Relaunched Recovery.gov Fails Accessibility Standards

SethGrimes writes with this excerpt from Information Week's Intelligent Enterprise: "Recovery.gov, a showcase government-transparency Web site that relaunched on Monday, fails to meet US federal government Section 508 accessibility standards and accessibility best practices. The non-compliance issues relate to display of data tables — an essential point given the site's promise of 'Data, Data & More Data' — despite on-site compliance claims. Other elements including navigation maps, while compliant, are poorly designed. Sharron Rush, co-founder and executive director of accessibility-advocacy organization Knowbility, goes so far as to state, 'The recovery.gov Web site is a good example of what NOT to do for accessibility in my opinion.' Louise Radnofsky explains in the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog, 'Expectations are high for the site, not least because of its hefty price tag: Smartronix, a Maryland contractor, is being paid $9.5 million for its initial overhaul and is likely to get another $8.5 million to keep the site running through 2014.' Compliance with Section 508 of the federal Rehabilitation Act — a baseline expectation — is a long-standing federal-government requirement for information-systems accessibility to persons with disabilities. The site's accessibility failures — which are shared by another showcase government-transparency site, USAspending.gov — are nonetheless easily seen."

Comments

Okay

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this really surprise anybody?

Re:Okay

[WaywardGeek]

No surprise at all. The right-wing anti-Obama crowd once again shows how petty they are... Poor accessibility on a web site? $10M for it? Well, here's an idea... we could give billions and billions to companies with strong ties to the Obama administration, and hide everything behind a vale of secrecy. It worked so well for the last administration.

I'm losing my central vision and ability to read, so accessibility is a hot-button topic for me. Gmail is terrible, and that effects me - Google should do something about it. Recovery.gov is far easier to navigate with a screen reader. The first item on their web site is a graphic which does nothing for the blind, but the first link under it is to a text version. It's not perfect, but at least average. Anyway, almost no sites pay attention to accessibility guidelines. It's up to programmers behind programs like JAWs to make them accessible anyway, and frankly, they do a pretty good job.

Recovery.org is a huge success. Even for the blind.

Re:Okay

[shentino]

What's impressive to me is that we were even aware of the multi-million design bill.

Airing out your dirty garbage does stink up the place for awhile, but in the end it keeps things fresh.

Re:Okay

[eihab]

Does this really surprise anybody?

Actually yes, the level of "badness" is kind of staggering on this one. There are other "decent" federal and state websites (whitehouse.gov, ca.gov) so I expected that the code would be something that's at least comparable.

When I first read the article (shocking I know) I thought it was just someone trying to nitpick or that the editor is another Obama-troll, so midway through it I visited the site to view the source code myself and I almost threw up.

There are a bazillion (that's 2 LOC right?) JS and CSS includes, XML declaration tags in the middle of the page, tables for layout (top navigation), the works.

For fun, I disabled JavaScript and CSS, and the first few lines that someone without JS/CSS would see are truly amusing:

You are leaving the Recovery.gov Website

Click the link to access
exit

We hope your visit was informative and enjoyable.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

I'm actually surprised that the article left all these issues and picked tables and forms to discuss.

Re:Okay

[lysergic.acid]

I agree that there is a bit of over-reaction here. But I think it's healthy. A political love-fest doesn't drive progress, only constructive criticism does. Troubled waters can't become stagnant.

So far, I've been pleasantly surprised with the site. Aesthetically speaking, it far exceeded any expectations I had for a government website. And even though there's way too much flash (you don't really need flash to generate pretty charts & graphs on a modern browser; Magento does a good job of it without any third-party plug-ins.), they do offer a text-only link underneath each graphic. And on those pages, they use TH elements to denote column headers and the SCOPE attribute to denote row headers. The incomplete implementation of the 508 standard on some tables seems to be an honest oversight, and it's good that there are people bringing the issue to the designers' attention.

Not visibly labeling each state on maps, though, is a pretty minor issue. Again, there is a text-only link underneath, where those whose geography might be a bit rusty can easily locate the data for any state. It's a bit unfair to put the blame on the website's designer for America's "geographic illiteracy." Not knowing your geography is not the kind of "disability" that web designers should have to account for—just as illiteracy is not something that a web designer should have to deal with.

Re:Okay

[andymadigan]

I voted for Obama and I support him and healthcare reform.

However, this is something that should be brought up. It's great that Obama wants to modernize government IT use and communications, but this is different for the government than it is for the private sector. A company can decide they don't really need to go that extra mile to make their site perfect in terms of accessibility, they can be just barely on this side of the law and be fine. However, for the government, the site should be damn near perfect. It's the right of every citizen to be able to communicate effectively with their government. They serve all of us, so there isn't a "good enough" when it comes to access. Companies can choose customers, governments can't.

Re:Okay

[SatanicPuppy]

In a word: crap.

You know why the government has hardly any web presence? It's because the requirements you're talking about, the requirements 99% of the world just happily ignores, are so arduous, so much of a pain in the ass to implement, that they just don't bother to do anything at all.

I submit that the purpose of the regulations, while noble, needs to bow out long enough for the government to at least get started with the web.

Re:Okay

[gandhi_2]

I voted for Obama and I support him and healthcare reform.

Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends use irrelevant disclaimers in an effort to apply ethos to a logos argument.. However...blah blah blah...

Pure fagotry there, bro.

Re:Okay

[aurispector]

Amen, brother. You touch on a core issue about government that can be extrapolated to government as a whole.

First, the PITA requirements; politically correct, mostly unnecessary and designed to please almost no one. Everything government does is subject to obtuse politics rather than practical considerations.

Second, cost is a core issue for any project yet in government we are often told that cost is irrelevant because the social cost of inaction is unacceptable. Social Security and Medicare are both financial train wrecks and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac were at the vanguard of the mortgage crash because all of these programs were designed to serve social rather than budget requirements. Inevitable these programs are destined to go begging back to the government (and ultimately the taxpayer) again and again for additional funding rather than get their financial house in order.

Third, every dollar spent in deficit is stolen from our children. Deficit spending is the most immoral act in which our government indulges. Everyone knows borrowing means paying back, yet congress and the president (regardless of party affiliation) blithely ignore this and collude to avoid dealing with the deficit. Every dollar we are forced to spend on debt service is taken from the very programs that created the debt.

The first thing on everyone's mind should be "What will it cost and where will the money be found to pay for it?" Never in history has an entitlement been discontinued except by complete government collapse or revolution often triggered by financial failure. If we wish to avoid this kind of scenario our first concern must be cost control.

Re:Okay

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for fun, I ran http://validator.w3.org on recovery.gov.

114 errors and 206 warnings.

Re:Okay

[Tim4444]

pretty sure you meant 'veil'

not to be pedantic or anything

Re:Okay

[dup_account]

Too bad I don't have any mod points so I can rate you down as a libertarian f'tard.

Two things:

1. He was talking about holding off, not eliminating the requirements.

2. We just had this conversation this morning, when someone said "Capitalism is the best system we have". But you have to ask, is it better to have a system that works to improve the social good of everyone. Or is it better to have a system where a few can get rich at the expense of the rest.

3. I disagree about being "Socially Good" is the problem. I think it's actually the bi-polar nature of our governmental and social system. We have one group that wants to help all people. We have another group who wants only their corporate overlords.

Re:Okay

[DesScorp]

"Recovery.org is a huge success. "

In what alternate reality? Most people have never heard of it or use it. There have been plenty of well-made websites, but with sparse traffic. They're not a "success" then.

Re:Okay

[Jared555]

One major thing is it isn't like they would have to maintain multiple sites. You would expect a $9.5 million site to have features that can be found in virtually any content management system (free or commercial). Such as the ability to have fancy and compliant versions of the site that are generated automatically.

Re:Okay

[oatworm]

Generally speaking, capitalism has done a better (albeit imperfect) job of providing a system where a few can get rich at the expense of the rest AND improving the social good of everyone. You have to keep in mind here, the choice isn't between capitalism and perfectly-implemented communism, where everybody gives according to their abilities and only takes according to their needs. Humans don't work that way, no matter how much indoctrination, teaching, or propaganda you throw at them - the people in charge always start treating everyone else like slaves, and the people at the bottom eventually start acting like slaves (i.e. doing the least necessary to avoid punishment). Besides, at least in my experience, the group of people that wants to help all people is rather small - usually, you're better off counting on everybody to act in their own self-interest, even if they're government employees.

Re:Okay

[dan_sdot]

However, for the government, the site should be damn near perfect.

Wow... really? You expect that when the government is involved, things should be perfect? Prepare yourself for disappointment, my friend.

Re:Okay

[aurispector]

Go try to start a business, run it for a few years then see how happy you are about paying taxes to a government that wastes at least half of every hard earned dollar you're forced to give. Why is it that the people who are most in favor of spending other people's money are those who don't have any of their own? This is class warfare at it's worst. You can not strengthen the poor by weakening the rich. The beauty of private property is that people value things they have to work hard to obtain. If you want to reduce the value of something to zero, give it to people without cost. This is why there is no such thing as a well kept public housing project.

