5/28/25 DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY FOR TEXAS AND TEXANS 

>>:  We'll be getting started in just a few minutes. 
>>:  When I was prepping this, my last presentation for this group was exactly two years ago, I was going to tell Matthew. 
>>:  Oh, wow.  I'm happy to have you back again. 
>>:  I'm happy to be here.  
>>:  All right.  We're going to begin recording, and then we can get started.  
(Recording in progress.) 
>>:  Good morning, and thank everyone for joining us here at the governor's committee for people with disabilities.  For our presentation today for digital accessibility for Texans.  We have Marie Cohan here today from the department of information resources.  She will be talking about this topic today.  We are very excited to learn more about this from her.  Before we actually begin, we have a few messages from the GCPD and we will turn it over to Marie after that.  About the governor's committee with people with disabilities, we have a mission to further opportunities for persons with disabilities, to enjoy full and equal access to lives of independence, productivity, and self‑determination.  GCPD recommends changes in policies and programs in the areas of accessibility, communication, criminal justice, education, emergency preparedness, employment, health, housing, transportation, and veterans.  The committee also supports a network of committees on people with disabilities for issues to promote compliance with disability‑related laws.  And for this webinar, chat has been disabled.  Please use the Q and A tool if you have questions for our presenters.  Most questions will be answered near the end of the webinar.  After the webinar, you will receive an automated link with a link to our page to access the recording or other materials.  The e‑mail will also include a survey where you can give your feedback, if you would like to.  If you have any suggestions for any future webinars, please include them.  Marie, the floor is all yours. 
>>:  Thank you so much, Matthew.  Good morning, everyone.  It is a real treat to be here.  Like I said, it's been about two years, so it's an honor and pleasure to be here with you today.  My name is Marie Cohan.  I am the statewide disability officer at the Texas department of information resources.  For anyone not aware, the Texas department of information resources is the technology leader for the state of Texas.  We provide technology policy, services program, contracts, cyber security, telecommunications, et cetera.  I am a Hispanic female with a long curly brown hair, wears glasses today that have a black rim, black dress, and gray blazer.  I have my state of Texas pin on today.  So we are going to talk about digital accessibility in Texas and for Texans.  We're going to talk about what's on the other side when talking about citizens.  We'll talk about Texas, accessibility policies in Texas, state website accessibility, my program, and the citizen experience.  So the great state of Texas has about 30.5 million people.  I have a picture of the state on my slide.  For demographic purposes, we're going to talk about Texans with disabilities.  3.7 million have a disability.  10 percent of those are children under the age of 18.  51 percent are aged 18 to 64.  That's the workforce age.  38 percent are over 65.  I think that number might have jumped up.  It's changing rapidly as the baby boomer generation starts to age.  That group is important because they will experience one or more disabilities as they start aging.  Then 31 percent of people with disabilities are employed.  30 percent of Texas veterans have a disability.  So we're talking about some significant numbers when you look at the overall population of Texas being over 30 million people.  So why do we talk about digital accessibility?  Why is this important in technology?  Well‑designed technology is a win for everyone.  Even able people.  Some of you may have heard about the curb cut effect.  We used to not have curb cuts in corners on streets where sidewalks are.  Once they added those curb cuts, they suddenly became usable for everyone, a mom pushing a stroller, pushing a cart, someone who is using a walker or a wheelchair or maybe just someone who doesn't do steps very well and wants to walk up a ramp.  The same is true with technology.  So when you look at your technology today, when using your mobile device, you're using things like Siri and Alexa, talking in your microphone to create a text message, these are all features that began with accessibility in mind.  When you zoom out with your fingers and I'm demonstrating that my fingers are zooming out on my screen, that is an accessibility feature.  So we all enjoy the benefits of accessibility features in our technology.  Inclusive design is not only about ADA compliance.  This is really important.  It also means we are creating an equitable experience for all users, regardless of the ability or disability.  I have a picture of a room full of people raising their hand.  So let's talk about economic benefits for the state of Texas.  On this slide, I have a picture of some dollars.  When we talk about accessibility in our Texas websites and forms that are on our websites and ability to log into some sort of portable to transact with the state, we're supporting small businesses in Texas.  Unemployment rate is high for people with disabilities.  A lot of people with disabilities will end up starting their own companies.  They go into consulting, testing, and a lot of other different areas.  Those small businesses are an economic boom for Texas.  They have to go to the secretary of state to set up their business.  That's a fee.  They pay state unemployment tax, they pay state franchise tax.  These are all revenue generators for the state of Texas.  Maybe it's a specialized type of business where they have to request a permit or a license of some sort.  So there's a significant revenue component that supports the economy when we ensure that our websites at the state agencies are accessible for our citizens.  