We provide one of the only solutions
that enables public facing websites to be 99% compliant will ALL aspect of the
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Software As A Service (SaasS) and is hosted on the FedRAMP (moderate) approved
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eTRANSERVICES is the only SDVOSB and HUBZone certified capable of selling the
product as of this blog's published date for government clients.
See AudioEye’s Press release: http://www.audioeye.com/audioeye-partners-with-strategic-small-business-etranservices/
The Audioeye Audio Internet Platform was
built to accommodate a large range of disabilities. The AudioEye solution
provides tools unique to each impairment, creating an all-encompassing
accessibility solution wrapped up into a single platform. From users with
complete vision loss to those with low sight or users that are hard of hearing or
just learning to read, the AudioEye accessibility solution provides the tools to
enhance the web access experience.
Lawsuit Says GSA Discriminates Against Blind Contractors
A group of blind federal
contractors filed a lawsuit
against the General Services Administration this week over a contractor website
they say shuts out the visually impaired.
The System for Award
Management website, SAM.gov,
contains numerous buttons, checkboxes, drop-down menus and “mouseovers” that
federal contractors must navigate each year in order to keep their contractor
status current. Those bells and whistles make it difficult or impossible for
screen reading software that blind people use to navigate the Internet to
decode the site, the suit claims.
GSA phone-in help desk
employees are also not sufficiently trained in disability issues, the suit
claims, making it even more difficult for blind contractors to complete their
registrations.
The suit was filed as
a class action by the American Council for the Blind and the Washington
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs in the U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia. The groups claim GSA violated Section 504
of the Rehabilitation Act, which, among other things, bars discrimination
against federal contractors and grantees based solely on a disability.
There are three named
plaintiffs who are helping to pursue the lawsuit. They’re all contractors who had
difficulty registering or re-registering on SAM.gov. Eventually two of the
three had to reveal personal information, such as usernames and Social Security
numbers, to either friends or GSA help desk employees in order to complete
their registrations.
“It would be one thing
if [the Environmental Protection Agency’s] website wasn’t compliant with screen
reader software,” Matthew Handley, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told Nextgov.
“But this is all the more troubling because this is the agency that’s supposed
to be policing all the other agency websites and it doesn’t appear to be
policing its own websites.”
GSA had not responded
by 5 p.m. Thursday to Nextgov
emails and phone calls seeking comment.
GSA manages a large
portion of civilian federal contracting for other government agencies and
publishes best practices guides for federal digital technology. The American
Council for the Blind spent about a year urging GSA to make SAM.gov accessible,
Handley said. When those changes weren’t sufficient, he said, they filed suit.
“We’d just sort of
reached a dead end with them and decided we didn’t have any way to push this
along without resorting to the court system,” he said.
The council hasn’t
done a full investigation but suspects there may be accessibility issues with
other federal contracting websites such as the Federal Business Opportunities
site, FBO.gov, Handley said. The
organizations hope that drawing attention to SAM.gov’s accessibility issues
will press GSA and other agencies to fix other websites, he said.
The groups are asking
a federal judge to order GSA to make SAM.gov accessible and to reimburse their
attorneys’ fees. The plaintiffs cannot seek damages under the statute.
GSA has 60 days to
formally respond to the lawsuit.
If you would like to learn more about
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benefits organization significantly and requires almost no changes to existing
website and code. Please visit a few AudioEye
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