Capitalism is to economics what "web 2.0" is to the internet. It harnesses the intelligence and ambition of anyone who cares to apply themselves. Why are you so convinced government can do better than a private organization? You drive a capitalist produced car, use a capitalist produced computer over a capitalist produced network, etc.. The problems with capitalism occur when markets aren't free and competitive. Capitalism without sensible regulation gives you 10 year-olds working in coal mines. Capitalism with good regulation gives you safer cars at affordable prices, for example.

You have an unbelievably simplistic world view if you truly believe the bit about our supposedly bi-polar social system. Did you miss that whole failure-of-communism thing that happened pretty much everywhere it was tried? Do you really think the desire to help people is sufficient to create a just society and high standard of living? Do you think money grows on trees? Rushing around throwing money at every social cause has yet to solve any of them, in spite of the strategy being tried for decades.

You may have had this discussion this morning, but that just means you get to be wrong twice today. Not surprising since you obviously have some serious problems in your understanding of basic human nature.

Re:Okay

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this had something to do with the wrecked code (from the recovery.gov home page):

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft SharePoint" /><meta name="progid" content="SharePoint.WebPartPage.Document" />

- T

Re:Okay

[andymadigan]

I said they should be, not that they're likely to be.

They contracted to a private company for the work. It should be simple, "you're required to follow these rules: XYZ, we won't pay you until those requirements are fulfilled."

Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[cayenne8]

I mean, the web and computers are inherently 'visual' mediums.

What's next...traffic signals have have audio speaking the colors out so blind people can drive?

I mean, I feel for the handicapped, and appreciate making things as accessible as possible, but, isn't it going a bit far on things that just are naturally aimed for normal people?

I recall in a govt. contract I was in...a new application was rolling out. The people wanted training, but, rather than just do a live meeting and demo the application, they had to fly people and equipment across the nation, because the LM presentation wouldn't be 508 compliant.

I'm thinking geez...what a crock. NONE of the people needing training were handicapped...yet the rules still applied...

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Darkness404]

I tend to agree. While there should be -some- accessibility standards (as in, being able to get everything in basic HTML, open standards, etc) but to be perfectly honest, some handicapped people just aren't cut out for some jobs or some tasks and may require assistance.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[AmberBlackCat]

I think it might be a good compromise if, as long as government data is inaccessible to blind people, blind people don't have to pay taxes. But since they have to pay taxes that pay for these websites and it's not difficult to make a website blind people can use, I think this is a legitimate complaint.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an incredibly ignorant response. Why should blind people have to settle for shitty data from a shitty website for which they are paying tax dollars?

The web is primarily a textual medium. That you have a browser that uses the markup to create a visual display doesn't make people who either don't have or cannot use such a browser any less important.

It's not like it's very difficult to make web pages accessible. There are well-defined mechanisms to include attributes for common tags so that alternative browsers, such as screen readers, can present the information in a way that the user can understand and navigate.

As a matter of fact, many traffic signals do have audio indicating when it is safe for a blind pedestrian to cross.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[John Hasler]

I mean, the web and computers are inherently 'visual' mediums.

Bullshit. There is nothing inherently 'visual' about data. The function of the site is to make lists and numbers relevant to the operation of the government available to the public. All of the public. That task does not require the use of "Web 2.0" crap. If you think that the data can be better presented in the form of swarms of crawling colored beetles set up your own site, copy over the data (or just link to it) and have at it. It's all in the public domain.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[guabah]

God forbid that one of this days you have an accident and loose any of your senses, especially your sight. Only then you may appreciate why there's all this talk of putting beepers on pedestrian crossings, making websites accessible to screen readers, and hell, even putting car-tones on electric cars.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Cryacin]

As a matter of fact, many traffic signals do have audio indicating when it is safe for a blind pedestrian to cross.

But what about traffic lights?!? And before you go saying that there aren't any driving, I've driven in LA too long to believe that!!!

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[John Hasler]

In fact it is easier to make a site that blind people can use because the task mostly consists of leaving off superfluous crap.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Idiomatick]

The reason the standard is being broken is because they are using flash which essentially walls the data away obfuscating it (the opposite of open). And blind people have 0 access. So.. that's what the standard is for. So really, you don't agree with him.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[cayenne8]

"The web is primarily a textual medium. That you have a browser that uses the markup to create a visual display doesn't make people who either don't have or cannot use such a browser any less important."

I'm trying to figure how one would present tables of data, in a manner that IS blind person accessible. It just doesn't sounds like it would be possible. Sure most of the web is/can be textual, but, how do you provide large amounts of data in a 508 compliant way? This isn't like putting out a paragraph that a txt reader can work with, eh?

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I mean, the web and computers are inherently 'visual' mediums.

Which part of Hypertext Transfer Protocol are you having trouble with? Just because you spend most of your time online watching youtube videos and browsing the latest AJAX powered dynamic rollercoaster does not mean that the rest of the web, and especially the parts where real work is done, are "inherently visual". Far from it.

I'm thinking geez...what a crock. NONE of the people needing training were handicapped...yet the rules still applied...

I'd like to take you to task on this, but Steve Krug has put this far more succinctly that I ever could. Read that link to become educated about
1) Why accessibility is important
2) Why most (able bodied) developers don't care about it, and
3) Why this problem persists (We haven't automated accessibility.)

The most important point Krug makes is the real reason you should care about and implement accessibility in your websites. "It's the right thing to do."

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[WinterSolstice]

I spent a lot of effort and time setting up my reporting sites with JS and tables instead of flash for just this reason. Flash doesn't belong everywhere - and not everyone wants it turned on.

There is really no excuse for using it just to display charts.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hate to LOOSE my senses.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet is naturally aimed at normal people? Either you are lazy and totally ignorant on this issue or just an awful human being. Please do some reading on accessibility.

Also when you come back to read the article you will find out that your normal people not affected by the poor design of this website are in the minority of users.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[tecnico.hitos]

Flash does have accessibility capabilities in its API, it's just that people don't use it.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

On a typical reader, a 508 compliant table would sound something like this, with pauses indicated by commas, and long pauses by semicolons:

Table, Contributions by State; ;
State, New York;
Dollars, 56 million;
Contributors, 120; ;
State, Vermont;
Dollars, 32 million;
Contributors, 140; ;
State, Texas;
(etc.)

Is it usable by a blind person? Yes. Someday, if your eyesight fails you, you may need to get tabular information in exactly this way.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're new here.

No, the web and computers are fundamentally digital electronic devices, free of representation. The simplest and most straightforward representation of the bulk of that data is plain text, and if you do the simplest thing (bog standard HTML) anyone with accessibility requirements can render it in their web browser.

It's the ignorant and stupid Flash AJAX Web 2.0 authors who have ruined the universal communication medium we old fogeys came up with.

Now get off my lawn.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[girlintraining]

but, isn't it going a bit far on things that just are naturally aimed for normal people?

I happen to believe that this country's government should do everything possible to help those who want to contribute and be a part of society do so -- normality not withstanding. Most people don't make a choice to go deaf, blind, or become handicapped. It just happens (most of the time). I would feel a lot better going to bed each night if I knew that should such a calamity happen to me, my life wouldn't come to an end literally or figuratively. There's some things that are just humane to do. That's why the rules are there. No, they're not important for you but to someone else it might mean the world.

No, it's not going too far -- it's not going far enough. WHO estimated that in 2002 there were 161 million (about 2.6% of the world population) visually impaired people in the world, of whom 124 million (about 2%) had low vision and 37 million (about 0.6%) were blind. For comparative purposes, it's guessed that Linux commands a 1.7% marketshare on the desktop. Which means, there's more people out there who are blind than use linux -- yet, were I to suggest that support for Linux not be included because it isn't something normal people use or care about, I'd be lynched.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[NotBornYesterday]

Even those with sight can benefit from a properly designed site. Color schemes that look fine to you or I can be a nightmare for someone with color blindness.

Even though the web may primarily be a visual medium, it can be navigated without relying only on eyes. People with more severe visual impairments regularly surf the web with text-to-speech software assisting them. Poor design, such as misusing tables in place of [div], [span] and other proper formatting makes things tough, as does the practice of using a jpeg as a link button, and not tagging it with the appropriate text to indicate what it is for.

The government has an obligation to be as open as possible to all its citizens.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it might be a good compromise if, as long as government data is inaccessible to blind people, blind people don't have to pay taxes. But since they have to pay taxes that pay for these websites and it's not difficult to make a website blind people can use, I think this is a legitimate complaint.

I think a blind taxpayer gets an extra deduction on the 1040.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

A conversion that worked well for me when implementing an interface to a game that had many tables:

Visual representation:

item price
car $25,000
bike $500

Audible representation:

item car price 25 thousand dollars
item bike price 5 hundred dollars

In the particular game, the audio representation was often more concise even on screen, as there were often empty or zero-value columns that could simply be skipped.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds fair, sure. Just like noting that as long as blind people aren't paying taxes, they don't get any other government services either, like say police protection.