Let's talk about universities and student programs supporting increasing enrollment.  Universities that have strong disability resource centers that provide resources for students with disabilities, and these are especially nonapparent disabilities, they attract more students, especially when talking about nonapparent disabilities.  This is a group of folks that do not disclose all of the time, but they still need support.  They want to be able to have that conversation with their counseling office.  That means increased revenue for the university.  It's increased tuition, room and board fees, increased other fees for the university, books, you name it.  We also can attract better faculty talent which raises the standing of a university.  In Texas, universities are stellar and topnotch in the U.S. and they provide services for our students.  So let's talk about cost reduction.  So we hear a lot today about being more efficient with government resources.  So when we take accessibility into consideration early on in our development or buying process or implementation of some sort of technology, we are saving on employee rework.  So those solicitations, those procurement processes to be costly.  They're lengthy in the state.  If we procure it right the first time, we don't have to go back out and reprocure again, which is a lag of time, it's loss, it's another expense to the state.  When we're implementing a software application or some new telecom commitment, if we get it right from the equipment, if we take accessibility in mind at the beginning, we can have implementation.  That saves money.  We can avoid litigation costs.  So if there's a complaint about a state website, there's a lot of risk that comes with that, a lot of cost risk.  So we have public information requests, discovery costs for lawyers, reputational risks, and then there could be hefty fines.  The state of Oklahoma's mobile application had a fine levied back in 2023 or 2024 for about a half a million dollars because the mobile application was not accessible.  The state of Louisiana is going through litigation right now for inaccessible websites.  We want to focus on citizens.  That's the most important.  We want government to be efficient.  We want it to be citizen‑friendly, easy to navigate, and we want y'all to do what you need to do with your government, get the information you need, transact, whatever the case may be.  Let's talk about social and cultural.  I don't think this comes up enough.  We have a lot of citizens in Texas and we are very engaged as a population.  So when we're able to interact with our government and go to a site and get the information we need, let's say we want to start a new business or we want to talk about housing in Texas, where's a good place to start my family, what about emergency information, how do I get emergency advisory alerts when something is going on?  So when citizens can get the information they need easily and efficiently from state government, it improves their experience.  It increases their independency and privacy.  It creates flexibility.  It helps with student success.  It helps build our employment force.  We can provide support for our employees.  We have better retention of quality employees when they have the resources they need to do their job.  It can be a community builder.  So when you can find information from a state website, then you can share that with your neighbor, you can share it in a community group, maybe an HOA meeting.  So now we're talking about spreading of information, creating fellowship in the community and sharing that information on what's going on in the state of Texas.  That's really good engagement with our citizens and that's exactly what we want.  So let's talk about state of Texas accessibility policies.  We're talking about state government now.  So we do have three different areas of compliance.  I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on these because that could take another hour.  It's not fun to talk about.  I'm sure you want to hear the good stuff.  We have federal compliance.  We have the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act is for state and local government.  That covers Texas.  The DOG announced a new rule under Title II last year to tighten up the requirements for web accessibility and mobile accessibility.  This is a significant change that's happened in the last year.  It's a welcome change.  There's a lot of ambiguity around website accessibility.  We are in the process of implementing Title II right now.  It increased the standard from 2.0 level A to 2.1 level A.  What that means is it's an industry standard.  Those are the web content accessibility guidelines.  They're not just for web pages.  They're also for software and hardware.  That is what we follow.  We now have a higher standard.  We have to step it up a little bit.  We also have Section 508 of the 1998 rehabilitation act.  It is to the federal government when talking about procuring technology.  The state of Texas follows that governance as well.  So let's talk about Texas.  Texas does have a statute on the books.  It's Texas government code 2054, subchapter M.  It talks about the requirements for accessibility for state employees and for citizens in Texas.  It also gives my agency authority to create the rules to help carry out that particular statute.  We currently have a bill moving through our legislature because we're in session right now.  I believe it's going to be presented to the governor.  I think it's made it to the final stage.  That will increase website accessibility within the state of Texas.  So we have our own legislation that is in progress right now.  There's also a bill at the federal level that house member Pete Sessions from the state of Texas has introduced to improve website accessibility as well.  You can see that that is really significant.  It's the first impression you get when you access the agency.  There's a lot of information on a website and transactions that happen on a website.  Those rules that I mentioned in Texas, we have two of them.  