IAAF 2023: The Accessibility-Powered Future of Work

Andrea O'Neal

Good afternoon. I know this is the last panel before happy hour, holiday travel, and all the other things, so I appreciate you sticking with us. It’s going to be a great discussion.

As Andrew mentioned, I’m Andrea O’Neal, Administrator Carnahan’s Senior Advisor for Equity. You heard from our Deputy Administrator earlier today. We’re so excited about the work GSA is doing, particularly in partnership with the rest of the government, to learn more about how we can, as Andrew said, embed the principles of DEIA into the function of government and make sure it’s sticky.

Administrator Carnahan likes to joke that I’m both a person and a policy vertical at the agency. I’ve committed to glitter bombing DEIA across government with her. In that sense, when we think about what it means, it’s not just good policy, but how policy gets implemented. The implementation of that policy, and the care and duration of that policy in a holistic manner, is critical at this time, especially as we’re trying to address all the challenges that communities are facing across the country.

I’m proud to work in an administration that has a specific focus on human-centered design, the impact of accessibility, and the experience for people with disabilities. It’s important to ensure the presence of people with disabilities in critical areas of government.

Katie talked about the "A" being the foundation of our DEIA work. Oftentimes, when I talk to folks across government and employee groups, they feel like the "A" maybe stands for "absent." What we are trying to do— and what excites me about this panel in particular— is to bring the built environment and digital government together.

This is a discussion, especially for those of you thinking about workforce policy, workplace experience, or even real property decision-making. Maybe you’re in your CIO’s office. If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it’s that the technology landscape is a fast-moving train headed to the future. It’s the government’s role to make sure everyone is on it.

With that, I’m going to introduce our esteemed panel, starting with Jennifer Croft. She is a Diversity Program Manager in the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility at the Office of Personnel Management. In her position, her role is to advise OPM and federal agency leaders on the implementation of Executive Order 14035, which addresses DEIA in the Federal Government. She recommends concrete strategies and best practices to recruit, hire, include, develop, retain, engage, and motivate diverse, results-oriented, high-performing workforces.

Anupa — sorry, apologies.

Anupa Iyer Geevarghese

Iyer Geevarghese

Andrea O'Neal

Iyer Geevarghese, thank you, Anupa. My apologies.

Friends from the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the Department of Labor, I see some of your friends dancing from the stands over there, so thank you. Hi, Jonathan. ODEP, you know, you’re like a rock star in this room.

Thank you, Anupa. As Chief of Staff at ODEP, Anupa is closely working with the Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Labor and leaders to identify and implement strategies for increasing the number and quality of employment opportunities for people with disabilities. In doing so, she draws on years of legal experience in both the public and nonprofit sectors, coming from the Department of Labor, the Department of Defense as a senior policy advisor for DEIA, and also work in the EEOC.

Chuck Hardy is a Chief Architect— very cool title— Chief Architect for the General Services Administration. He’s a licensed architect, workforce workplace strategist, and certified construction manager. Mr. Hardy’s career with GSA spans more than 31 years, beginning in the Great Lakes region. He’s spent time in multiple positions, including now in the central office. He advises many of you. Raise your hands if you’ve been to GSA’s building anytime to see our Workplace Innovation Lab. We’re doing some really interesting work, and I invite all of you to come, you know, through your respective representatives in federal agencies. GSA is thinking about space and design in really interesting and important ways. Thanks to Chuck for leading this work.

And finally, Natasha Jamal— she’s the Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility at the U.S. Digital Service, which is a component of OMB at the White House. Natasha joined in November of 2020. In November 2022, she co-created the inaugural DEIA USDS Council, comprised of 14 individuals across five communities of practice. She devises strategies that integrate DEIA principles into aspects of USDS culture and service delivery for the support of the rest of the government.

So, we’re in for a transformational conversation today. First, we’ll talk about the broader landscape in workforce policy, particularly the participation of people with disabilities in the labor force. Then, we’ll talk about space and place design. So, you’re in for a treat, and thank you for sticking with us for the next hour.

If you can, give us the 30,000-foot view of what folks who are trying to participate fairly in the labor market may be experiencing right now. When we think about the long arc of where we’ve been, and I know we’re celebrating some landmark anniversaries this year, are things different? Are they better? What are you seeing in terms of labor statistics and workforce participation?

Anupa Iyer Geevarghese

Sure. Thanks for asking.

So, the truth is, when we think about the moment that we're in now, it is positive, right? We have made huge strides in advancing employment for people with disabilities. This year, we are obviously celebrating the landmark 50th anniversary of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which was the first civil rights law to advance access and equity for people with disabilities. And that's actually why our theme for this year's National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which we just passed, was Advancing Access and Equity.

So, I'm gonna draw a little bit, what the data tells us about the employment of people with disabilities in this moment. As we think about the future of work and as our economy continues to recover, people with disabilities have entered or re-entered the labor force in greater numbers than pre-pandemic.

Looking back at the start, from February 2020 to April 2020, following the onset of pandemic restrictions, the employment-to-population ratio for disabled people ages 16 and over declined from 19.1% to 16.1%. Now, this ratio fully recovered in August of 2021 to 19.2%. Great. That's great news. But even better, it has continued to increase and remain above pre-pandemic levels.

