IAAF 2023: Welcome and Opening Remarks - Day 3

Narrator

Annual Interagency Accessibility Forum. Day three Welcome, Dr. Sachin Pavithran.

Andrew Nielson

Welcome to today's last day of this year's Interagency Accessibility Forum. My name is Andrew Nielsen. I'm the Director of the Government-Wide IT Accessibility Program in GSA's Office of Government-Wide Policy.

I'm going to soon pass it to Dr. Pavithran to give you our real opening welcoming remarks. Before I do that, I just have, again, a few logistics comments to offer to you and a little bit about what to expect today.

Today, again, we have just a fantastic program for you. We're starting with a fireside chat, so to speak, with accessibility leaders, and then before lunch, another panel accessibility roundtable discussion with leaders from Veterans Affairs.

For reminders, bathrooms are at the audience's left, to your left out at these doors. Or, if you exit the rear of the room, take a right and another right and follow the signage. You can also... we also have folks that can show people around if you go to our registration desk.

Emergency exits, of course, where they're noted here in the room. But the emergency stairs are directly outside the rear of this room on your left as you exit, directly opposite the elevators.

Of course, we have ASL interpretation and CART services here in the room and online. And if you would prefer to view the CART services on your mobile device, please let one of our folks know at the registration table, and we can give you the direct link to see the Zoom text on your device.

As a courtesy to our speakers, please, no flash photography. And please mute your electronic devices during our presentations, of course.

And one other note, again, I'm happy to see folks continue to file in this morning. I think yesterday we noted that we had more than 900 people registered in total, including both in-person and virtual attendees. That actually grew. I think that number was actually updated. We have over 1,200 folks registered both for in-person and virtual attendance.

So we welcome, of course, those of you who are attending virtually as well.

I'd like to now introduce our true welcoming comments from Dr. Sachin Pavithran, the Executive Director of the U.S. Access Board. Dr. Sachin Pavithran previously served as a member of the Board and was selected as the Executive Director just three years ago now?

Dr. Sachin Pavithran

About. Yeah, about roughly.

Andrew Nielson

Dr. Pavithran comes from an academic background, and so has years of advocacy and educational work working with higher education to promote accessibility and really has years of experience in the arena of accessibility advocacy, not only here in the U.S. but really worldwide.

We all know the Access Board as the owners, the writers of the Section 508 regulation.

But of course, the Access Board also has a role in, in writing and defining rules, and guidance, both for the physical space and outdoor recreation as well.

Well, and I'm very pleased to have have gotten to know Dr. Pavithran over the past few years and consider him a friend and really happy to have him here.

Directly after Dr. Pavithran’s comments, we're going to go directly into our first panel, and I'll leave it to Allison Levy at the Access Board to introduce the panel.

But without further ado, please join me in welcoming Dr. Pavithran to the podium.

Dr. Sachin Pavithran

Good morning, everyone. It's great to be here today. I've, you know, ever since I've been part of the Access Board for the last couple of years, joining this conference has been exciting because of the conversation that happens, but it's also nice to be in person.

You know, a lot of these conversations, you know, I don't know about all of you. I'm getting tired of all of these virtual conferences. So it's nice to meet all of you in person.

So, like Andrew said, I'm the executive director of the Access Board, and we have the Access Board. We set standards and guidelines on accessible design. That's what we do. But when it comes to accessibility, it's not just a professional thing for me; it's a personal matter as well. I've been blind most of my life, and when there are accessibility barriers, it impacts me—not just the work I do, not how I perform in my day-to-day employment, but everything I do in my personal life as well.

I did not grow up in the U.S. I immigrated to the U.S. after high school. Growing up, I had no exposure to what accessibility could look like. I did not go through any special education. I did not have opportunities that people enjoy over here. I was born in India. I grew up in Dubai, and in Dubai, they had all the money in the world but no accessibility when I was growing up. Things have changed, but it was just not something I experienced growing up.

So, coming to the U.S., I was open to the opportunity of having all these opportunities of accessibility, and it was fantastic. The U.S. had it figured out, is what I thought initially, but soon found that there's a lot more that can be done. We have come a long way in the U.S. when it comes to accessibility, but we have a long way to go.

What better way to make sure what a good model of accessibility could look like than if the federal government can be that good model? You know, at the federal government level, we have that opportunity to create what a good model employer can be and what a good model of accessibility could look like in an organization.

The accessibility of Section 508 is a conversation that has gotten a lot of spotlight in the last year or so, both in congressional space and also in the federal space, with executive orders and all the different conversations going on. But we all know the federal government has work to do.

I'm also excited that all of you are here listening to this conversation and also engaging and being allies to what the work needs to, where the work needs to go. We need allies, and we need partners to make this a reality because accessibility cannot be just done by all the hardworking 508 program managers who do a lot of work. But sometimes they need allies, and this work will only be accomplished if we all invest our time and dedication to make this a priority.

So, I've heard the conversation. The last two days have been excellent, and I'm sure the conversation going forward today will be equally good. I hope what we learn over these last three days will be something that we can replicate within our agencies and challenge folks to do what is right, not just because it's the law, but it's also the best way for us to represent as the federal government.

So, with that said, I want to welcome everyone, and I also want to acknowledge FDIC for letting us host here. It's been a great collaboration for the U.S. Access Board, both with FDIC and GSA—a great partnership in getting this conference set up.

So, without further ado, I'm going to pass the time over to our excited speaker, moderator Allison. And then we'll go from there.

Thank you. [Applause]

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