We have 206 for websites and we have 13 for all other electronic resources technology.  Then the industry standards that we follow, again, we have the web content accessibility guidelines.  We're at 2.1 AA.  We also use the information technology industry council who makes those product accessibility templates.  This leverages the standards.  It has the success criteria for each standard.  It's listed on a form.  Companies that make products like software products or platforms of service, they have to go and complete that form after testing their product and document on that form how their product conformed to those standards.  That is an important form.  It's called an accessibility conformance report.  That is what state agencies use when we're buying technology to assess how accessible that technology is.  We have to work closely with the vendor community.  I do a lot with the state of Texas with the vendor community.  They're my customers too.  I explain how important it is that they bring us accessible technology, that we have choices when we buy technology and we want to buy the best technology for the best price in Texas and they need to step up and make sure their products are accessibility and their development services as well.  So I did talk about the Americans with Disabilities Act.  It's broad.  It applies to private and public sector.  The new standard for web is at WCAG 2.1 AA.  That covers web content and applications.  The documents that are stored on a website, so electronic documents like PDFs, social media, my password‑protected content, so like your utility bill would be a good example and third‑party content on a state website.  That is the scope of the new rule.  The Department of Justice enforces ADA compliance.  They're not the only ones that enforce ADA compliance.  Private citizens enforce it as well.  That is where the bigger risk is.  Private citizens are everywhere and they're using our sites and they have no problem letting us know when a site is not accessible.  So sorry, guys.  I hope you can't hear that.  Give me one second.  Okay.  Hopefully he calms down here in a second.  My dog is barking.  So 508 of the rehabilitation act has to do with federal procurements of technology and states across the country also follow Section 508.  Typically because states are also getting federal funding.  They want to follow it as well.  He's not sure if he should be barking or crying.  Texas government code 2054 is our state statute.  It gives authority to create rules.  It provides for training and outreach for our state agencies and universities.  There's policy making for those universities and agencies.  There's a requirement they have an accessibility policy that they have a person like me.  Texas is unique in that because of our ‑‑ hey, stop it.  Texas is unique in that because of our government.  Each of our agencies has their own leadership.  Then we have the statewide leadership.  So there's a person like me at every single agency and university which is wonderful.  They can drive digital accessibility for their agency.  They're the expert.  So they make policies, they lead that practice for their agency, they handle any exceptions that come up.  My agency handles all of the exemptions.  There's only a couple like nationwide.  There's a couple.  There are some reporting requirements at the state level as well.  This is just a quick snapshot on the Texas administrative code for websites.  It goes into what's allowable as an exception.  It has a requirement for closed captioning for video, alternatives for noncompliance, accessibility testing, accessibility policy, the adaptability of your website, and then establishing compliance measurements.  And then this is a lot heavier.  I'm going to go through it quickly.  Basically, this is Texas administrative code 213.  This is for electronic information resources.  This covers everything else.  So software applications, operating systems, telecommunications, video, hardware, the performance criteria, compliance, exceptions, procurement process.  It's quite significant when you talk about that.  DIR follows that.  We handle contracts for the state of Texas.  It goes into the training, testing, job descriptions, it talks about the person who is assigned like me at the agency and then there's just some other reporting requirements in here as well.  And then I did already talk about this, digital accessibility industry standards.  We talked about that VPAT form.  We talked about the accessibility conformance report which comes after proper testing of a product.  I say proper because preferably, the product owner, for example, Microsoft will test their own products and complete that form versus a reseller in Texas who completes it themselves and then they fill it in and says it's based on general product knowledge.  That's not really acceptable.  They need to go back to the product owner, the manufacturer and get that report from them.  They know the product intimately.  Lastly, on our WCAG standard, there's four principals when we talk about the standards.  There's a ton of those in there.  They're broken into four groups.  We want our technology to be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.  Perceivable means anyone can take in and consume that information regardless of their senses.  We want it to be operable so if I'm using assistive technology, it works with my technology or let's say I'm not using some sort of technology, I need to use keyboard‑only navigation, it works with that.  We want it to be understandable.  For those nonapparent disabilities, if I was a person with dyslexia or ADHD or a brain injury, I want to understand the content, so is it written at a level that I can understand, is the web page not busy, is there a lot of white space on there so I don't get distracted, and we want it to be robust.  As technology changes, the website can keep up with the changes.  It adapts.  This is what a recommended procurement life cycle looks like.  I'm going to go through it quickly.  This is what I do with my agency on those contracts.  