In fact, in August of 2023, the employment-to-population ratio for people with disabilities was 23%, the highest on record since 2008. That's great, and we should be celebrating. At the same time, when you compare the employment-to-population ratio for people with disabilities to people without disabilities, an unacceptable gap remains. So, in August, that number was 23% for people with disabilities, while for people without disabilities, it was 65.9%. So, we have work to do.

As we think about our economy recovering and our job market recovering, and when our nation is facing a labor shortage of more than 9.6 million job openings, we at ODEP and the Department of Labor know that people with disabilities can be part of the solution. The number of people with disabilities is larger than most people realize. Data released in 2022 showed that 22 million working-age people have disabilities. That's 1 in 9 people. And we know this number continues to increase, especially in light of the pandemic as a mass disabling event.

So, with all of this data, we know there is a workforce of people with disabilities, and ensuring and advancing accessibility brings them to the table. So, that's sort of my big-picture employment landscape of where we are now. It's positive, but we can still do better.

Andrea O'Neal

Thanks, Jen, to bring you in the conversation.

So if, Anupa and her team is thinking about the American public, you're kind of the long arm of the law when it comes to employment, policy And, especially not in the federal, just not the federal government. But we've had private sector kind of watching OPM and seeing what, we're doing in federal government to set the standard and, you know, bringing the title back, for the panel, this is, you know, Accessibility Beyond Compliance.

So what are you seeing as promising practices, or what has OPM been thinking about to try to bridge those gaps that Anupa laid out?

Jennifer Croft

Thank you.

I am very excited about all of the work that's been going on at OPM, at ODEP, at the EEOC, and at all of our individual agencies. I think especially since the onset of Executive Order 14035, we have seen not just the elevation of the "A." This is a game changer for sure.

But we also have now this whole-of-government effort, this whole-of-agency idea. Just in the room before, we were nerding out hard. We were talking about the multiverse—that is, the Marvel Cinematic Universe—and how we could be.

Also, we didn't talk about this, but this is what was in my mind: bringing together all of the different sections—the reasonable accommodations folks over here, the 508 folks over here, the disability program managers there. Where are the SPPCs (Selective Placement Coordinators)? They're nowhere to be found. We're really, really struggling through because we're in such silos.

But if we really were to break those silos down, bring us all together, we really could model, I think government-wide, a whole new set of tools, provide learning opportunities like this conference, like the Perspectives Conference. For those of you from the old days, remember how wonderful it was? We would sit in a room just like this with big round tables, eat great food, and hear from wonderful speakers. I really wish we had that again, and I hope to be able to look forward to that.

Within federal agencies, we're seeing how all of those components are also starting to come together and using those different tools that are coming out from our offices to proactively assess their environment—not just wait for the complaints to hit the door, but actually delve deeper into the known barriers for people with disabilities, both those that are currently within the agencies as employees as well as future employees, our job seekers with disabilities.

So, I'm really excited about this whole-of-government approach, this whole-of-agency approach. I'm going to continue to push this collectivism, and I think that together, our multiverse can make it happen.

Andrea O'Neal

Awesome.

So, Doctor Underwood at ODEIA likes to call us, the DIA Avengers.

So, we'll bring that forward.

And just before we talk a little bit more and delve in, thank you for those, those, contextual remarks, I wanted to just, give Chuck and Natasha a chance to introduce their work, and what you all are doing and how it relates to kind of, this broader landscape of the things we're trying to solve for.

So, Natasha, will you talk about digital government?

Natasha Jamal

Yeah, absolutely.

So, Natasha Jamal, the Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility at the U.S. Digital Service. And just because I realize that a lot of people might not know what that is, we started as a group of ten people that were focused on healthcare.gov and working on the challenges there.

For a long time, we thought we were just going to be a group of ten people. Almost ten years later, we're a group of over 200 people, working on how to make government better. If you think about how you interact with your government through any kind of website, through any kind of digital experience—how do you make that better? Through technology and design?

And a lot of how you make that better is by making it more accessible. So, a lot of what my work is, is to build our infrastructure for that. That means how do we actually hire people? How do we support people once they are there?

And then most recently, and I'm really excited to have some of my colleagues in the room that are focused on accessible delivery in government services. So thinking about how do we actually test with people who have disabilities early and often in the process?

Really bringing together all of those communities and all of those practices and saying that compliance is super important, but compliance doesn't guarantee accessibility. How do we actually bring people in who are using a service to test for those things and to see if that actually works for them?

So, I am really, really honored to be here and to share a little bit about what we've learned. And also, because this can often be a lonely space—we talked about some of the silos here—some of us are working on this sort of alone, I invite you to partner with us, to share some of these ideas, and to create more of a community of practice.

Andrea O'Neal

Thank you. And Chuck you're kind of the king of federal partnerships, right now across the federal real estate footprint and the built environment itself.

So you talk but what we've learned in the last few years, you know, just in space, in place design, especially after the pandemic and remote work and, making sure that, I think you like to say people are the new amenity, right?

So as, folks come into the office, how are those spaces flexible, accessible, and inclusive for everybody?

Chuck Hardy

Yeah. Thanks.

Glad to be here. And thanks for staying. This is going to be worth your time, I hope. It is one of those things: everything, everywhere, all at once. We're getting hit with a lot of different things.

Space used to be, we designed it, and as an architect, you come in and use it. And I designed it, so it must be right. But that's just not real. That's just not reality.