Complaining the site isn't usable is legit. Claiming that because of one website you should be exempt from taxation is not.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Mr 44]

If you read the article you would see that they are complaining about the text tables the site provides not being marked up properly, not the use of flash.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

I make my Geocities-esque personal site more accessible to the blind by substituting looping midi renditions of Spice Girls tunes for tiled animated gif backgrounds.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[arthurpaliden]

The problem is that there is only one accessability standard. So if you have a site that deals just in streaming audio books in order for it to pass the accessability tests, so the blind know they can navigate around it with ease, you also have to have the text version of all the audio books availible so that the deaf can use the site as well. Even though it is an 'Audio Book' site.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Erinnys Tisiphone]

OP isn't arguing that there should not be some basic accessibility standards. For instance, providing a pure-text, basic open-standard html copy of the site would be a very adequate substitute. Plain text is the easiest thing possible to parse in text-to-speech, alternative interfaces, and older systems. Requiring all things arranged or designed by government contracts to be both accessible and pretty >>even if nobody using the service or system is disabled is something else. Its a huge black hole for money. The option should be available, but not mandatory for everything, all the time. I also think there is a notable difference between designing for a competent person who has lost say, their vision or a limb, and designing for a person who dropped out of high school and doesn't know how to navigate a standard website.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[defaria]

I guess I'm having difficulty understanding HyperBraille Transfer Protocol because I don't see a B in HTTP.

The point is that the training the guy spoke about was not needed to be shipped out to be 508 compliant because their were no fucking handicapped people in the fucking audience who needed to take the training. This is called being prudent and being efficient. Look those words up in your braille dictionary!!!

Look if you wish to help the handicapped then fine - do it. But I don't. There I said it. It's not my problem. I will not solve all of the sighted needs or whatever needs they have due to their handicap. By definition they're gonna have a more challenging life and it's not my responsibility to make it easier on them. I'm all for helping them if you feel like you should or want to but I am totally 100% against forcing people to help them. My god man! Think of the people in Africa with 300 baud lines! You probably should be reproducing that web page into paper with a self address stamped envelope to mail to them. Oh and make it in their own language too! Bother! Brother. No thanks!!!

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[iamacat]

Yes, but should we also ban manufacturing cars unless they can be safely driven by blind? That's what we are doing with websites right now - every page, no matter how obscure, must be accessible. Just like we might ask blind to take a bus or taxi, we could require providing data as either plain text or machine readable format so that some tools can be used to access it.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[FatdogHaiku]

I have a wrench for that, it will tighten up everything but the ability to sense fear in squirrels. Good thing that one already fell off of most people anyway...

Seriously, I'm on oxygen and walk with a cane. I'll never hike into the Grand Canyon again, and I just avoid some things like visiting hilly towns (S.F. or even Jerome, AZ.) I do like being able to get into buildings via a ramp as stairs kick my ass... but I don't think they should have one circling the Statue of Liberty just so I can go to the very top of it. The whole PC thing is just gone nuts and I don't see how it will ever end as long as someone has the time and money to raise a stink. A REAL global economic meltdown would put an end to all this crap as we busied ourselves catching rodents for dinner... And squirrels are the easiest for me, I can sense their fear...

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[jmorris42]

> "It's the right thing to do."

If that is the best argument ya got it won't work in the real world. But there is a better one. A site designed to be accessable tends to be a good website, period.

Some of the reason is that accesssable sites must avoid the temptation to take the easy fix of throwing anything complicated into a flash applet or other inaccessable crap. But an equally important part is the opposite argument of one I make in another post about .aspx being the seal of crap. It isn't because the Microsoft stuff can't be made to work with enough effort, it is that only clueless people tend to pick it in the first place and clueless people will do other clueless things. Conversely, people cluefull enough to build a properly accessable site will also tend to make a generally well designed site. And host it on a better and less costly platform like a LAMP server.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tend to agree. While there should be -some- accessibility standards (as in, being able to get everything in basic HTML, open standards, etc) but to be perfectly honest, some handicapped people just aren't cut out for some jobs or some tasks and may require assistance.

Too bad some ignorant fuckhole marked you troll for being right on spot. Fuck I hate slashdot. You clearly say some jobs. Does racecar driver not qualify as a job? How well suited is a blind person for this task? What about music critic as a deaf person? Oh and let't not forget basketball playing people without arms, there are a lot of those. The guy isn't saying anything degrading about handicapped people, he's merely stating the fucking truth. And if anybody wants to shield themselves from it then fine, but marking truth as troll means obligatory AC post with a nice cup of: fuck you. Now mod me down before somebody reads this piece of truth, god forbid.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[noundi]

God forbid that one of this days you have an accident and loose any of your senses, especially your sight. Only then you may appreciate why there's all this talk of putting beepers on pedestrian crossings, making websites accessible to screen readers, and hell, even putting car-tones on electric cars.

It's one thing to try to help the handicapped in society. It's another to define something as worthless just because it hasn't yet been adapted to some handicapped audiences. You see one is being just, and one is being a fucking dick. I'll leave it to you to solve the puzzle.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymusing]

I work for a nonprofit organization that receives grants from the federal government. Any web sites for the US-funded projects must be Section 508 compliant. That means:

• Navigation must be coded certain ways.
• Tables of info must be coded certain ways.
• Graphics and image maps must be coded certain ways.
• Interactive multimedia must have 508-compliant alternatives.
• Videos must have transcripts.
• PDFs and downloadable PPTs must be similarly 508 compliant; e.g. a chart or illustration must be marked up with 508-compliant meta information.

It can be difficult.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[WaywardGeek]

Dude, you simply have zero clue about what blind people are good at. I had lunch yesterday with a blind Ph.D. candidate who probably codes circles around you. Programming is one of the best occupations for the blind. There's JAWs in Windows that does the job beautifully, allowing bind programmers to read the screen at 850 words per minute, probably 3X your reading speed. There are blind and deaf programmers who use Braille displays to code like you wouldn't believe. JPEGs are inherently 'visual' mediums, but text is the vast majority of everything on the web, and virtually 100% of programming.

Anyway, we probably agree that there are too many dumb government regulations, like the one that recovery.org fails. I used the Orca screen reader to test it out, and while the site could be improved, it was fine. I had no trouble listening to the data at high speed.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an incredibly ignorant response. Why should blind people have to settle for shitty data from a shitty website for which they are paying tax dollars?

The web is primarily a textual medium. That you have a browser that uses the markup to create a visual display doesn't make people who either don't have or cannot use such a browser any less important.

It's not like it's very difficult to make web pages accessible. There are well-defined mechanisms to include attributes for common tags so that alternative browsers, such as screen readers, can present the information in a way that the user can understand and navigate.

As a matter of fact, many traffic signals do have audio indicating when it is safe for a blind pedestrian to cross.

So you want to troll about tax dollars ey? If it takes 1 hour of work to do complete a job which can benefit 1000 people, and another hour to complete a job which can benefit 10 people, which one is more expensive? Don't try to troll with money. The purpose should be simply that anyone of us can at anytime be in that position and that aside from showing humanity we insure ourselves to be capable of everday tasks even if we would get to that spot, not because of tax dollars you try to troll into a bullshit equation. Someone mod this troll down please.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[HiThere]

So don't take any government money.

This is about a government web site specifically aimed at being accessible. So, no, the comments aren't going too far.

P.S.: It's not just a government web site, it's one that some people got paid a rather large amount to create, and expect to be paid another rather large lot to keep working.

My feeling is that the web site should be marked not satisfactory, and all payment withheld until they do it right.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we really be listening to a potential competitor to the contractor in this case? How do we know the motives of this guy who's pointing out all the supposed problems with the site?

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad I'm not a developer anymore so I don't have to care about any of this bullshit. If you were a developer and you were taking all the demands from the people who pay you, then halfway into the project they say, oh yeah, we'd like to add 508 requirements to the list....how would you feel? Just imagine the guy who has to think about how the website looks in three different browsers at once, none of which look the same or are exactly compliant with web standards, and you have the crux of the problem. When it comes down to it, you're going to decide to support one and only one, and that's what most government websites do.
I completely understand the desire to provide data without the external metadata that makes it format a certain way. However, trying to make a site look a certain way on multiple platforms is a bitch. I don't recommend it to anyone.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Your Pal Dave]

FWIW, I'm glad you're not a developer anymore, too!

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Another, completely]

Exactly. I'm not blind, but I do prefer to browse with a larger-than-normal font. If sites just mark up content, then that works fine. Some pages override that control because they need to do complicated layout to say what they mean (like those interactive maps on recovery.gov), but most things that you need to say can be done with text.

I didn't think the Recovery.gov data was so bad (for my standards) once you clicked the "Text View of Data" button. Pull-down menus and standard HTML tables with hyperlinks. The problem the original article was complaining about was that it didn't have extra markups that most people won't notice, but that help the special-assistance tools. Like using TH tags for the table header row, instead of just TR and setting the color.