This is recommendations I make to all of the agencies and universities in Texas.  So when we create a solicitation, we decide we want to buy something, we write a solicitation.  I read that language.  I work closely with our procurement team.  Then once that solicitation goes out to market, so it's made public to citizens, to businesses, to everyone in Texas, we have a small window where we can talk to those vendors who are interested in responding to that solicitation.  We can explain to them the different components of the solicitation, we can answer any questions that they may have, provide clarifications.  We do have to be careful how we do that because we don't want to favor anyone over another.  So it's all handled very professionally.  Then once the solicitation closes, once all of those vendors submit responses, I do an evaluation on the accessibility of the response.  We call that the response at that stage.  So this is how I kind of do my accessibility evaluations.  I believe a lot of the agencies or universities are doing the exact same thing.  So there's three components to an accessibility evaluation when talking about vendors responding to do business with the state of Texas.  I look at are there services in that response.  If they are, then there's a form that they need to complete explaining to me how they train their developers, what kind of training do they do, what kind of development tools, testing tools, do they test with automated tools, do they test with assistive technology, how do they correct defects, track those defects, et cetera.  So we want to see samples of work they've done in the past.  It's important to us to identify the best company to develop our website or an application of some sort.  We also have products.  So any ‑‑ that's like Microsoft or Apple products, anything that's a tangible product, whether hardware or software, that's that report that we review and then we have a national document that's been sponsored by the national association of chief information officers that is called a PDAA.  It is an assessment of the company, so the company that is responding to the solicitation, not their products or services in their response.  We want to understand how company ABC adopts accessibility in their own company.  We want to understand if they have accessibility built into their business practices.  Are they training their staff, is it a cultural shift within that company.  That helps us understand where they are with accessibility maturity and that helps us make a better decision about whether or not we want to do business with that company.  So website accessibility.  So we'll talk about our websites on our agencies.  So again, websites are our first point of contact for the customer, the citizen, and the state.  In most cases, this is going to be the biggest accessibility risk when talking about digital accessibility.  There are thousands of lawsuits that occur every year around website accessibility.  There's easy things that get missed like alternative text or images or graphics.  We want to make sure that our policies and practices are in place to ensure we ‑‑ that upkeep is on our websites, continuous monitoring, things like that, so we can reduce our risk.  So in a web development project, this is a quick snapshot.  I'm an agency, let's say, and I want to build a new website, especially now because we're trying to comply with the Title II role.  It has all of those documents I mentioned earlier as part of the evaluation.  So when we talk about building a new website, we're going to hire developers to build that site.  We want to make sure the developers are trained and that they're current on the new standard.  In the development process of that site, there are some products that we may need.  We may need a special font package, a hosting environment, so that's a product, we need a content management system to hold all of our web content.  That is a product.  We want to make sure that we're evaluating for those products as well that may enter into that solicitation or they may get added on later when we're engaged in that particular product.  So what I do in that solicitation stage of the procurement life cycle is I make sure all of that language is in there.  So that if at some point during on engagement with a vendor, we want to add on development services or a product, it's already built into that master contract, making it much easier for citizens ‑‑ or for the customers like agencies and higher ed, even local government buys off our contracts, other states buy off of it, so whoever that purchaser is of ‑‑ using our contracts, they have all of the language they need in there to protect them from an accessibility standpoint when working with those vendors.  So these are some web product best practices.  A lot of our agencies are going through web products right now.  We want to make sure we have a clearly defined scope for that site and around our page designs.  We want to talk to our vendor and say, this is what our requirements are for our agency.  That should be in the scope and requirements, in each development.  We want to make sure each team understands what testing needs looks like and who is responsible for any defects.  Sometimes we get into discussions over who is responsible for remediation and it's usually them.  So we want to make sure it's clear in our contracts when doing a website, update, or redesign that we know who is testing, we know what the baseline accessibility standards look like.  We want to do a risk assessment.  We do a lot in state government.  We want to be efficient with state dollars.  It should be done early and monitored throughout the product.  The risk is a probability of something occurring.  We score it on whether it's going to occur, what's the likelihood, and if it does occur, what is the impact of that incurrence and we score on that as well.  There's the score of the probability and the scoring of the impact.  If both are high, that's a risk to the state.  We need to address it immediately.  