We did an industry survey work with Dodge reports just to get us. It was the first of its kind in the industry, surprisingly, to find out how the industry is doing in DEIA. And we all knew it wasn't doing great. The survey kind of highlighted that, but it also sent the message as a demand driver to the industry to start looking at some of that change.

As we look to create space, even in these times of post-COVID and people coming up, they're looking to architecture to say, "Tell me what to do. Solve my problem." The answer is really a co-creation. It's working and listening that is going to get us where we need to be. Because I can solve and I can design space that works for me, but that's not what I'm supposed to be doing.

Getting people to actually understand that—how do we make our buildings accessible? To borrow a term from what technology strives for—and I think buildings are there now too—is both being agile and flexible. We want to be able to adapt and change as needed.

And interoperable. People wouldn't think interoperable is a thing in buildings. It is technology, but we want our buildings to interact and be integrated.

As we talked about before, it's not just space. Now we're talking about HR policy, technology capabilities and availability, and the personnel and training—all those things. All three have to come together, and space just happens.

We don't build buildings because buildings are cool, and that's our job kind of thing. We're building buildings for people and mission and things we do. The only way you're going to build something that actually builds on the need is by listening to people, finding out what problems you're trying to solve, and working with them to do that.

Those kinds of conversations get there. We've got a challenge.gov out to universities right now, asking students, "What do you see the future? And what is that going to be in a universal design logic?" That's something you can ask somebody inside now, or someone that's been doing it for 20 years or ten years—they're going to kind of build on what they know. But coming from the students with blue-sky planning, telling us what universal design means to them is a whole different logic.

I was at a conference the other week, and we were in a hackathon for space. The question was asked—they give you a persona, and they wanted you to solve a problem. My persona, along with the partner I was with at the table, was a 27-year-old hotel receptionist in a wheelchair who was an activist for health and wellness, government, and accessibility. We had to look out 20 years to figure out what's the world at that time.

But we're looking at it from a seven-year-old's eyes of saying, "What's my world going to be when I'm 27?" That's a whole different perspective that we in government look at. Typically, and I talked to the moderator afterward, and she goes, "We started talking ten years. When you talk ten years, everybody's talking about what they're doing now and just pushing the stuff around. When you talk 20 years, people start to think differently.

So if you think like right now, that's 2043 for us in this room. What's it going to look like? Our job in buildings and the infrastructure that we put up is starting to position it in a way where it can be flexible and agile, to be able to be adaptable in 2043, to be serving the needs as well as they are today in a much more uniform and accessible way for everyone.

So, that's kind of where we're at.

Andrea O'Neal

So, the future is now, is what you're saying. And getting back to the future of work, it's a fraught phrase because, right, the future of work is now. When we think about the labor force, the economies of the future, the policy that's going to undergird all of those things, you all are working in that real time, right? You're tracking it through labor. You're developing policy for the workforce.

So, back to Jen and Anupa. Maybe, Jen, I'll start with you. There's this new focus—OMB put a memo out last year, helping agencies think about things like organizational health and work environment. How does accessibility play into that?

What are the ways that you're helping to guide federal agencies to ensure DEIA and accessibility, in particular, are part of these organizational health and effectiveness measurements? As all of you have mentioned in different ways, we're not meeting the mission of government if we're not serving all the folks in the communities. But that also means that we've got to have all the folks reflected from those communities in government, and we need to be able to attract them, retain them, and make sure that they have an equitable workplace experience.

So, just kind of wax poetic for us on that a little bit.

Jennifer Croft

Thank you.

I'd be happy to.

The government-wide strategic plan on DEIA that followed the executive order release speaks about the need for designing and delivering services with a constant focus on the lived experiences of the people that we serve in government. Boy, that doesn't sound a lot like Section 508 to me, because we've been doing that for all of these years. We've been giving disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others.

So we're way ahead of this game. We're in the future already, 508 folks. But so this is good. We know that the lived experiences of disabled people are not uniform. We all are very, very different.

So, we have to have a lot of different kinds of use cases, as you say, thinking about people with blindness, deafness, for example, wheelchairs. And then thinking ahead to mitigate all of those possible inequities. And that's what we've been doing here in 508, all day, every day.

508 means making sure that that ICT, the Information Communication Technology, is accessible from the get-go, not waiting for somebody to ask for that accommodation, but being proactive about that. And one of the good things about the COVID-19 pandemic—I know it's very hard to find good things, but one is people-centered design. That's been a theme that's been running throughout this conference.

This conference, I did listen to some of the conference's earlier presenters, and I was very, very impressed about how we were thinking about the fact that people-centered means, for example, thinking about, are all employees able to participate in the kinds of relationships that lead to these higher levels of engagement? More effective work teams. We're not leaving anybody out of this.

How do employees with disabilities remain informed, share knowledge, stay connected, and ensure that work assignments are done equitably? I came into the federal government as a sign language interpreter. I'd been a 508 coordinator. I've done a reasonable accommodation policy. I've done all of the different jobs related to disability employment.

And so, this is why I talk about Whole of Government, Whole of Agency, over and over again. And the importance of that people-centered focus. So, I think the 508 community is well ahead. And we can continue to share this kind of perspective with other parts of government.

Andrea O'Neal

Thank you Anupa, would you like to build on that or what are you seeing from the ODEP side?

Anupa Iyer Geevarghese

Sure.

