But throw away those negative numbers, pick one individual, and a story about someone determined to live a normal life is found. Add the benefit of technology, what happens when a person with disabilities is given a chance to use his talents can be seen.
Take Dimitri Kanevsky. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, and deaf since the age of three, Kanevsky has come far since growing up disabled in the former Soviet Union. Today, he's a member of the research staff in the speech recognition group of the Human Language Technologies Department at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, based in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. Kanevsky holds a doctorate in applied mathematics as well as 23 patents and has another 60 patent applications pending.
Working for IBM, he developed the world's first speech recognition system for the Russian language. Kanevsky also developed a Web-based stenographic captioning system and is working on IBM's NetScribe system, which replaces stenographers with automated speech recognition software that can be housed in a local server or a remote location via the Internet. This could be very useful for real-time transcription of college lectures, legislative debates or city council meetings. Kanevsky never hears the words his technology converts from sound into text. He must use the assistive technology he produces.
Kanevsky's work in the field of speech recognition could help boost employment and graduation rates for the disabled population. The solutions also could prove a boon to e-government and distance learning, where technology already has triggered major changes in how the public sector interacts with citizens and students. With the right kind of assistive technology tools and standards, e-government and distance learning could deliver new opportunities to citizens with disabilities.
But making that happen is proving difficult, according to disability experts. "The significance of e-government has not been addressed in a systematic way by public policy-makers in the United States, particularly in relation to Americans with disabilities," said Martin Gould, research specialist for the National Council on Disability, in a speech delivered at Michigan State University in October 2001.
He continued to say that Internet access by people with disabilities is half that of people without disabilities, while the use of technology to help educate the disabled has been hampered by poorly equipped schools and lack of training among special education teachers.
Meanwhile, e-government is taking off but threatens to leave people with disabilities behind, according to Gould. While the number of e-government initiatives at the federal and state level continues to expand, access for the disabled is moving at a snail's pace. A review of federal and state Web sites found that only 27 percent had some form of disability access, such as TTY or TTD numbers, Section 508 or World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliance, or passed testing by "Bobby" software designed to expose accessibility problems. The survey, conducted by Brown University in September 2001, found a tremendous variation in the percentage of states with accessible sites. They ranged from Maine with an accessibility rate of 60 percent down to Idaho, which was only 3 percent accessible.
No National Policy
Part of the reason accessibility ranges so widely among federal, state and local government Web sites is the country's lack of national IT accessibility policy. Instead, there are a number of laws that mandate accessibility in certain contexts.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 requires government to furnish aids and services to the disabled where necessary, unless doing so would result in either a fundamental alteration of the program or an undue burden. In 1996, the Department of Justice required state and local governments (and the business sector) to provide an effective means of communication regarding programs, goods and services through the Internet.
While these statutes bolstered accessibility requirements involving electronics and information technology, they haven't eliminated the problem. ADA complaints continued to be filed, according to a report on IT accessibility laws and policies by Cynthia Waddell, executive director of the International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI) and Mark Urban, chairman of the ICDRI Board of Directors and Advisory Board.
Waddell, who is also a former disability access coordinator for the city of San Jose, Calif., said interest in accessibility got a boost when the Rehabilitation Act of 1998 was passed with Section 508, which states that when federal agencies develop, procure, maintain or use electronic or information technology, they must ensure it is accessible to people with disabilities.
"Section 508 uses the power of the federal purse to bring about accessibility of products and services," she said. "As state and local governments see the feds buying accessible products, they will want to do so as well."
But Section 508 requirements generally don't extend to recipients of federal funds, nor do they regulate the private sector. States that receive federal funds under the assistive technology Act of 1998, however, are required to comply. Yet, with Assistive Technology grants averaging just $400,000 per state, "the funding [requirement] is a poor incentive for development of extensive policies and procedures," according to the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO).
Some disability advocates would like to see all Section 508 requirements extended to state and local governments, according to Gould. Other government officials think the current crop of laws have launched a full-fledged effort at accessibility at the state and local level. "They have been a catalyst in moving forward," said Deborah Buck, access program manager for New York's Office for Technology (OFT).
NASCIO agreed in its Information Technology Accessibility Report. While calling the applicability of Section 508 to state government somewhat murky, "ADA requires all state and local government to develop and maintain accessible Web sites just as they are required to build accessible features." In addition, states have adopted their own laws, policies or executive orders that address IT accessibility.
Comparing Standards
Some states also have adopted standards in reference to a specific area of information access, according to NASCIO. Setting standards that incorporate access into Web design is a crucial first step toward broad-based e-government accessibility, Waddell said. "You need to determine technical standards to code Web sites," she said.
For the most part, states and local governments have been implementing the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to satisfy accessible Web design requirements. But these guidelines haven't delivered uniformity in Web design across state lines. Waddell likens the situation to the early days of desktop publishing when everybody was taking a crack at designing online publications. Some of it was good, but more often, the results were bad. That's what happens when standards and guidelines are inconsistent.
Another problem states face is that the W3C guidelines differ from Section 508 accessibility standards. Jim Thatcher, an assistive technology consultant who has studied the issue closely, said there are some fairly significant differences between the two. Thatcher pointed out that states using W3C as their standards could run into a conflict when they apply for funds under the Assistive Technology Act, which requires states to use Section 508 as the standard.
At the national level, the lack of uniformity "leaves those responsible for procurement in the precarious position of having no benchmark to use in judging if a product is accessible or not," reported NASCIO. "The lack of uniform access standards at the state level also leaves the information industry without guidance for product development."
Better Access Through Better Training
Despite the confusion over uniform state standards for accessible Web sites, there's a lot state and local governments can do on their own to ensure citizens with disabilities have access to both technology and e-government. "Most of the problems come down to a lack of understanding," explained Waddell. "You need to identify Web access policies and determine standards and then bring on the support in order to carry it out."
Waddell also urged states to carry out a quality review of what's been done to date. "Whenever I'm asked to validate whether a government Web site is accessible, I have found that even with the best efforts, there's room for improvement."
One state that decided to review and upgrade its Web access policy is New York, which drafted its first in 1999. "We're revising our policy," explained the OFT's Buck. "We need more clarity and guidance." Part of that effort will include an in-depth analysis of W3C guidelines and Section 508 standards.
Beyond that, Buck is spearheading efforts to help individual agencies implement the state's Web access policies, in spite of competing priorities, such as cyber-security. One way to do that is with training. New York's OFT offers courses through its IT Academy to current and future state Web designers. The courses range from basic to advanced. The OFT also reviews Web design work by having disabled staff check for consistency and overall usability.
Sometimes Buck finds herself fighting a lonely battle. She is an office of just one working to uphold standards and policies that ultimately affect nearly 3 million New York residents with disabilities, plus the many state workers who have to use computers and the Internet for their jobs. Since last year's terrorist attacks on New York City, priorities have been re-evaluated, and keeping a focus on accessibility standards can be a struggle at times.
"But we aren't ignoring the issues," she maintained. "E-government has been a huge catalyst to making state technology more accessible." And she added that accessibility standards benefit everyone, not just the disabled. For example, the growing interest in wireless solutions has led many organizations to create Web sites that can be navigated using the keypad on a cell phone. Without accessibility design standards, Web designers would have had a much more difficult time migrating graphics-rich Web pages to handheld devices.
The goal remains the same. "No person should be denied the opportunity to access information technology and transfer its potential into viable, life-fulfilling endeavors," explained the National Council on Disability's Gould. With more consistent policies and standards in government, people with disabilities can reap the benefits of IT on a consistent basis. Perhaps the end-result will be more people like Dimitri Kanevsky.