We want to have development iterations that include a quality assurance check with the development team.  Not only for the features that they've developed, but also for accessibility.  We want to make sure that the feature is accessible and works the way it's supposed to, that the user testing is throughout, not just at the backstage of a website project.  I tell my customers, I promise you, if you wait and do accessibility testing at the end, your website will launch late, you will have significant remediation and additional cost added on to that product.  Make sure it's early on and planned for and tested often.  Make sure you only have maybe a few little tweaks that need to happen.  All of the heavy stuff has been fixed.  We talk about management of scope, budget, time line.  These are all critical.  We want to stay on top of that.  Any changes should be documented so we want to make sure we are constantly communicating to make sure that the product is flowing properly, that nothing has been added that's not been recorded or approved.  Then we also want to be careful about a minimal viable product.  If anyone works in project management, you may hear MVP.  Deploy the best product we can get to right now, trying to save money.  What happens with those MVPs is they have accessibility issues.  So if you know early on that you're probably going to deploy some sort of minimally viable product, make sure you are testing for accessibility often and early.  Even that MVP cannot be deployed if it's not accessible.  And then we have website governance.  Once you get a website in place, what we tell our agencies is have a style guide.  So you know what your colors are, they're tested, you know what your font is, you have an accessible font size, you have governance around who is allowed to publish to your site.  If everyone is allowed to publish, there's no control over whether or not something is accessible or not that's getting published to the site, think about updated content or files that have been uploaded or maybe someone changed a form on the site, but they didn't test it for accessibility.  Who is allowed to push something out to the website, and are there checks in place to make sure that it's accessible.  Have a process for tweaks to the site, so do some quality assurance checking.  If there's any updates happening, go back through and retest.  Even if it's a sample test, make sure nothing is out of whack.  Track defects within your agency.  So let's talk about DIR and my program.  I'm proud of my program because I get to work with the best employees in the state of Texas.  So in my program, I get to work with all of the state agencies and all of the universities and the folks I work with at those agencies and universities are stellar.  They are strong experts in this field.  I learn from them all the time.  They're very passionate about accessibility.  I'm now working with local government advising them and junior colleges.  I've been mentoring other states in the country.  Texas has become a leader in digital accessibility.  We have a mature program.  We have become a model for other states to follow.  I also work with vendors evangelizing the need from them.  We can't do this alone.  Texas has strong, private public partnerships with our vendor community.  We rely on them.  I make it clear to our vendors that we take that partnership very seriously and we need them to do their part and bring us accessible products and services.  As far as functional roles within the agencies, our roles are very cross functional.  So I work with other accessibilities.  Those and I work with our own general council, risk officers, resource managers or CIOs, work with the IT web team, the developers, I work with leadership across all of the agencies and my leadership, procurement professionals, program managers or project managers and then the policy advisors.  So it's ‑‑ you can see that this touches a lot of different areas and I don't have it listed here, but I also do work with HR departments too.  So my program provides three major areas.  We provide statewide leadership.  So we work with our agencies and local government and universities to provide them guidance and research that I do, I share with them.  Any opportunities for training, I provide that for them.  We update the rules.  We have our contracts program at DIR for technology procurements.  I evaluate responses that come in for that.  As far as compliance goes, we don't manage or monitor compliance.  We provide the guidance for compliance, but we also want our agencies to be successful in their compliance journey.  So we provide automated web scanning for their websites.  We have a survey that we do every two years to test where they're at from a compliance standpoint.  The results get reports to the legislature and to the governor's office.  We monitor statewide exemptions.  Then I ensure that all agencies are following our Texas administrative code and that they've assigned a person like me.  If there's an agency that has not appointed someone like me to work on accessibility with them, that's a risk and they're going to have defects within the agency.  We do a lot of education and outreach in my program.  We have a learning management system that we provide for all state and Texas employees where they can take classes on accessibility, I provide training, so I'll do a lunch and learn, or I'll work one‑on‑one with an employee who needs additional support.  Again, I do vendor outreach to train vendors in addition to evangelizing for the state agencies as well.  We have tools and resources we provide.  I speak at a lot of different conferences that range from IT folks to state leadership.  We have a monthly statewide meet‑up that state and local government are invited to.  I'm averaging about 120 people at each of those meetings.  It's just for state employees.  Then I have a weekly office hour, so every Monday afternoon, I just jump on a Teams call and anyone in my customer group, hundreds of folks, can jump on that call and ask questions or just sit and listen.  