When I looked at the main state-summary table here just now, it did mark up the header row correctly (as far as I could tell). The original article makes some specific complaints, such as this:

To make the table more accessible, use TH [table header] tags around the state names, and include scope="row".

It looked like this is what they do. Maybe they have already acted on the report?

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[shentino]

I would surmise that bringing a complex website into compliance for the blind would constitute an "undue hardship".

Case in point: Youtube.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[shentino]

Good point.

Also note that access to government sites isn't the only benefit that taxes pay for.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[iamacat]

Actually this is one case where search, audio and comments can be easily made accessible to the blind.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[sumdumass]

Available but not mandatory.. Hmm.. So the government should be able to choose communications media that is inaccessible to it's citizens and you are fine with that? How about if the government raise your taxes, published the notice in some magazine no one has ever heard of, and when you are expecting a huge return like last year and purchase that new big screen TV, you find out that you actually owe the government some money.

Here the problem. The government chooses to communicate with the citizens and traditionally, services and techniques have become availible for those citizens with special needs. Generally, they are extra devices or software that enables the citizen to gain the communication. Now when the government fails to meet accessibility guidelines, it means these people are shut out or then need 10,000 different devices or programs or have someone violate their privacy to read the shit to them. The government is the government of all the people, not just the ones who aren't freaks or deformed in some way. When the government publishes something, it has to be accessible to all the citizens. The guidelines make that possible with some effort on the person with the disadvantage.

This is a little different then a company not getting it right. You can chose to take your business elsewhere. You can't chose to create a new government in place of the existing one.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

> > "It's the right thing to do."

>If that is the best argument ya got it won't work in the real world.

Shouldn't it though? And if it doesn't, shouldn't we work towards a world where it does?

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the fact that 508 standards are set forth by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) which is directly under the supervision of the Presidential Administration. Recovery.gov should be 508 compliant if for no other reason than to hold the Administration to the same standards they hold other government agencies to.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[b4dc0d3r]

What's funny is, I bet a non-handicapped person is really behind this. If I were planning on doing something with the data, and it were jailed in Flash instead of perfectly acceptable HTML, I'd use any applicable lawsuit to get access to the data. Not proud of that, just sayin'.

Besides, if a blind person saw the site, they wouldn't necessarily know which data is missing. They'd have to be at least partially "in cahoots" with a sighted person.

I blame sighted people for the whole mess.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

"normal" people? You are a fucking moron.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[b4dc0d3r]

Just as an aside - .aspx tends to be crap because Microsoft's built-in objects and default settings are crap. It takes a *lot* of effort to replace default behaviour with something a normal person would expect.

In some cases, to make a minor adjustment you have to learn about ASP.NET pipeline, page rendering order, how output normally proceeds, and have to derive from an unrelated object usually in an unrelated file (app_code folder) and spread your code all over the site, just to do something you can achieve in asp 3 in mere minutes.

ASPX pages showed up on microsoft.com well before it was released to the public, I'm surprised their internal people didn't raise more objections.

If you have an experience .NET developer, you can do a lot quickly. But it takes a very long time to achieve that. Kinda like when Java sucked and it was because people used strings instead of stringbuilder, because they don't know any better. Not trying to start a Java thread, just saying it's not tied to Microsoft. Any complicated language with surface-deep "how to program in 24 hours" type examples will make failures of its developers before they become enlightened.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[beetle496]

Do you are understand that web accessibility is really not hard?

I mean, the web and computers are inherently 'visual' mediums.

Incorrect. The web is an information medium. As far as the computer goes, the display and keyboard are really kind of arbitrary, the compelling action takes place between those two!

I mean, I feel for the handicapped, and appreciate making things as accessible as possible, but, isn't it going a bit far on things that just are naturally aimed for normal people?

So, do you think it is a good practice for the Federal government to build (or pay for) things that create obstacles to citizens with disabilities? Or for the Feds to build/pay for applications that provide an obstacle to their current (and future) employees with disabilities?

I'm thinking geez... what a crock. NONE of the people needing training were handicapped... yet the rules still applied...

Some random observations:

1. Accomdations are still easier to provide in-person than remotely.
2. Odds are that with remote training, there would have been more participants, and likely some with disabilites.
3. The remote conferencing systems are way behind the ball on 508, and will never get their act together if they are not pressured by potential Federal customers to do so.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[mcgrew]

I mean, the web and computers are inherently 'visual' mediums.

The whole world is visual communications. The elevator buttons, the exit signs in buildings, walk lights on traffic signals, business signs... most elevator buttons are also marked in braille, but there's no braille for the rest of my tiny and greatly incomplete list.

But the internet isn't solely a visual medium. For instance, you can hear almost every radio station in the world on it. And text can be translated into speech trivially.

isn't it going a bit far on things that just are naturally aimed for normal people?

Almost everything is naturally aimed for normal people. A site dedicated to PC gaming would have no need for acessibility to the blind, but nearly every other site should be. If your site can't be read by a screen reader when its information could possibly benefit the blind, you have a piss poor site indeed. It shows a total and complete lack of compassion on your part, since making it accessible is dirt-simple; it shows that you're also a lazy bastard since the amount of extra work is trivial; and it shows your foolishness and stupidity because you're turning away a possible audience.

NONE of the people needing training were handicapped...yet the rules still applied

The rules were written by idiots. It's like a completely full parking lot at a sports equipment store with six empty handicapped parking spaces. The rules should say that of the lot is full you can park in one of these spots, and if a business has little or no expectation of handicapped people it shouldn't need a handicapped spot at all, or at most, one.

But for a government web site, there is absolutely NO excuse for it not to be accessible, and in fact the law rightly says it must be.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What's next...traffic signals have have audio speaking the colors out so blind people can drive?"

Traffic signals have had tactile units for the blind since day one. It was one of the single biggest issues in the original designs.

The fact is many "normal" people don't realise just how many everyday items feature special features for blind or deaf people..

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[mcgrew]

IMO using Flash anywhere where it's not absolutely necessary is stupid. Actually using any tech that's not needed is stupid. If you can substitute your flash with a little standards-following javascript, use the javascript. If you can use plain HTML instead of javascript, use plain HTML.

There is no reason to get out a circular saw to cut a piece of 1 x 1/4 wood. A hand saw is the better tool for this. There is no reson to transport one person in an SUV, a sedan or coupe is a better tool for this.

It seems web designers measure it with a micrometer, mark it with chalk, and cut it with an axe.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[mcgrew]

God forbid that one of this days you have an accident and loose any of your senses

I loose my senses every day. But I'm glad I never lose any of them.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[obscuro]

No! This isn't going a bit far. The blind PAY TAXES TOO. They have every right to expect to access government data with as much ease as the industry can deliver.

This also shows a really sad design bias. People who called themselves designers before the advent of the web would have NO PROBLEM with a requirement to accommodate blind people. None! That's because design used to be a profession focused on human beings in the world. Now anything graphic is referred to as design. That's a fail for the entire discipline in my book. The idea that the web and computers are inherently visual media is part of a lame consensus that's a big part of that fail. How about thinking a bit less like Microsoft and CREATING something UNFAMILIAR?

The outrage here is that these guys were paid millions and millions of dollars and didn't get around to delivering quality accessibility. That's profoundly lame.

As for your experience with government exception handling on 508 compliance.... Yeah, that's lame that they don't take it into account when a handicap isn't represented in a trainee population.

Still, sorry the whole world can't see your cool 3D effect dude. They don't all speak English or have electricity 24/7.... If your website or app includes them in the target user group its pretty unconscionable to treat their needs as an annoying afterthought.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[mcgrew]

Color schemes that look fine to you or I can be a nightmare for someone with color blindness

More often than that, and affecting more people, are sites developed by clueless kids with low contrasting text (I'm looking at you, Boost Mobile) like gray on black, or blue on a different shade of blue. These work fine for young people, but most geezers have a hard time parsing them.

With Boost Mobile it's actually funny, as the phones themselves have an option to change the size of the text!

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

While it is true that some people (disabled or otherwise) aren't cut out for certain jobs, in the context of this conversation (being able to find out what your government is trying to tell you in an increasingly digital world), it is a troll.

GP is basically saying that blind people just aren't cut out to find out what their government is saying, which is bullshit.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Jared555]

Especially when the company is working on subtitling videos

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Jared555]

For the people walking some areas are at least working (may already have) on audio walk/don't walk signals

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Jared555]

In this specific case, I have a feeling this happened due to a stupid policy made by the company/government office in regards to compliance, other than the rules about compliance themselves. In many cases companies don't have to actually run something as 508(or whichever specific accessibility law applies) compliant, they just have to have the option available for when it is necessary. And also, it is probably actually possible to make a live meeting 508 compliant, it is just doubtful that anyone would do it.

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

See also: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/03/21/accessibility-is-a-harsh-mistress

(summary: accessibility law is stupid)

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[Anonymous Coward]

See also Accessibility is a harsh mistress

Re:Isn't this goingg a bit far?