I mean, I think, you know, the reality is our workforce has changed permanently post-pandemic. But there are pros that have come out of this, right? The pandemic asked us all to shift rapidly into remote or hybrid work arrangements. And while that shift was complicated, it did present options and opportunities for people with disabilities to work in their chosen field, in their chosen environments, without necessarily having to deal with inaccessible commutes, complex office environments, and other barriers.

And what the data shows in this increase of the number of people with disabilities in the employment-to-population ratio is that these hybrid work environments, these new changes in how and where we work, have really led to this increase of people with disabilities in the labor market.

And so, I think, you know, as the federal government, as we are planning and looking towards the future, right, these models have really helped inform where we go and how we approach it. You know, in this new work environment, we have to be flexible. We have to adapt, and we really need to think critically about what is going to ensure the success of all our workers, right?

And think about, you know, accommodations. But looking at it from a universal design perspective, you know, having, like Jennifer was saying, you worked in a number of different roles, like, I worked in a number of different roles. I, you know, at one point reviewed almost every federal agency’s reasonable accommodation policy. And sometimes it can be so prescriptive.

But as we evolve, and if we want to retain and advance workers with disabilities, we have to be flexible and look at it from a DEIA lens.

Andrea O'Neal

Yeah.

And I'm excited about this panel.

And I'm going to call Sachin [Pavithran] out because I see he's still there.

Sachin, I remember we had a

conversation, maybe a year ago

when you were talking about physical accessibility.

I want to get more

into the digital accessibility space.

I want the two communities to start talking more together.

So this is kind of, a stake in the ground in that

we've got your Chief Architect talking to

The U.S. Digital Service.

And one of the things I think is cool about this conversation

is because it's just what you said, we can have prescriptive policy,

we can work in our silos, but operationalizing this

and making an implementation,

making implementation work for the people

on the ground, in communities or in office buildings

is, this is, this is where the

proverbial sashes get made, right?

And everyone needs to be equally at the table.

Natasha, you've been doing a lot

of great work.

And, and with accessible, accessibility forward

work, 508,

not just 508 compliant, but thinking about government systems,

and the way

people use technology.

Any promising practices

or things that you've learned over the last year?

Especially as we're kind of resetting the table

from the pandemic and where digital government is going.

Natasha Jamal

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think a lot of it is about, you know, we can have the best technology, we can have the fanciest things, but if people, if they don't work for people, they're not that great, right? So how do we actually make them work for people?

From my lens, I think about this on two sides. So, within U.S. Digital Service, how do we create that culture to actually make accessibility important? And we use the word culture a lot, so I'll explain what I mean by culture.

Culture is things like the messaging our leadership team sends to say that this is important, that a service is not completed until it is accessible, and we are not going to call this done until we have actually reached a certain level of accessibility. Accessibility is never done, right? Like we know that. But we know that we need to be able to test. We need to understand that this actually works for the people that are going to be using it.

So how do we actually equip our teams? There are also some very simple things that show up in our culture. How do we make decisions on the types of projects that we're actually going to take on? How do we think about scoping a project from the beginning? Simple things like timelines. Are you building in time to test with people?

Sometimes we think that testing is at the very end. We'll roll out something, and then right before it's going to launch, we're going to, you know, test it with a few people, and then it's super rushed. We didn't find all the people, and then we can't fix it anyway because it was too hard or it was too far off. And we'll just catch it in the 2.0 version, right? We've all been there. We've all seen that happen.

Those are some of the things we're trying to avoid. So, when we say we're testing with people, we're doing that. And my accessibility practitioners always tell me we're always moving accessibility further left. We're always thinking about how we do that from where we select projects. We're testing multiple times. Any time we roll out a new feature.

And I'll actually give you an example. One of our team members, they were testing with someone that was using a screen reader. And the heading that came up, we see the heading "an official government website," right? This is an official government website. And the person using the screen reader, what they were hearing was "unofficial government website." So instead of official, they were hearing unofficial.

And so, their whole experience with that website was different. They were like, oh, well, how do I get to the official one so that I can get my benefits? And so, I think, like, when I heard that, I was like, wow. And so, like, these are the types of things you might miss if you're not actually testing with a real person, right?

So, I think that is just like one example of why that piece is so important.

Andrea O'Neal

Yeah, that's really powerful. And, you know, maybe a nod back to OPM. Not for a question, but just an observation. As I've been in this role, making sure that folks that are testing are not just your friendly neighborhood, you know, disabled person that you find. That it's a, "Hey, can you test this website for me?" No, we need people that are in those positions, getting compensated for their time, have the expertise in the job, and are not just kind of dual-hatted and other duties as assigned because they happen to be present.

So anyway, soap box away. But I want to make sure that was a point made. And thank you. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Just, yeah.

There was an earlier conversation today about the rapid change in the digital landscape, accelerated by the pandemic, and how everything is online. How, you know, our apps need to work for everyone. And the speed in which technology is being developed and deployed, especially when we think about the scale of government. GSA doesn't do anything small. We do small batches, but there's still millions of people, right?

And so, the idea that we're having these new conversations while, Chuck, to mix metaphors here, while the concrete is still wet, right? We have a chance to really get this right. And you and I have had conversations before about how when LEED emerged, right? And it started from maybe activists and environmentalists talking to government, wanting to adopt standards. GSA, with its bully pulpit, adopted some of those things, socialized it, kicked it back to industry. And now, you know, decades later, it is the gold standard, right? It literally is a gold standard for design and sustainability.