A lot of folks like to do that and they learn as they go.  Then we have a community of collaboration.  So I have creates a private Teams site for state and local government in Texas.  In there, we can share templates, different policies with each other.  It's kind of a ‑‑ there's a discussion board in there, so you can phone a friend, if you have a question about something.  We share information on the accessibility of different products with each other, documentation we need for a product to determine if it's accessible.  You name it.  It's happening in that group.  That group has been wonderful for this community because they're all connected.  They can talk to each other, they can mentor each other, and we're all moving at the same pace now, so nobody is getting left behind.  If there's a small agency that lacks resources to implement some of these best practices, they don't have to figure it out on their own.  They can piggy back and we're all moving together.  It's a good tool that we've employed in our program.  So let's talk about the citizen experience.  That is what this is all about.  That's the end goal.  So I've talked a lot about how we're trying to help our citizens and get information to Texans and make it a good experience when you come to a state site.  We want it to be an easy and efficient experience.  What can you do to support the state of Texas agencies and higher ed?  So if you get to a site and you notice there's an inaccessible component or something is not working right, let the state agency know.  All agencies have to have a form on their site where a citizen ‑‑ oops.  A citizen can provide feedback or ask for help.  So do that.  Let the agency know, hey, I just wanted to let you know there's a character limit on this field and I can't complete it properly or there's no headers in this field, I need help with this.  They're going to want to know that.  We don't catch everything.  We're not perfect.  So it helps when our citizens let us know that we have a little bit of a gap.  If there's a bigger gap and you're having a difficult time and you let them know, please be patient.  They have been instructed to respond as soon as possible or immediately to your request or issue, but sometimes it takes a few days.  Some stuff is more complex.  Maybe we can't remediate it right away, so we need to come up with an alternative way to get that information to you or to help you enter information into a website form.  So just be patient and give us a little bit of time to work with you.  For public events, let the agency know if you need an accommodation.  So if you're attending like a meeting like this today, which I believe is open to the public, if you need a sign language interpreter or if you need closed captioning or CART services, let the agency know ahead of time so they can have a procurement lead time to get those resources in for that particular meeting.  We can't do this stuff on last‑minute notice.  So typically, agencies will ask for like a week in advance or maybe two weeks in advance so they can actually go and procure that service for you.  Students and universities and K through 12 should seek out services early.  So if a student is having a hard time, maybe they don't ‑‑ they're not aware that they have a disability, which is common, they know they're having difficulty reading or don't understand something, they're scoring low in a particular concentration, that could be a detection that there may be a neurodivergent disability that that student needs help with.  Reach out to your school.  They have an at‑risk counselor that does educational testing, putting together plans.  The universities have the same thing.  If you're getting ready to test with your college board test, like AP exams, SATs, ACTs, I believe, it's been a while, contact the college board and let them know you may need an accommodation and work with them.  Waiting is never a good policy, whether it's government or citizen.  We all need to be proactive when it comes to accessible.  It's not an afterthought.  We want to talk about it early on and be proactive at all times.  If you just want ‑‑ if you're a screen reader user and you want to be helpful for state government, reach out and say, I'm happy to test something for you if you're updating your website or developing a new application.  That would be helpful to the agency.  It would save them money because that can get costly.  Then just get involved.  So we're in session right now.  Actually session is ending, I believe, next week.  The last day of session is coming up soon.  Provide public comment.  We've had testimony over the last few months.  We do have a bill that's moving through that talks about website accessibility.  They've had several public hearings.  Show up and talk about how it's important to you, how you need the state to support people with disabilities.  Show up.  It is open to the public, to private sector, to government agencies.  If you want to go to one of those, get more information, and you can attend, they're here in Austin.  I have a digital accessibility mailing list.  You're free to sign up for that where I push out that information I mentioned like free webinars or research that I do or updates legislatively.  That will go out.  I also cross post for the governor's committee.  On the federal site, I'll cross post for them, too.  So these are ways that you can get involved and support government and help us do the best job that we can do.  So you're free to contact me if you have any questions or want to learn more about the program or want to sign up for my mailing list.  If you're a state of Texas employee, you want to learn about our learning management system to get digital accessibility training, if you're a state agency on the call and you're not participating in our web scanning services, just e‑mail me.  My e‑mail address is statewideaccessibility@dir.texas.gov.  You will be able to contact me or Juliana working on my team as well.  We are both happy to help you.  I can take any questions if there's ‑‑ if that's allowed with you guys.  