[clone53421]

In fact it is easier to make a site that blind people can use because the task mostly consists of leaving off superfluous crap

We were talking about the government, right?

$9.5 million?

[girlintraining]

Okay, for $9.5 million dollars I think they can afford to hire a web designer that knows how to make a website accessible. I mean, I made a website that was accessible for two cans of mountain dew and what was left of a can of pringles. Looked better too. Then again, I did it for this girl who I really hoped would notice me after (she didn't), so I might have underbid just a bit. Still -- I think I would do better than these guys did. :\

Re:$9.5 million?

[M. Baranczak]

9.5 mil for re-designing a website seems suspiciously high, even for a federal contract. Does the contract include other services that aren't mentioned in the summary?

Re:$9.5 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

For a fraction of that $9.5 million, they could get a contractor who understands that data interchange does not equal Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word and Microsoft powerpoint. There's a whole bunch wrong with the site, quite aside from the accessibility issues. Either the buyer or the contractor is grossly incompetent, What a waste!

Re:$9.5 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's 2 million for the lawyers, 2 million for the lobbyists, 2 million for the liability insurance, 2 million for the programmers, managers, testers, bullshitters, writers, editors, coders, designers, etc, and $500 in campaign contributions.

Re:$9.5 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

I did it for this girl who I really hoped would notice me

That's really sweet. You're a girl, but you have to go through the same stuff us nice guys do.

Re:$9.5 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, I did it for this girl who I really hoped would notice me after (she didn't):\

You *do* realize she was blind, right?

Re:$9.5 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Then again, I did it for this girl who I really hoped would notice me after (she didn't)

Revenge of the Nerd: Dude, just use the pringles can to steal her wifi signal.

Re:$9.5 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
Posted anonymously for obvious anonymous reasons.

Re:$9.5 million?

[ColdWetDog]

Does the contract include other services that aren't mentioned in the summary?

Hookers and Blackjack?

For that much money, I would expect Hookers and Blackjack. Nothing less.

Re:$9.5 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah let me at the 9.5 million... I would work full time for the rest of my life for that.

Re:$9.5 million?

[mcgrew]

And probably hetero as well. A gay guy hit on me a couple of weeks ago in a redneck bar, and I was there with a woman! What is it about gays and lesbians that make them think everyone is gay?

Re:$9.5 million?

[girlintraining]

And probably hetero as well. A gay guy hit on me a couple of weeks ago in a redneck bar, and I was there with a woman! What is it about gays and lesbians that make them think everyone is gay?

Look up 'fag hag' sometime. :\ Sorry, I know I shouldn't give hints to the heteros, but if you're truly that offended, you should know...

Re:$9.5 million?

[mcgrew]

No, I'm not offended, actually I was amused. I'll look up "fag hag", haven't run across that term before.

Re:$9.5 million?

[mcgrew]

OK, I looked it uo ans see how it might apply; the guy probably thought I was gay and that she was a "fag hag".

Just the other night I left the same bar (redneck bar, mind you) with a woman nicknamed "Butch". The next day people were horrified -- not at sexuality (I would have sworn she was a lesbian but it turns out she's straight) but it seems they knew her, and she has hepatitis C.

Which I know for a fact is hard to catch, a woman I dated for over a month had that, and I never caught it.

Wrong line of work!

[spaceyhackerlady]

If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with Django and MySQL.

The site does very little if you don't have Flash, BTW. Many pages don't even give you a "You don't have Flash" message. You just get blank white pages. I make a point of not having Flash on my main Linux box, just to see how this tool of the devil is poisoning the net.

...laura

Re:Wrong line of work!

[FlyingBishop]

From what I understand, most of that money is servers, server maintenance, and bandwidth. Design is a fairly small piece of the pie.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[frosty_tsm]

If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with Django and MySQL.

The site does very little if you don't have Flash, BTW. Many pages don't even give you a "You don't have Flash" message. You just get blank white pages. I make a point of not having Flash on my main Linux box, just to see how this tool of the devil is poisoning the net.

...laura

While I will agree with you that 1) many sites can be built more user friendly with less work using the right tools and 2) Flash is evil, you must remember they need to interface with a bunch of legacy government servers to get the data. That's a royal pain in itself.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[John Hasler]

> If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong
> line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with
> Django and MySQL.

Yes, but it would have take several months and several hundred thousand dollars for specialized lawyers to put together a qualified bid for the job. Much of the work involved in bidding on and completing a Federal contract has to do with complying with loony procurement regulations rather than performing any actual productive work. That is part of the reason Federal contracting is a specialized business and why it is not as profitable as it appears to be.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[NoYob]

That is part of the reason Federal contracting is a specialized business and why it is not as profitable as it appears to be.

Depends on who is doing the books.

Manger interviewing accountants:

"2+2=?"
First accountant, "4".
mgr: "Thank you will be in touch."
Mgr with 2nd accountant:" What's 2+2="
2nd Accountant "5".
Mgr: " Thank you for stopping by. "
Mgr 3rd Acct" "What's 2+2=?"
3rd Accountant: "What do you want it to be?"
MGR "You're hired!"

If Government contracting has so little profit, then why are so many companies scrambling to do it?

Re:Wrong line of work!

[Anonymous Coward]

most of that money is servers [...] and bandwidth

And still the incompetence is staggering...

Cache-Control: private,max-age=0
Content-Length: 15957928
Content-Type: text/xml
Etag: "{5F44F378-FA2E-442E-9DAE-165FECB4A8A6},6"
Last-Modified: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:12:02 GMT
Server: Footprint Distributor V4.5
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices: 12.0.0.6421
Exires: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:14:43 GMT
Public-Extension: http://schemas.microsoft.com/repl-2
ResourceTag: rt:5F44F378-FA2E-442E-9DAE-165FECB4A8A6@00000000006
Expires: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:16:23 GMT
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:16:23 GMT
Connection: keep-alive

See what happens when we compress that 15MB XML file using gzip (7z deflate at maximum)...

-rw-r--r-- 1 dave users 15957928 2009-10-01 23:16 contracts.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 dave users 1107939 2009-10-01 23:18 contracts.xml.gz

Compressed XML files should be precached on the server, any development team with a clue would have done that from the outset.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[tecnico.hitos]

I make a point of not having Flash on my main Linux box, just to see how this tool of the devil is poisoning the net.

Well, the harm is already done

I'd really like to use an alternative, but have been unable to find anything that include both a programming API and a good animation tool. JavaFX seems close to this, having vector and bitmap manipulation in its API, but I haven't seen any good animation tool yet.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[cpghost]

I make a point of not having Flash on my main Linux box, just to see how this tool of the devil is poisoning the net.

On my main FreeBSD/amd64 desktop box, I not only make the point of not having Flash on it, I don't even have the choice, as it is not supported by Adobe. So much for accessibility.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[Orion Blastar]

Actually federal contractors are not paid that well and usually have minimum benefits, some are 1090 instead of W2 and have to save their own tax money to pay the IRS. The bulk of the money goes to the Federal Contractor company and their board of directors and upper management.

I used to be a federal contractor, but I always followed federal guidelines for disability accessibility, Y2K, network standards, security standards, etc. I wasn't paid much, and they promised me a raise, but I only got a fraction of the actual promised raise because of "budget cuts" even if they were earning millions via a federal contract.

So as a federal contractor, you wouldn't be paid as much as a federal employee or corporate employee. Only management gets the big bucks. Unless you form your own corporation and win the federal bid on contracts.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[cjHopman]

On my main FreeBSD/amd64 desktop box, I not only make the point of not having Flash on it, I don't even have the choice, as it is not supported by Adobe. So much for accessibility.

Well, when you made the choice of what OS to use you weighed the advantages and disadvantages of each. In particular, you considered the fact that the particular one that you chose was a very small portion of the market and was commonly not supported as well (or not at all) as your other options.

Now, any site that requires flash is making the decision that you are not important enough to support.

Point is, don't blame Adobe, blame yourself and those companies (and others) who require flash.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[Anonymusing]

Mod parent up. This isn't your everyday database problem.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[an unsound mind]

Because firing people you don't have enough work to support is also complicated, unpleasant and expensive.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[lannocc]

I'm sorry but in my experience it is better to design first, optimize later.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[John Hasler]

> If Government contracting has so little profit, then why are so many
> companies scrambling to do it?

It has about the same profit as the alternatives or no one would bid on the jobs. They just figure the extra costs into their bid (they must employ experts to do that figuring) and so the government pays more for the same thing as would anyone else. Of course, there are many companies that won't bid on government jobs not because they are not qualified to supply the goods and/or services but because they choose not to make the necessary investment in government procurement expertise. In general, government contracting is a large part of your business or you don't do it at all. There are many middlemen whose sole business is buying stuff (or subcontracting), jumping through procurement hoops, and selling to the government. Companies hire former government procurement officers to handle their government contracts because no one else knows the system well enough to navigate it.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[westyvw]

If you think you can do that there is money to be made. Spatial maps, particularly NOT flash are in demand. You might want to add GeoDjango to your toolkit and have at it.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[Yvanhoe]

If it can make more people involved in political choices, into realizing where the taxpayers money goes, and what can be bought with the budget of a war, I consider this money well spent.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[palegray.net]

I'm sorry, but in my experience the things you apparently consider "optimization" are basic rules of the road.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done government contracting for the Air Force for 10 years. I finally reached the following conclusion: the production of a working system, a secure system, an elegant or efficient system are all secondary concerns. The primary purpose of contracting a company for a government IT project is to use up the budget, thus ensuring next year's budget. End of story.

