIE COHAN:  Some highlights that I've noted as everyone was presenting, it's very important to identify those key stakeholders that are going to help you with a successful initiative so if you haven't started yet, no fear, no panic, you know, start today.  Identify those folks who are going to help you get your policies in place, help you have the resources you need to provide training, to disseminate information, whatever the case may be.  And all of these cities today have talked about that.  They've provided training.  They've disseminated the information downward, so that all the end‑users have it.  They've had leadership buy‑in to support them across the process.  
     If you're having trouble with leadership buy‑in, I can say this is not a trend.  This is not the hot topic with 15 minutes of fame.  This is a culture shift, and we really need to embed digital accessibility into our technology across‑the‑board and educate our users and make sure our content authors are aware of it.  Everyone should have some sort of ownership over it.  
     In the long at all run, a good digital accessibility program will save your city, your state money.  It provides greater efficiency, it provides expanded service to all of your customers.  So if you're trying to make that case with your leadership, let them know this is good business.  It's for the state of Texas.  It's good supports for small businesses in Texas, and it's more efficient for you to operate at that level.  Digital accessibility is not just for that 25% of the populations.  It helps everyone in the long at all run, so I will say that.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yes we all benefit from different types of technology that is enhanced; right?  And, so it's going to be great when we are all digitally accessible, and so I'm going to go ahead and get questions from the audience.
     And so is there a list of job titles and/or positions specifically for ADA knowledge of digital accessibility for people with disabilities?  /TP if any of you can answer that then just chime right in 
>>  MARIE COHAN:  I was looking at that question.  Maybe we need some clarification.  I think what they're asking is maybe is there a job listings for people with disabilities they could apply to because there is a high unemployment rate in this demographic.  They have double the unemployment rate of the regular unemployment rate so if that is the question, typically you'll see a lot of postings on LinkedIn, you know, looking for people with disabilities.  If the ‑‑ if the question is asking:  What would be a good job description or do we have some sample language, I do have sample language for like a accessibility specialist in the public sector.  I'd be happy to share that, and you can also find some of that language on the state auditor's website there's three job classifications there for accessibility specialist that's open for the public but if you want to reach out and my email address for my team is statewideaccessibility@DIR.TEXAS.gov.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Does the state have any spreadsheets or templates that universities can use to track compliance testing and remediation for both automated and manual testing over individual web pages and documents?  
     Marie, do you have an answer for this?  
>>  MARIE COHAN:  We don't provide a template like that, so Texas is a federated governing model.  While my agency provides the administrative code and the statutory language for the state to follow, we do give that discretion of setting their own policy, processes, you know, how they're going to comply with the law ‑‑ we leave that to the agencies and the higher ed.
     I will say there are a lot of resources out there.  We can try to find some resources for you.  In my community of practice.  We have a guide in there that's got tons of resources in it so if you ask to join that community practice, you'll have access to that information.
     And I will say there's tools out there, like, JERA is a very common tool to track defects in remediation.  When you're doing your accessibility testing like you said a spreadsheet you can set up your own spreadsheet.  We've done that on smaller projects, so it's really up to your agency what works best for you.  
     I will say having documentation is critical so whatever documentation you do choose to use, don't delete it or throw it away at the end.  Keep all of that saved in the event there is a complaint, you want to demonstrate to a court or to whoever that you did your due diligence, and you did do testing and maybe it was just an oversite in the testing.  
>>  DEBORAH SCHARVEN:  And this is Debbie.  I can tell you that the digital accessibility team and the ADA coordinator team at UT Arlington has done presentations about their digital process and how they got themselves ready as a higher education university, and so I'm going to put that out as an additional resource because I know they've done a lot of presentations, and so you may be able to talk with them and see if they have any templates they'd be willing to share for university level.  
>>  MARIE COHAN:  Thank you for pointing that out, Debbie.  UT Arlington is is have my advanced accessibility offices.  They have done a lot and if you do want to reach out to Laura, she's the accessibility officer for them.  Their email address is accessibility@UTA.EDU.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Yeah thanks for that, Deborah.  That is excellent information because they do do great work, and they're also a great resource.
     Did you want to add anything, Angel, or Martha to that?  
>>  MARTHA FOOTE:  Yeah, sorry, just a quick note.  This is Martha.
     I have seen UT Arlington's resources in the teams instance in Marie's community of practice, so if they ask the question and join that, I think that'll be the quickest way to access that, and then obviously follow up with whoever Laura or anyone else, so that has been super helpful to us as well.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  And where can where he access the tutorials and trainings that were referred to in this webinar.  
>>  MARIE COHAN:  So, yes, if you're a state employee, and you would like to join our academy, which is our learning management system, digital accessibility courses, you can email us at that statewideaccessibility ‑‑ our website, and we'll go ahead and get you set up for that and the same thing goes for the web scanning program, if you're interested in participating in that, you can email us at that same address.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Great and can they also find resources from you for making PDFs accessible?  
>>  MARIE COHAN:  We do have some training resources available for that outside of the academy.  Again, that digital accessibility program resource guide that we have created in the guide does have some links there is have those is our wonderful Laura Hopkins tutorial, and it's on YouTube on it's available to the public, and we can get you that link available.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  Fantastic.  Well, that's all the questions I have for today, and this has been a really great webinar.  I would like to thank all of our panelists for sharing insight with everyone and, yeah, that's all we have for today, so thank you so much.  
>>  MARIE COHAN:  Thank you for having us.  
>> MELINDA CROCKER:  All right, everyone have ‑‑