There's some things starting to happen in the architects' community around the importance of experience of people in the space. And not just buildings for building's sake or, you know, the next Frank Lloyd Wright, or whatever, right? But thinking about the need and the reason for building and how technology is integrated. You did some really cool stuff, so I just want to give you the floor to talk about, you know, the Workplace Innovation Lab or how GSA is partnering with other agencies to integrate technology and design.

Chuck Hardy

Sure. Now, great question. And the standard pushback we always get for rolling out, whether it's LEED or a new program as well, is, "It's going to cost us money." And it really doesn't. Good design costs you some thinking power and some time, but it doesn't necessarily cost you money.

If you know what your constraints are and you start to think through a problem, you come up with some great solutions. The innovation lab that we've got on the second floor of our building at our headquarters building was just that. We reached out to some furniture vendors, some technologists, to say, "Here's a floor we're not going to do anything with. Just show us your best game here. How do you look toward the future and what can you offer us?"

And they came in with five different solutions all mashed up together, doing really cool stuff. Had we put too many constraints on that conversation, we wouldn't have gotten what we've gotten. As we move into the future, choice is really the answer. We've proven long ago that this one-size-fits-all is not the right solution.

And even when you start talking about accessibility, I've got a brother who has spina bifida. Growing up, as siblings like to do, he always wanted to keep up with us and do what we wanted to do. And he kind of picked and chose which ones he needed help on and which ones he didn't. And they weren't the ones that I would have picked or chosen that he would need help on or done.

But that falls into the workplace too. So, we can't just say, "Okay, here's how we're going to address this. Let's do this across the board." We have to have the multiple perspectives and viewpoints to say, "What kind of, and choice isn't anything you want. And it's not Henry Ford's 'any color you want, as long as it's black.'" It's a curated choice somewhere in between that says, "Here's a couple of options that you can start to feel in control of your environment."

That goes for technology, but it's enabled by the space they're in. And so, through the Workplace Innovation Lab, where we've given people choice to see, we're watching, we're asking for feedback. "Why did you sit there? What did you like about that?" One of the, we've got these soundproof phone booths, kind of things that are all the rage now. The first comment was, "There's no access to this because there's no ramp."

The manufacturers went back and started to address that. And so, we're teaching industry by that kind of feedback to show this is what's going on. Some of the screens, they just weren't accessible. And again, we're giving that feedback back to industry to correct. So, it's going to be a partnership between us, between industry, and between the end user. But most importantly, the end users have to have a voice at the table. So, we're solving the right problems. So, in a way, it's kind of.

Andrea O'Neal

Any, I just want to stay on kind of what Chuck said. And any responses from the panel, especially as we think about not just work productivity, right? Because, yes, that’s some of the measurement. But it's also, this is about well-being and keeping people in the labor market and making sure that they've got upward mobility and things that are related to all of the things that we talk about when we talk about participation in American life.

So, any thoughts on that? Either from, you know, kind of this idea that public participation is an equity issue? How we're in, not just conversation, but collaboration with communities as part of design and that we're solving the problems that matter. We're not talking to each other in the echo chamber of government, but we're getting to the root cause of why people are continuing to experience inequity on the ground.

I mean, any thoughts there?

Chuck Hardy

I'll jump in first. And the built environments kind of easy is we create a lot of problems that we put in place of building, and we leave. And the community has to live with those issues as time goes on.

And so, going back, a lot of these are simple fixes. They're water running off into streams. There's not accessible sites. It's when you're designing a project where they put the ramp in the most inane, out of the way place kind of thing. When you're trying to say, okay, how do you get there? And it's challenging because a lot of the people we're dealing with, a lot of conversations are having still, they're not getting the question.

And so when you ask, well, how does the community have access to the site? Oh, it's fine. We've got lights and it's going to be open and people can get out to the park. I'm like, the community, the people that live around here with our buildings closed down, what happens to the area and what can be done, and how can people have access to this?

And you have to say that about seven times and seven different ways for people to finally get it to say, oh yeah, we could do something there. And that's, to me, that's the biggest challenge in community engagement is making sure that the community is listened to.

But we have to, as government, we have to be the advocates as well. The one superpower, speaking of Marvel and all, the one superpower government has is the power to convene disparate parties to come up with some really cool solutions, and we just have to take more advantage of that.

Andrea O'Neal

ODEP is a convener.

So what would you like to say, about either interagency or working with the broader American public?

Anupa Iyer Geevarghese

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think there's a couple of things like my mind is going on like lots of different directions.

Sorry, so it might be scattered.

So, couple things.

Andrea O'Neal

Are you in the multiverse?

Anupa Iyer Geevarghese

The multiverse accessibility thoughts here. So first, you know, when we think about equity issues relating to people with disabilities, there is a digital divide, right? And that's a gap that has to be closed in order for remote hybrid work to be equitable. We have to ensure that there is equal access to robust and reliable broadband networks.

And that was something that early on in the pandemic, we released a brief called The Disability in the Digital Divide Brief that found that people with disabilities continue to have access to internet subscription at home at lower rates than people without disabilities. So that is an equity issue at a macro level that needs to be fixed.

Now, what can federal agencies do? And I think this sort of builds on Chuck's point around planning, right? Is that we need to plan and intentionally plan for digital accessibility. We need to audit those plans. And it goes without saying that people with disabilities need to be part of the process.