Re:Wrong line of work!

[elrous0]

Section 508 is a bitch to work with, especially the "best practices." It's one of the reasons so many government sites look like generic webpages from 1997. Designing a site that is both professional looking, presents information in a compelling way, contains modern useful tools, and complies completely with section 508 best practices is nigh impossible. I'm all for the blind having accessibility. But 98% of the population shouldn't have to suffer because 2% of the population is blind. Section 508 ideally even discourages separate alternative pages for the blind. And don't even THINK about including any video, audio, or java/flash apps (unless you're willing to pay big bucks for subtitles, transcripts, etc.).

Re:Wrong line of work!

[drinkypoo]

Mod parent up. This isn't your everyday database problem.

It's your everyday data warehousing problem, writ large.

The solution is probably to institute a warehouse of warehouses, organized logically such that it consolidates like databases.

This would be costly and outside the scope of this particular project, but of nearly incalculable value. (And in any case, the value is probably impossible to calculate without performing this exercise!)

Re:Wrong line of work!

[cpghost]

Point is, don't blame Adobe, blame yourself and those companies (and others) who require flash.

I only blame institutions that chose to go by proprietary "standards", instead of offering a no-barrier standards-compliant website, when they are in fact required by law to do so. They can use Flash as long as they like, as long as they provide an alternative path to navigate their content.

Doesn't even validate...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recovery.gov%2FPages%2Fhome.aspx&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0

Re:Doesn't even validate...

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing validates.

Except that

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that there aren't sites that do comply - 508 compliance is a joke and requires far far far too much for true "compliance". The fact that Ms. Rush admits the navigation complies is huge, kudos to Smartronix for getting that far. This statement in the summary "a baseline expectation â" is a long-standing federal-government requirement for information-systems accessibility to persons with disabilities" is very telling of the bias presented here. It makes 508 appear to be a few things it is very much not (complied with or required in very many places).

Re:Except that

[Anonymous Coward]

From the source, HTTP headers, and the general URL layout, it appears that the site is running on top of SharePoint.
So the fact that navigation, which is almost certainly provided using out-of-the-box functionality, is just as compliant
as it is in the base product means somewhere between jack and shit.

Cost Analysis

[swanzilla]

Recovery funds paid out: $85,977,000,000
Recovery.gov overhaul cost: $9,500,000
Recovery.gov maintenance cost: $8,500,000
Hindering market self-correction: Priceless

Re:Cost Analysis

[cellurl]

pi ?

How to do it.

[NoYob]

If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with Django and MySQL.

First start a company. Then make campaign contributions to the incumbent politicians that are part of the committee that overseas these things. Start in the Senate. Of course, you'll have to get around the campaign finance laws, but don't worry, there are plenty of law firms that can help - for a very nice price.

That' s not enough though! You also need a lobbying firm to lobby other politicians and the Government offices that also have input - there are folks that will do that for a nice price too.

Now, there will be others who will do the same, so you'll have to be very strategic and get the best advisers.

Now, after winning the contract, just outsource the actual design and implementation to the lowest bidder, and keep the profits; which in this case $10 million minus $5-6 million in campaign contributions and lobbyists less $200,000 (let's be generous!) for the actual software development, leaves you a profit of $3.8 million to $4.8 million.

Of course, you may have to go overseas because, as every CIO says, there are no qualified American programmers and they have to go overseas for the talent! All those people that don't have jobs out in the market now aren't qualified - even though the companies that used to employ them found them to be qualified for years but had to let them go for cost cutting purposes. They're out of work so there must be something wrong with them!

But wait! There's more!

You won't book the $3.8 to $4.8 million! You'll have other expenses and things to pay, tax write-offs and whatnot that will leave you with a loss. Then of course, there's going to be tax credits that will enable you and your buddies to get more money out of the American Taxpayer.

That is how you make money with Government contracts.

Re:How to do it.

[foo fighter]

What are you talking about? Why would contractors do what government employees should be doing anyway?

Oh, what's that? 'Small government' and 'Free market' Republicans want this?

OK, then!

Actually, your web site SUCKED !

[Anonymous Coward]

It is easy to say you are compliant, but there is NO web site that is 100% compliant.

This article is focusing on the WRONG thing. It should focus on how helpful the web site is for 80% of the population.

Delicious Irony!

[Anonymous Coward]

9.5M??? Hopefully I am not the only one appriciating the irony in the prominent "Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse" link on the top of the page!

Of course the site displays the 'seal of quality'

[jmorris42]

I thought about making this post without even bothering to go look, but yup the site displays the 'seal of quality' up in the url bar. As soon as you see that .aspx at the end you know you are probably in for a world of pain at at site. You know things will probably suck from end to end. Performance issues, design issues, usability issues, the whole bit.

No, using Microsoft products isn't always the reason but it is always a symptom of the root problem. It is as close to a "This site designed by idiots!" logo as we are ever likely to see. Only idiots (or companies beholden to Microsoft's goodwill) pick Microsoft's inferior in every way stuff to roll out a high volume, high visibility site on. Poor design isn't caused by hosting on a Microsoft server but it is another symptom of designed by idiots.

Googlemaps API anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

The main page as it were seems like it could be written on top of Google Maps and not require flash. of course then the managers couldn't justify the ten megabucks so easy. there is an option to search the data and get results one page at a time in a table, but it seems broken and oh bonus the entire thing is built on a foundation of Microsoft.

How very ironic...

[mr.dreadful]

That a website promoting our fiscal recovery cost so much. As an American citizen and a professional web developer, I'd like to understand how this amount can possibly be justified. Did they build a data-center to house this site? I'll bet you that the web developers who actually built this site didn't take home the majority of that cash.

This stinks.

Re:How very ironic...

[langelgjm]

90% of the cost was probably due to the lawyers who worked on the contracts.

Re:How very ironic...

[shutdown -p now]

That a website promoting our fiscal recovery cost so much. As an American citizen and a professional web developer, I'd like to understand how this amount can possibly be justified.

It's a commercial company hired by the government with, what seems, very little oversight - a recipe for disaster, as you have all the wonders of capitalist cost cutting, with no competition / market hand to keep that in check.

Re:How very ironic...

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. Consider the company that did the work is probably just a minority or female owned shell company (good for getting government contracts) that then farms the work out to India or China for $2/hr. Then owner/CEO then takes the millions home. Just a big clusterfuck.

The government wastes so much money it's ridiculous. Once I actually quit a government contractor out of disgust.

Re:How very ironic...

[Anonymusing]

If the site has to interface with older, obscure, and/or legacy databases in other government divisions in order to gather its data, then that will eat up a lot of time and money. I suspect that the front end was the cheapest part. It's the back end that probably had the I.T. guys pulling out their hair.

Re:How very ironic...

[izomiac]

I wonder that as well. A quick glance at the site reveals mostly textual information, graphs, and maps. Since it's a government site, accessibility (e.g. by the handicapped and mobile devices) far, far, far outweighs aesthetics. It's not like government paperwork is very easy on the eyes. IMHO they would have been far better off with simple HTML such as lists and plain text, imagemap maps, and raw data below graphs. Have a decent web designer add a nice and unobtrusive stylesheet to spruce it up a bit, and throw the bulk of the resources into the back end. Faster loading, more accessible, doesn't require professional web designers to make minor changes, better results with search engines, and much cheaper. Is there a reason such an approach is rarely if ever seen in the wild? My only guess is that manager types think customers/citizens prefer flashiness over usability and web designers have a good sales pitch for more complicated sites.

Re:How very ironic...

[indiechild]

I'm a web developer as well, but the kind of money being thrown around is not surprising. A lot of big government/commercial web projects cost that much. And you're right, obviously hardly any of it goes to the actual people doing the hard work.

Re:How very ironic...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the oversight that costs all the money. Time keeping, accounting certifications, status meetings, and endless reports. Lack of oversight isn't a recipe for disaster, it's lack of accountability that's the real problem. The government hacks responsible for the site will neither receive a reward nor a punishment for the success or failure of the site, therefore it's likely to be a failure since no one cares.

Re:How very ironic...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once I actually quit a government contractor out of disgust.

Me too, though I didn't quite phrase it that way in my letter of resignation. My coworkers were well aware of my views, though, and while most of them shared it, there weren't in a financial position to quit (families to support and such).

Re:How very ironic...

[cmorford]

I like the button at the top of recovery.org, "Report Fraud, Waste or Abuse". Can we report recovery.org?

