IAAF 2023: Welcome and Opening Remarks - Day 2

Narrator

Annual Interagency Accessibility Forum. Day 2 Welcome, Sylvia Burns.

Brooke Aiken

Wow! Good morning, everyone. It's great to see everyone here as well as our virtual friends. If we haven't met, my name is Brooke Aiken. I am the FDIC Section 508 Program Manager and welcome to this year's Interagency Accessibility Forum. We are hosted here at FDIC in Arlington, Virginia.

Before we receive our official welcome from Sylvia Burns, I'd like to share a few logistics with you. Sessions today will, and tomorrow will be held either here in the Bair Auditorium or in the Hove Auditorium. If you leave this room and go left and then take an immediate right. You'll see it on your left or in our training room, which is also located on this floor B3022. We have lots of staff to assist you to get you where you would like to go, and we will be happy to escort you to your next session. Just to let you know, the online agendas as well as the downloads are located at section508.gov/IAAF-agenda.

The restrooms are located to your left and there's signage, but you just turn the corner, and you'll see the restrooms there. We have a fantastic cafeteria. If you're interested in lunch, people definitely seemed to be pleased yesterday with the food as well as the prices. We also have a coffee kiosk on the second floor. Both are here in this building, which is building C. ASL interpreters, are available in each of the rooms, as well as Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services, which you'll see to my right, and they are also available for virtual attendees.

Virtual attendees, if you're with us virtually, you, will be able to ask questions via the WebEx chat. We have chat monitors there for you, to assist with your questions. So we will be, the chat monitors will be asking your questions for you. In case of emergency, the exits are located where you see the exit signs. As a courtesy to our speakers and guests, please mute your electronic devices and no flash photography.

If you have any questions during our events, please feel free to stop by the registration desk and our volunteers here at FDIC. The planning team, I just cannot rave about them, so much but, they are here to assist. And finally, today and tomorrow, we have invited vendors to come and exhibit their accessibility products and services. So please take advantage of meeting the vendors. They're located direct outside of the Bair Auditorium. And, you know, say hello, introduce yourself. Each vendor is attending the conference just one day. So tomorrow we will have different vendors. but please take some time to visit their booths.

So, without further delay, allow me to introduce our first speaker and FDIC just fantastic CIO, our Chief Information Officer and Chief Privacy Officer, Sylvia Burns. Sylvia Burns is here to formally welcome you to this year's Interagency Accessibility Forum. Sylvia.

Sylvia Burns

Hi, everybody. I'm Sylvia Burns, I'm the CIO and Chief Privacy Officer of the FDIC. And I'm going to take a play out of Brooke's book because I learned this last week from her. So, I'm Sylvia Burns, I'm a CIO at FDIC. I have black hair, short black hair, black eyes. I'm wearing a black dress with a long green coat.

So anyway, I learned that this is an accessibility conference. So, first of all, I want to welcome you to the FDIC. I'm so excited that you're here. And we are so thrilled to be hosting the 10th annual Interagency Accessibility Forum. The Interagency Accessibility Forum provides a venue for accessibility professionals, including developers, designers, project managers, and leadership, and many others to exchange best practices in managing and implementing digital accessibility imperatives, including section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Through the ability to host this hybrid event. We're reaching over 900 participants. I saw the counts, by the way, I was amazed. And by the way, we've been talking about this event at the FDIC since, like, I don't know, last winter, Brooke was talking to us about hosting here. So, I've been, like, telling the chairman's office, oh, you know, we're going to have this interagency forum in November. And lo and behold, here we are. It's November, and you guys are here with 900 of us, right? So, it's fantastic.

The 2023 Interagency Accessibility Forum is sponsored by the Federal Chief Information Officer Council, Accessibility Community of Practice, and hosted by the government wide I.T. Accessibility Program from the Office of Government Wide Policy of the General Services Administration, the U.S. Access Board, FDIC, and the Department of Veterans Affairs in partnership with other federal agencies. So, it's a true interagency collaboration. Throughout the next two days, you'll have the opportunity to learn from accessibility leaders throughout the federal government. Section 508 compliance is an integral part of FDIC. As a CIO, I'm committed to ensuring that our information and communication technology is accessible to our employees and to members of the public.

I'm also thrilled that OMB, released 23-22, which is all about this. It's about accessibility and kind of like the digital experience for all of our citizens. Very exciting stuff. A special thanks to the IAAF Host Committee for working tirelessly on this conference. Brooke Aiken, she's a gem. She's our section 508 program lead at the FDIC. I love you, Brooke. Michael Horton and Andrew Nielsen from GSA, I met them before, I don't know where they're sitting, but thank you. Chet Frith from VA and the entire FDIC Division of Administration Planning Team. With kudos to Vernie James and Carla Duff. Thanks so much for helping us to put this event on.

I would like to now introduce my very esteemed colleague, our leader in IT in the federal government, Clare Martorana. Clare, come, Come up. [Applause]