>>:  All right.  Thank you very much.  I want to thank you for giving us all of this information and sharing it with us.  We do have a few questions in the Q and A box.  I wanted to go ahead and ask you those.  The first question is in regards to the local government.  I know that you do provide support for the local governments and making their websites and programs accessible.  So we have some questions about posting the guidelines and resources that can be followed, just rules for federal and state requirements.  
>>:  If this is a local government, you can contact me at the e‑mail above or you're also welcome to join my monthly coffee chats.  I do have local government in there, junior colleges, city, county, so we're happy to support you in that monthly meet‑up as well.  We have a lot of good information and we've been focusing heavily on the Title II rule change.  Reach out to me.  I'm happy to help.  
>>:  Do you post any documents online, like FAQs or anything like that?  
>>:  It depends.  Those types of more detailed support materials are in my collaboration group, so really trying to keep it tight within the employee group.  As far as public, it's more for the public, so things like this that they can attend, I did cross post this event or any ‑‑ like I said, legislative updates that might impact the public.  So yeah, just ‑‑ if you want to reach out to me so I can better understand what your agency does or what level of government you're in or if you're in Texas and I can better tailor that for you if you reach out to me and clarify what you need.  
>>:  All right.  Somebody asked ‑‑ wanting to share about the TTAP conference, and I shared that in the answer, so if people would like to have that information, they can click on the link to get information from that.  Another question, if a vendor provides a product that doesn't have a problem with accessibility issues, they contract without that information, is that being considered?  
>>:  Yeah.  So that is an issue.  DIR does have a vendor ‑‑ I think it's a vendor progress report or something, so we do keep track if there are complaints against our vendors because we're managing those big technology contracts.  Agencies can always reach out to DIR.  We do have customer service representatives that work with the agencies and the vendor.  So we can be that liaison if there is a big issue.  This is why, again, I talked about that procurement life cycle.  It's important to have that language in your solicitation.  It ends up in your contract.  We try to make sure it's in all of our master contracts.  That's what you're going to fall back on.  That's when you get your general counsel involved to hold the vendor accountable for those terms and conditions that are in that contract.  
>>:  All right.  Another question I think is in regards to the ‑‑ when something has been approved ‑‑ once a vendor is approved to provide services for the state or a contract because who monitors the compliance?  
>>:  So the agency ‑‑ 
>>:  If something changes on technology or whatever?  
>>:  Sorry.  So the agency is going to monitor the compliance of the contract they're engaged in.  That's going to be left up to the agency.  The agency is responsible for making that final procurement decision.  They do that final vetting of the credibility of the accessibility documentation that's been provided by the vendor.  We also have it written into our rules that agencies can go back to a vendor and ask for new documentation at any time.  So vendors do need to comply with that.  When DIR creates a contract, it's a snapshot in time.  That contract is in force for at least four years.  A customer may purchase off of that contract three years later after it's been executed.  Technology changes at the speed of light.  We want to make sure that we have protections for our customers, that they can go to the vendor and say, I need all new documentation, where is your product at today, let me see.  So the customer agencies do a lot of that enforcement.  DIR does not do any enforcement.  It's kind of the third leg in the stool that's missing right now.  We do have private citizens and DOJ that do that enforcement effort.  If an agency is having a difficult time with a vendor complying with rules, then they can reach out to DIR if it's a DIR contract and we'll try to work with both of them.  
>>:  Is the DOJ the only place where you can apply a grievance or is there another way to solve those?  
>>:  You know, citizens can write to their legislature, governor's office.  We ‑‑ the sky is the limit, honestly.  We can't really control that.  Which is why state agencies need to do their best effort to make sure their products, their websites are accessible.  Citizens can reach out to a number of resources, the news.  Again, that reputational risk is a big issue.  There are ways for citizens to be heard if they're not getting the attention that they need and accommodations they need for accessibility.  
>>:  Okay.  Another question.  Is ‑‑ do you do lunch and learn for local government agencies or is it just for the state of Texas?  