Re:How very ironic...

[gorbachev]

There was a discussion on this on Slashdot already.

The contract is NOT expensive, if you look at the requirements, which are (or were) publicly available on the Government's contracting job bank.

In fact, if you looked at the requirements, and have any experience in system integration work, you'd have felt pity for whoever schmuck ended up doing the work for this one. It was preconditioned to fail.

It does seem, though, that the contractor made a best effort to screw it up on their own with the non-compliant implementation. If the Government requires them to fix it, I'm pretty sure the contractor won't actually make any profit out of the project.

But what if he doesn't?

[tjstork]

What if, like the vast majority of people, he doesn't lose his sight or senses? If it is reasonable for people who are impared to wish the same impairment on others, is not reasonable to wish that impaired people did not exist?

Report 'em!

[spicate]

If you think that claiming accessibility without delivering it is fraud, and that the whole project cost was ridiculously inflated.... report them! http://www.recovery.gov/Contact/ReportFraud/Pages/ComplaintForm.aspx That's what the form is there for!

Re:Report 'em!

[The Moof]

You are at this page because you loaded the JavaScript free version of reCAPTCHA, but it looks like you have JavaScript. We need to prevent this for security reasons. If you are testing out the JavaScript-free version, turn off JavaScript in your browser.

*sigh*

How to do 508 right - www.financialstability.gov

[tomtermite]

Our company developer the Trouble Asset Relief Program's site, at http://www.financialstability.gov/

I am happy to report, MOSTLY compliant with Section 508.

And it has cool stuff, too.

NOW THERES YOUR PROBLEM!

[phantomcircuit]

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx

same data?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are sharing the same data, then what's the difference between USAspending.gov and recovery.gov?

Or the difference is my pocket getting more empty and someone elses (the contractors) getting more filled. So much for power to the people, it's the typical overload them with data and everyone will assume it's all good and correct.

Just as I went thru jury duty this week: I don't have a law degree, so don't overload me with cool legalese, just give me the facts and let me go decide (don't have a week to waste).

Meh.

[msauve]

This is the government. It's not about "openness" or "accessability," it's all about the appearance of openness and accessability.

Re:Meh.

[conureman]

Yup. I managed to drill down to some locations in the People's Republic of California that I recognised, and they obfuscated who got the money and what for. I was able to infer from the locations who it was, big bucks for the local ACORN-style money sinks. I should have been a social service contractor, that's where the money is.

private website: recovery.com

[marhar]

Here's an interesting note on NPR relating to a private company that is aggregating the same data.

http://recovery.com/

"When Congress approved the stimulus bill, it made a point of setting up a Web site called Recovery.gov to allow citizens to track all those billions in spending. But if you've gone looking for it, you might have stumbled across another, very similarly named site, Recovery.com.

The dot-com version is not run by the government, but it also tracks the stimulus -- and much of its information is more up to date. In fact, it has spending information that the government won't have until October, and its data provide a sneak peak into how the stimulus spending is going.

The site is run by Onvia, a Seattle company that collects and sells data on government procurement. Whatever the layer of government -- whether state, county, school district or local water board -- Onvia wants to know what's being purchased."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112893572&ps=cprs

Re:private website: recovery.com

[Com2Kid]

Quick comparison:

Recovery.gov

• Flash Map of USA
• Able to quickly zoom in on any region, select state from drop down, or enter a ZIP code, all from home page
• Location of graphical icons on map shows business or organization's location.
• Can download data in KML format
• Variety of options of filtering displayed data on map

Recovery.com

• Flash Map of USA
• Click on a state, long loading time of state specific page
• Cannot graphically locate fund allocation on map
• Data is spread across multiple pages, smallest filtering option is to split data up by city.

While showing the data in page format is definitely more accessible from the POV of a screen reader, the graphical map is more useful in terms of finding out how money is being spent around where I live.

The recovery.gov website is actually pretty good, in under a minute I was finding how funds were being allocated in my neighborhood.

Re:private website: recovery.com

[spgass]

The .gov site wasn't super fast but it worked. You would think Section 508 compliance wouldn't be an outstanding issue with such a large high-profile contract. I wonder how much more money the contractor will get to make the site compliant. Recovery.gov results for my zip code: $0

Looking at the contractor web site

[Orion Blastar]

Smartronix it looks like their own style of designing their corporate web site is not disability accessible.

They use Flash content pop-up Windows that a blind person cannot see, unlike an image tag that has Alt text or a hyperlink.

Obviously they used their own corporate web site standards than the federal government accessibility standards.

Re:Looking at the contractor web site

[atheistmonk]

Obviously they used their own corporate web site

Seems like it. Their standards seem to be "well, we can access it!".

direct access

[TheSHAD0W]

It'd be nice if the site would give direct access to the database, so people could mashup whatever they wanted. Anybody know what it runs on? SQL?

Re:direct access

[Civil_Disobedient]

It'd be nice if the site would give direct access to the database

It'd be nice if they provided a copy of the database. Direct access would probably set a world record for fastest denial-of-service in web history.

Re:Isn't this going a bit far?

[conureman]

I probably wouldn't be considered handicapped, but a few moments on the site made me think tl;dr. Fuck that state of the art web site shite. Fortunately most of the web pages I choose to peruse eschew Flash and other crap like that. My dad thinks the web is a waste of time because of that stuff, which won't render on his ancient browser anyway, for the most part. I am constantly trying to explain that there is good, useful information available but he tends to believe his own experience more than mine. I never got to any tables but if any of that dreck met accessibility standards then clearly the law should be changed.

It's Sharepoint!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This site is all sharepoint... Is should be accessible, but for 10mil, some designer thought to remove all the features that sharepoint provides, accessibility! The out-of-the-box install would have included a mobile page view for any page created but some wise-a$$ thought for looks lets disable everything we don't need including the built-in sub-systems renderer which produces mobile & screen-reader accessible pages.

Take a look at: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx they even have an article about moving to sharepoint... But damn for 10 mil, I could have done it for 1k and still had an accessible site... but hey there are those golden toilet seats!!!

Flash has accessibility mechanisms

[osssmkatz]

http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/

Accessability statement

[certain death]

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/Accessibility.aspx Looks like they took this story to heart!

Re:Of course the site displays the 'seal of qualit

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. Microsoft users are idiots, if only the world was run by you.

Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'll notice, in the upper right corner, you can submit an online "complaint form" regarding the abuse of Recovery Act Funds. $9.5 million spent on that mess probably qualifies...

Reliance on Flash?

[atheistmonk]

At least it isn't Silverlite, I guess. Lesser of two evils? Fuck them, anyway, none of this kind of crap should be on a .gov.

Afro-American Racism Against Whites and Asians

[Anonymous Coward]

During the election, about 95% of African-Americans voted for Barack Hussein Obama due solely to the color of his skin. See the exit-polling data by CNN.

Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against Whites (and other non-Black folks). Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is Hispanic or Asian. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable. (A maximum of 65% for McCain is okay. So, European-American support at 55% for McCain is well below this threshold and, hence, is not racist.)

If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.

At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.

Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.

African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.

Testing comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Testing comments on a different article because Slashdot is giving me an "unknown error in the submission" when I try to comment on the OpenSSH article: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/10/01/2320222.

It's not just me; the story has zero comments.

died

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like slash dotting them broke the site. I got the home page to load once and now get "Connection Interrupted" Page load Errors on all links.

From a technology point of view

[kbahey]

From a technology point of view, the site was open source when it first launched in February or March 2009. It used Drupal on Linux.

Now, it is using ASP.NET, presumably on Windows.

Not saying this made it less accessible. Far from it. But that there was also a switch from open source to proprietary as well.

Attractive and usable or accessable: choose one

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

Those maps, as he points out: "creative commons shows how it's done". Creative commons shows how it is done, to cater to morons who can't pick their state out on a map of the entire country. SERIOUSLY? Not having state abbreviations is an issue for this guy? Since when is 'fucking moron' classified as a disability? Does 508 cover it?

I hereby raise a middle finger to your vision of accessibility, Mr. Seth Grimes.

No .net java postback bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't notice any java .net postback unbook-markable bullshit so any grade I might come up with is in the A+ to B- range. It almost doesn't matter if they've managed to avoid that crappy MS locked-in un-bookmarkable bs.

The recovery needs time so, let's give the new administration a chance to right the ship after 8 or 10 or 100 years of crap, em k?

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who programs Flash and HTML to meet federal 508 Accessibility requirements, I think the criticisms of this website are unfair for the following reasons:
1) Although the letter of the 508 law is clear, its implementation is highly subjective by a 508 examiner. The line between "accessibility" (which is what the law is about) and "usability" is often blurred by 508 examiners.
2) No distinction is made here between the different types of disability: vision impairment (blind), audio impairment (deaf), motor impairment (can't use mouse). It seems the critic is referring to vision impairment, but this is never stated.
3) The suggested remediations for coding tables (i.e. using TH instead of TD or TR) are outdated as most screen readers, such as JAWS, establish reading orders that are independent of what the program can control.
4) If the point of the site is to communicate data, the "Text View of Data" link is the fairest alternative to the interactive maps. From a usability standpoint, one could argue that there should be a brief alt-tag summary such as "Map showing states with large populations receive the most money".