And I want to give kind of a preview of a report that ODEP has been looking at. We've actually been reviewing FY 22 MD715 data and the reports that agencies have been submitting in response to the Part J, or the affirmative action plans. And we looked at A-156 reports.

And what was positive, right, was that more than half of the agencies of that 156 actually mentioned programs, policies, or practices related to improving digital accessibility. Which is great, but it was sort of like the multiverse, right? Like everything was everywhere. And there wasn't comprehensiveness in those plans in what agencies are doing.

So as we think about what should we be doing? We should be looking at establishing more of a standardized framework and guidelines for digital accessibility. And that is not just creating that framework, but also ensuring there's sufficient time, funding, resources, people, right? More people doing this work and including people with disabilities in doing this work.

And that is how we can ensure greater equity and really fulfill that mission of the "A" of accessibility in bringing that in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Sorry, that's my soapbox.

Andrea O'Neal

Drop the mic, sister. Yes.

Thank you.

Jennifer Croft

I'd love to follow on because I've had a chance to review that. And it is a very, very exciting report. It's talking about how there are six major pieces within Part J. The six pieces of disability employment they cover include answering questions from the members of the public.

It includes processing applications from people with disabilities and people with targeted disabilities. It also covers processing reasonable accommodation requests, Section 508 compliance, architectural barriers act compliance, and special emphasis programs for people with disabilities and people with targeted disabilities.

And so looking through all of that, are we seeing that that multiverse is actually coming together? I'm not positive. I think that that's really just the very lowest common denominator. The name of this conference is going beyond compliance. Right? That was, that's really what we're trying to do here.

So with the six pieces that I just named, was the bottom of it, that's the bar, the bottom. How do we get to the top? How do we go to real DEIA principles and real equity for people with disabilities? It's got to be doing things like providing consistent funding, centralized funding if possible, for reasonable accommodations, as well as accessibility.

At the minimum, though, ensure that contracts are in place for sign language interpreting, closed captioning, and personal assistant services. We need to communicate better to the entire workforce. How do we resolve complaints related to, it's easy with reasonable accommodations. That's pretty straightforward with the EEO offices.

But what about complaints for 508? That's not always straightforward. There are also not just the complaint levels, but what about just requests for trying to solve issues in the meantime? So there's big holes, I think, that we could fix.

And speaking of fixing the holes, if everybody was a little bit more involved with the training that's already widely available to all of us from GSA, Section 508.com. Thank you very much. That's the training that all of you guys have been putting out in our agencies. That would really, I think, go a long way to being able to level the playing field.

And then lastly, let's not forget about universal design features. So thinking proactively about not just individual requests, but how can we take it from a much higher level and universally approach our future of work. So thank you.

Andrea O'Neal

Yeah. Natasha, you talked about the culture of design, and you're doing some exciting things to shape the norming and forming and storming of teams’ technologists. You know, intrinsically using things through the center of practice, U.S. web design system, right? Agile. Like, what if we had Agile for DEIA? The possibilities are endless.

And one of the things that struck me about the equity work over the last year, especially, is this idea that we're reshaping what expertise looks like. We're codifying that lived experience, community level experience, is a valid form of expertise that needs to be at the table.

In our user communities and our user testing and design communities, and in the technologists themselves. So, can you talk a little bit about some of that work that you're doing?

Natasha Jamal

Absolutely.

And I have two of my accessibility practitioners sitting right at that first table over there, Louise and Meg, if you want to wave. So, basically, at USGS, these were already things that we cared about, right? We cared about accessibility. We cared about making websites and devices accessible.

However, we didn't always have a lot of the things that this group was talking about: the resources, the funding, the direction. This means that, at best, we were inconsistent. And at worst, these things were just non-existent, right? Like uncertain projects. You might go through an entire project and you might check every single box of saying, like this website works without actually knowing who it works for.

So, when we say things have gotten better, the next question that we're really trying to ask is, for whom? And that applies to lots of different communities, and people with disabilities are one of those communities.

So, what we did recently is we’ve actually stood up a team of accessibility practitioners that are focusing more specifically on building capacity across all of our projects to say, if I'm a product manager, if I'm an engineer, if I'm a designer, if I'm a procurement person, how do I advocate for accessibility within my role? I am an expert in this type of technology. I know how to write code. I know how to launch a product or a service. But am I actually thinking about what my timeline needs to look like in order to make that service more accessible? Am I thinking about who I need to test for? Am I thinking about the multiple options that might need to be available for that?

So, really enabling the people who are designing technology because all technology is people-powered, right? So, these principles that we have, how do we actually help our technologists who really care about this? That's why they signed up to work at U.S. Digital Service and not somewhere else. But how do we actually give them ways to think about this and ways to advocate within their role? Because often you have a lot of credibility as an engineer saying, hey, as an engineer, I actually think we need to do this differently. I actually think we need to write this differently, but you may just not know exactly what to do.

So, figuring out who it is you might need to talk to, figuring out what some of the options are. So, upskilling in those ways.

The other thing that we’ve been working on is also just the inclusive research component. So, thinking about if we, you know, need to actually talk to people with disabilities, how do we recruit people? So, it is not just your friendly neighborhood person. How do they get compensated fairly? How do we think about the different types of disabilities as well? And then, when you're moderating those conversations, what is the etiquette that you need to use?