>>:  No.  I do that for local as well and I'm also doing it for other states. 
>>:  Okay.  So where's that information at?  
>>:  Again, you can e‑mail me.  I will say, customer experience is really important to me, to my boss, to my whole division.  It's super easy to throw information out on a website and that's what they're for.  But I like to provide kind of that white glove service to my customers and citizens.  I'd rather have that conversation so I can understand what your needs are, what you're dealing with.  Sometimes we can get confused and so it helps me to really listen and then I can kind of guide that agency or that employee in the right direction after we've had a good conversation.  
>>:  Great.  Thank you.  The next question, in regards to nonprofit organizations, do you have a list of solutions that they can use to make their ‑‑ make them digitally accessible?  Have that's a tricky one.  I don't believe nonprofits are allowed to buy off of the DIR contracts.  They can certainly reach out to me and I can provide them guidance on best practices.  That is kind of a gray area as far as them being eligible by state statute to use our government services.  I am happy to give them some time.  Again, they can e‑mail me, we can talk through e‑mail, or I have a link in my signature block where I allow folks to just have access to my calendar and I keep my calendar up‑to‑date to the minute every day.  So I allow people to schedule time with me for a quick 15‑minute chat, if necessary.  
>>:  Okay.  Someone was asking where can they get access to academic courses.  
>>:  The academy courses, yes.  So if they're talking about our learning management system, just e‑mail me at that above e‑mail address.  We'll go ahead and submit a ticket to get you registered for those courses. 
>>:  Okay.  And then someone wants more information about the tech launches with the governor's committee.  We also help host those every month.  So if you contact our office, you can get more information about this as well. 
>>:  Yeah.  Thank you, Matthew.  
>>:  All right.  I think that's all of the questions that we have.  We'll wait a few minutes and see if we have more questions come in. 
>>:  I did see a question about vendor training.  DIR does offer complementary training for vendors.  So again, they can e‑mail me at that address as well.  We can get them signed up.  It's specific to digital accessibility and specific to doing procurements and it's four courses.  
>>:  Perfect.  Then we had another question in regards to the WCAG. 
>>:  Uh‑huh. 
>>:  We have different versions.  The most current is 2.2.  
>>:  Uh‑huh. 
>>:  We're required to follow 2.1 and below, is that correct, so why is that?  
>>:  2.1 AA is the new baseline.  So you cannot go below.  That's the threshold.  However, the federal government does allow agencies, local government to adopt a higher standard.  We do have 2.2.  We also have 3.0 that's being drafted right now.  You're welcome to have that higher standard.  I know our Texas Workforce Commission and health and human sources, because they work so closely with people with disabilities, they tend to have that higher standard.  Vendors are alerted to that when they're going through DIRs procurement processes for our technology services.  I do let them know, this is the baseline standard, but be prepared to perform at the higher standard because our customers have that discretion.  
>>:  All right.  Thank you.  I feel like that's important because technology is changing all of the time and it may be accessible today and then there are changes later because technology gets better.  People need to be aware of the higher levels.  That may be something new for them to do instead of just following the baseline.  We do have another question now. 
>>:  Okay. 
>>:  You mentioned readability score, so ‑‑ 
>>:  Yes.  
>>:  ‑‑ if ‑‑ say there's two products and they have different scores.  Does that mean that you would pick the one with the best score or how does that work?  
>>:  So it's interesting with accessibility.  We can't score it like we do a security scoring like for Tex ramp.  When talking about people with disabilities, we're talking about a broad spectrum and varying degrees and human beings.  We're all different.  We all have different needs and we all don't have just one disability.  We may have cooccurring.  So if you're buying a product, it's up to the agency, again, that risk assessment, to know that audience.  If you know you have a lot of screen reading users, make sure that those parts work with a screen reader or if you're going to be doing a lot of presentations like this presentation today, you want to make sure it has closed captioning or works with a CART service because you want to make sure that your information is available to people that are hard of hearing or deaf.  So it depends on what the business need is at that agency and knowing who their audience is, who their citizens are that are using their website or using their product and then they make that individualized assessment when they're looking to buy a new product or service.  
>>:  All right.  Thank you for clarifying that.  I really enjoying learning about that.  We're out of time.  
>>:  My pleasure.  Thank you so much for having me today.  I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your week.  
>>:  Thanks.  You, too, bye‑bye.  
>>:  Bye.  
(Recording stopped.)