Relaunched Recovery.gov Fails

[Anonymous Coward]

They fail at other things too, like acutally giving money instead of taking it:

AWARD OVERVIEW
Agency Name: Department of Housing and Urban Development Project Location: N/A
Award Number: TX24M000002-07Z Project Location - State: TX
Funding Amount: -$26,692 Project Location - Zip Code: 770776678
Ending Date: 2009-05-31 Congressional District: 7

Looks like DHUD had to pay the govt for their contract!

Not a fan of this administration, but...

[pcolaman]

I'm actually glad for this website, as it just reaffirms my belief that this stimulus bill is a load of shit. Most of the recipients of grant money in my local area are accountants and attorneys, who are the ones driving around in Porches and Bimmers while not creating tons of jobs for local citizens. Hurray for progress.

Re:Not a fan of this administration, but...

[misexistentialist]

You're overlooking all the wealth trickling down into the gas station attendant industry

Re:Not a fan of this administration, but...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I'm actually glad for this website, as it just reaffirms my belief that this stimulus bill is a load of shit. Most of the recipients of grant money in my local area are accountants and attorneys, who are the ones driving around in Porches and Bimmers while not creating tons of jobs for local citizens.

Our of curiosity, where do you live?

In my immediate vicinity the stimulus has gone to:

• modernization and operation grant for the public bus system, which was going to be reduced greatly leading to people being unable to get to nearby, affluent areas for work.
• a breast cancer prevention program for high risk women without healthcare, run by a local university.
• a modernization grant for the city to upgrade firefighting gear (we just had to call in two other regional firefighting groups to put out a fire downtown that destroyed a historic building).
• a grant to help keep some publicly subsidized housing for the poor open.

I guess what I'm saying is, they seem to be doing pretty well by my locality for the types of grants they're providing. I don't see any handouts to accountants or attorneys.

Re:Not a fan of this administration, but...

[pcolaman]

Florida, and here's a run down of just some of the money spent

-$80k in grants to one PA (doesn't specify what for, but it's a grant so no need to pay back)
-$70k in grants to a massage school
-$1.5mil to someone who is apparently clearing woods
-$450k to another PA (mostly in grants)
-$25k to an accounting firm
-$3 mil to a local university (which is in debt and cutting classes while paying the president a $5 mil salary)
-$200k to another local university that is actually not in debt

I could go on but I think the picture is clear. I'm sure some of it is doing some stimulating, but in the end it just seems like it's people taking advantage of government handouts. Big shocker there, right?

Re:Not a fan of this administration, but...

[pcolaman]

Which would never make it to the gas station attendant, but instead the oil companies coffers. I thought this was going to be the administration of no special interests?

(PS - Yeah I know you were just being funny)

It should have been simple

[rossz]

If accessibility is a major concern, you have at least one blind person on your staff that must approve the layout. I worked with a blind DBA for a year and had the luxury of having him critique a website of mine for accessibility and implemented all his recommendations. The changes weren't all that difficult since I don't use evil crap like flash in the first place.

Question on Accessibility

[malus314]

I was reading the accessibility page on recovery.gov and found this:

Pages have been designed to avoid a screen-flicker frequency greater than 2Hz and lower than 55 Hz.

So... what frequency does that leave? Could anyone tell me what I'm missing here?
I would think anything lower than 55Hz would also be lower than 2Hz, and anything greater than 2Hz would be greater than 55Hz, so.... I'm a little confused.
(And, yes, I did ask my friend Google, although if anyone could give me a gentle push toward a search term better than "Hertz", I'd be appreciative.)

Re:Question on Accessibility

[shentino]

How the hell can a web page control screen flicker?

That's a uber deep setting buried in the X config or the device manager.

Re:Question on Accessibility

[malus314]

Hell if I know!
You can read the page where it says it here, though:
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/Accessibility.aspx

Re:Question on Accessibility

[dbcad7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate

I don't know, but I am assuming they are avoiding 2 thru 55 HZ ,,, as to how it applies, I imagine it has to do with the frame rate of flash.

Change you can believe in

[Anonymous Coward]

You voted them in...What were you expecting?

It's the .NET way: Quirks

[roland_mai]

It's written in .NET which throws out all sorts of standards: W3C and WAI, and keeps only one: Quirks. I think this site was launched way too early.

Huh.

[The Wild Norseman]

The site's accessibility failures which are shared by another showcase government-transparency site, USAspending.gov are nonetheless easily seen."

Does making the site so bad that even a blind user could see the faults count as a success or failure?

508 Compliance is Retarded

[fluffy99]

Seriously, the 508 compliance stuff is brain-dead. I have to file a 508 compliance exception form because my monitor doesn't have the braille on the keys so a blind person can tell the difference between them. The onus is on the manufacturers to do the voluntary testing, and most don't bother.

and you're also wrong

[hany]

If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with Django and MySQL.

Here you're wrong also. If you used those you would produce something better than current APSX+Flash+whatever. I guess. :)

shocking!

[OpieTaylor]

Obama refuses to use markup "...to associate data cells and header cells for data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers. "

Impeach him!

More government turd polishing

[xednieht]

Eliminate personal income tax, rely on the corporations that buy the politicians to keep government afloat, stop giving our money to failed corporations, and you won't need a $17 million website to see how bad government does it's job.
Go ahead dress me in troll. But I'm an American, not a Democrap, not a Republican't - a pure and simple American. Real Americans know that the thing that Democraps and Republican'ts do best is nothing. The government should do more of THAT and let Americans take care of themselves.

Their previous install wasn't all that good either

[mgiff]

What I am most surprised about this is that the administration quickly got this up using Drupal, because they were able to leverage a free software CMS. No that their initial install was perfect, they took a pretty accessible CMS that produces nice valid xHTML Strict code and made both worse in their theming/implementation.

Rather than learning anything from the previous install they rewrote it in ASP and reproduced or even enhanced the accessibility problems that were there in their first attempt. It's frustrating to see how little money people are willing to contribute back to making a good tool better and how easy it is to just toss millions at a vendor in order to give a site (that was only about 6 months old at this point) a fresh coat of paint.

So much more could have been done to improve the accessibility if their approach to their website was more collaborative & long term in nature.

_full_disclosure_SMARTRONIX_is_a_good_company_

[negative_0ne]

I created a slashdot account just to make this comment_

i've been a lurker for years..

*FULL DISCLOSURE* I used to work for smartronix, so yes i know some of the employees, and processes that go through getting the government contracts.

basically, they have main office in maryland, and they send contractors to various locations to do work. i moved up to lexington park, to work at NAWCAD naval air base. there we worked on classified and non-classified projects.

there is a long process for submitting bids, and there is a strict process for getting approvals from the government for these bids.

yes, there is a lot of overhead involved. i don't know the full financials.

i worked as many things there. UNIX admin/NT admin/SUN/DEC/Secure HP unix admin. then i moved onto writing documentation, and requirements for other projects. i finally ended up doing a lot of web-development for a dHMTL based project.

that was a few years ago. i suspect things haven't changed that much there.

they were a first class company when i worked them (i left another less reputable company)..and they had serious/smart and dedicated workers. even the president had technical knowledge, and would get involved in the project work.

i know they are coming under a lot of scrutiny for this project, and i'm sure they'll come through.

i've moved to another company know in a different state, but if i need a job, i know i can go back there, and not have to worry if they are doing good work or not.

i was always treated fairly, they treated their employees like family, and i NEVER had an issue once while i was there..

later

-1

Sounds like the site is as bogus as the recovery!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Obama,

The first thing to do when you discover yourself in a deep hole is to stop digging.

Sincerely,
Your Broke Country

This site is incredible. What's wrong with it?

[Viewsonic]

I've never been to it before, in fact I totally forgot about this. I just punched in my zip code and this is pretty damn amazing. I was able to zoom down to a street, look at what money is going where, pull up even MORE info about the specifics. This is crazy. What are people complaining about, really?

The reality of Accessibility

[kwelch007]

OK folks. Speaking as someone working in the Accessibility market (CTO of http://www.virtual508.com/) I can say that there are a lot of different metrics used to define what is "Accessible" and what isn't. Some disagree, but many find some common definition for "Accessibility" aswell.

Should IT be available to those with disabilities? Yes! Can I or anyone else tell you what will make said IT definitively "Accessible"? No, not with distinction, but we can give you some good guidelines. Frankly, without going into detail (but focusing on web sites,) nested tables are a very inaccessible format. I could go on and on. The reality is that all developers should keep Accessibility in mind while developing their software, be it web deployed or otherwise. This is a growing concern, especially if a software vendor/consultant wishes to sell their products/services to the Federal government.

My email address is kendellw@virtual508.com. I look forward to any conversation any of you would like to have regarding Accessibility.

Kendell