How do we actually—and Louise has been really amazing about this—how do we actually create situations where if someone is doing testing and someone else wants to learn about it, maybe they can actually sit in and watch a live scenario? Because a lot of these things, a lot of times, I think the reason we don’t go to training is because we don’t understand how it applies to our job.

So how do we make this really applicable to the work that we need to do it through these live scenarios, through actually providing people resources, and then providing a supportive learning community for this? We have something called Nitty Gritty at USDS, where we get into the details of how you do something. But really what it is, is it's a supportive community of people saying, hey, I'm working on this problem. Let's work on it together.

Chuck Hardy

I just wanted to share that, just as a tip for what we do on the design side, we've got a good neighbor program in GSA. And that's working with communities to help either provide a catalyst for that community to do the right thing and change in a positive way or to provide some resources and do that. And we do planning and outreach in partnership meetings with them, too. So we're bringing a diverse group into these communities. Sometimes we don't even have a job coming soon. Let's just get together, talk about the master plan for your city, talk about some of the shortcomings, some of the things you want to solve, get together and find the resources.

So, we're bringing in certainly the accessibility side of it and saying, "If you're not thinking about this, let's start talking about it" kind of thing. And so, we're providing that catalyst and getting the right people that then can inform how we're planning our projects, how the cities and communities are planning their master plans for the community. It all starts to work together.

And when you talk about, yeah, if they don't have the resources, we'll work in partnership with other agencies. "Oh, you need some digital help? We got some folks you can talk to." And that's where government starts to become approachable in a community. Instead of just coming in, doing a one-and-done, building a building and leaving kind of thing. So it's worked out pretty well.

Andrea O'Neal

Yeah. That's great. So, as we wrap up, final thoughts, I just go down the line, call to action, final thoughts. We want this to be, you know, obviously a great conversation, but what can folks do who are in the room now, decision makers at their agencies, working across the different verticals that we have represented here? What would you want them to take back to their agency for the work ahead over the next year? So let's just go down the line. Anupa?

Anupa Iyer Geevarghese

All right, well, a couple things.

So first, we've heard a lot about like recruitment and hiring, right?

And one of the things that we've been looking at is inclusive apprenticeships.

And I'd be remiss to not say this, right?

Because next week is National Apprenticeship Week.

And we've been looking at how can digital apprenticeships be a pathway for employment for people with disabilities and within the federal government, right?

How can we utilize Schedule A for hiring people with disabilities into some of these positions?

So that's one. The second thing that I would say is looking back is planning for accessibility and being intentional.

So those are some of my thoughts around what can be your takeaways from this moment.

Jennifer Croft

One of the gifts I'd like to give to this community is about the FEVS DEIA index. So, when I first came on board two years ago, we were tasked with revamping what used to be the new IQ, or the inclusion quotient. But we beefed it up with research and actual base behind each of the questions related to the D, the E, the I, and the A.

So, take the questions related to "A" for accessibility, stratify them out by people with disabilities in your agency and those without disabilities in your agency. And there you have it. The metrics to support your work. If there is a major difference, or even just a tiny two-point difference, there's room for you to improve there.

So, I would really encourage agencies to dive deep, to focus on groups, climate surveys, interviews, and drill down on those root causes of those issues that are experienced differently among diverse groups.

Andrea O'Neal

And that's the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.

Jennifer Croft

Thank you.

Andrea O'Neal

<

And recently just released in terms of the agency should have their data.

Jennifer Croft

The second year-round.

So now we have baseline data plus one year.

And that's really good news to be able to do a comparison.

And we expect that to go forward in the future.

Andrea O'Neal

Yes.

And then you rolled out with MD 715.

You're cooking with gas.

Natasha, how can folks work with your office or how did folks learn about projects that may be going on their agencies right now that they may not know about?

Natasha Jamal

Yeah, definitely. Well, you can reach out to me directly. But you can also go to usds.gov to learn more about what we do. And I think a lot of it is, what I would say is like, don’t do this alone. Right? Find people. Maybe they’re not in your organization. Maybe they’re doing something a little bit differently than you, but find people. If you would like USDS to be some of the people that you find, that’s great. We’re here. We can talk about this in tech. I don’t think it’s that different than how you’re doing in any other part of the government. But find some people, and think about how you’re doing this.

I think the other thing that I would really recommend, beyond just the partnerships and partnering with us or whoever, is to think about the stories that you want to tell. Like, what is different because of the work that we do and how do we personalize some of those stories? Because I think we have a lot of data. And I think sometimes people are kind of theoretically bought in or even, you know, like they say they’re bought in. But what is actually that personal story that you can tell?

We’re all impacted by this. We all have this maybe through our family, maybe through people we know, through other things that we’ve seen, maybe through a story of how someone has experienced a government service. If you want to borrow our story about unofficial versus official government website, why that matters. But what are the stories that you can use to build the case? How do you personalize it to what someone is actually experiencing, whether that’s tech or something else?

Andrea O'Neal

And nothing about us without us, right?

Chuck, final thoughts.

Chuck Hardy

Yeah, mine is pretty simple. It’s just do something and act now and learn from it.

Our administrator has a saying: “demos, not memos.” We need to be starting to do things, try things, iterate and improve on those because that’s going to get people past “costs too much,” “too hard to do,” “can’t do that.” So go do something, and then, again, I’ll give out the same opportunity. If you don’t want to do it, you’ve got a great idea, just email me or call me up. I’ll be happy to push it along because we’re looking for that. We’re looking for innovation. We’re looking for those future problem solvers and current day problem solvers that we need to do.

But it starts with action.

Andrea O'Neal

Yeah. So, you can tap your friendly neighborhood architect. Thank you. This has been a really great conversation. I think it's actionable, it's tactical, and it's inspiring too. I think we're at a really interesting time to be in government. And I hope that the audience feels enriched and is able to perhaps follow up with some emails to their friendly neighborhood government officials about all the things that we've spoken about today. So, thank you so much for your time, your expertise.

Andrew Nielson

Let me just offer my own thanks to our fantastic panel. We'll let you exit the stage and resume, or rejoin the rest of the audience. And please, ask the rest of you to stick with us for just a few more minutes for some closing comments. Shortly, I'll invite some of my colleagues to join me on stage. But while I have the opportunity, and I have the mic, well, first of all, I recognize it's been a long week. We've had such a good time together. I recognize that some of you just want to have a drink and call it a week, and we'll let you get to that as soon as we can. If maybe, if you're like me, you might be wearing pants that maybe fit a little bit better before you gained weight during COVID, and you want to get home and get those pants off and kick your feet up.

But I would like to reflect a little bit on this year's conference, like so many conferences in the past that it's hard to describe how we feel. I feel full. I feel almost overwhelmed with the wonderful exchange. It's been so fantastic to see so many of you in person. I'm sorry for not being able to see everyone that joined us online, that we ran out of space in for in-person attendance. And we'll look forward to expanding that in the future. But so, again, just so, so grateful for all of the wonderful content that we've shared. Wonderful information exchange ranging from some of the really the nuts and bolts, some of the basics for how to make content accessible, and how to make our implementation of Section 508 better. How to make things more accessible to our coworkers and to our fellow Americans. And man, we've had some real TED Talk level presentations here and there. We had some just fantastic panels with our CIOs yesterday, some really heavy hitters in government.

Today, this panel included was just a fantastic way to finish up this conference. And also have to express gratitude, of course, to all of you here in this room and in our virtual room for the work that you're doing to advance accessibility in the digital space and in the physical space and to improve equity and inclusion and making accessibility a core foundational part of that.

Again, I also want to express some gratitude. We won't be able to thank everyone, but please bear with me for just a couple more minutes so that we can acknowledge some of the people who've made this conference possible, and especially those behind the scenes. Of course, FDIC, please, can we give a round of applause to our hosts? This is just such a fantastic. Yes, please, please, all our behind-the-scenes folks. We also have some folks in the corner back there, Ben, Patrick, and Conrad. If you would, I didn't ask you previously. So springing this on you, but please come up to the stage as well. I do, of course, FDIC as one of our co-sponsors and as our host of the facility. What many don't know, they're also, they're footing the bill for a lot of the planning that went into this and the day of, or the days of the event for the planning staff. All it goes into it.

Our other co-sponsors, of course, the US Access Board, The Department of Veterans Affairs, GSA is one of our co-sponsors. Yes, please. Our, excuse me, I'm missing the CIO Council Accessibility Community of Practice. GSA, of course, as a co-sponsor. Our planning committee who helped us develop the agenda and gave us such wonderful input and helped us find and fill out our agenda, and helped us review proposals, etc.

Again, we can't name everyone by name, but here's where I do want to maybe start to give, make a name some people by name. And, Brooke, if you would maybe pick up a microphone and you can kind of cover, you know, some of our FDIC behind the scenes folks that are here on stage. But again, I mentioned, from our GSA team, some of our support staff, Patrick, Ben, and Konrad, if you wave your hand at the end there. They've been a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff. Helping run microphones. Patrick was the one on the other end of the line if you sent an email to IAAF@gsa.gov. Answering some of those support questions. And, but here I'll give it to Brooke to kind of run down the line for, for, for again just our wonderful event support staff.

Sorry. Brooke, before I do that, I also want to acknowledge we've got some folks doing AV, Dave in the back. Jenny, that was over in the Hove. And some of our AV support staff, I didn't even get to meet them officially and get their names. So, thank you to them as well. And Brooke, please.

Brooke Aiken

We are so lucky at FDIC to actually have

an entire team that does event planning, and that is Mona's team.

So Mona, Raz, Bernie and Carla, you guys just hit it out of the park.

Just fantastic.

So thank you.

And Mike and Tim and

Chet and Andrew, I mean, talk about teamwork.

It was, it was a labor of love.

We've been doing this for about nine months, talking every other week and then to weekly,

and then I think we started doing twice, really just texting and saying, get on a call, please.

And, and, this is really a labor of love.

And I'm so glad that you guys enjoyed it.

And, you know, I think our next big event is probably season, right?

Yeah. So hope to see you guys there.

And please let us know your feedback.

We will be sending out a survey.

Any other comments?

Mike?

Michael Horton

Bri Canty used to be in our office.

She took an opportunity, as we all do when they arise, but we would be remiss to not mention Bri Cantyís help.

She helped us start this in January.

And I tried to fill her shoes, but it was really difficult, so.

I want to say, if you're listening, Bri, thank you very much for getting us started.

Thank you. Thank you all.

Andrew Nielson

Well, with that, I'm looking at a big fat timer in the back that says we have minutes left.

But I think with that we will call it.

Thank you so much for being here and for being part of this.

We really love you and appreciate you.

And until next year, thank you.

This now concludes this conversation for the annual Interagency Accessibility Forum.