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P J Edington’s Remarks at [P.J. Edington, is an Governmental Programs’ Executive at IBM in Washington, D.C. and works with the IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center on policy and standards issues. This text was originally provided in a rough draft format from the VLI Reporting Communication Access Realtime Translation, CART, transcript. CART is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. Therefore, the transcript was then corrected to ensure an understandable record of the proceedings.] IBM and Technology: Employment Issues Introduction I am thrilled to be last because I got to hear Paul Schroeder first who really laid out the issues very clearly and we really do agree on all those. And, Kelby, I appreciate your comments although one of them I don't agree with. I do see that we have some issues in common and we are trying to solve them, but the issue I don't agree with on was your statement "Americans are far behind in the global economy." I am not disagreeing on the policy issues, just about your comment about the economy: I think we're doing a great job, although we do have to keep our eyes open. I'm going to quickly go over some things. I'm going to approach it a little differently, from a corporate perspective, and just quickly go over IBM’s approach. Then I would like to raise what I think are some difficult future issues that we're going to be facing. I think Paul and Kelby have outlined where we are now on the issues of absorbing the technology for jobs and employment, however, I think we're heading on a path with the rapid development of technology into an even more precarious spot. I think there are some areas where we really have to start developing stronger policy and standards so we don't get farther behind. But first I want to put up a quote from our Senior Vice President of Research. This is the person who oversees everything we do in technology at the company. I think this quote is important because it says where IBM is on this issue: Accessibility at IBM “Accessibility is important to IBM and not just because it's the right thing to do for our people or because it's an essential part of our business, but also because I believe driving higher levels of accessibility will be the primary way we begin to solve the difficult usability issues that information technology has thus far not been able to solve.”—Dr. Paul Horn Usability is something Jeff Rosen touched on earlier and was reported on by Suzanne Bruyere. I think this quote is important because it puts our company and our research in the right place to move forward. IBM and Employing People with Disabilities With IBM and employment, technology definitely isn't our major issue. IBM has a history and a culture of not only diversity, but hiring people with disabilities. We have always provided our employees with the technology they need to perform their jobs and in addition, these employees are an integral part of helping IBM develop new assistive technologies. It seems the issue for us is in the recruitment of people with disabilities globally and then supporting them so they prosper with the company. Kelby, you talked about people leaving the government. It's the same kind of thing in the private industry. We have to create a place for everyone to grow: develop the networks and the support mechanisms to keep people in our company. We have over 348,000 people worldwide so it's a very big place for everybody to learn and grow in the corporation. It's particularly difficult if you don't have the role models and mentors to help you move forward. I think we are lucky for in our Human Resources department we have terrific people that are putting new programs together to help recruit and support employees with disabilities. Some of them are listed on the PowerPoint here. For instance, the Entry Point program (Jenny Stern who runs that program is here with us in the audience). It is an intern program that gives year round academic instruction. There are other programs too: Project Able, a project to identify candidates and business champions, and Lift, training for computer programmers. We run a Diversity Campus Executive Program that sends our IBM executives to recruit on campus. But what I think is just as important is what IBM does once we bring on employees. Support in the Workplace Hiring is only the first step; once on board a corporation has to create a supportive and comfortable atmosphere for people to stay. Some of the support things that we do include a biannual global leadership conference where we bring employees in and plan what we can do differently. We also have diversity networks set up across the company. They include ones for persons who are blind and visually impaired, for people who are cognitively impaired or for deaf and hard of hearing persons, and also one for persons who physically and mobility impaired. Breaking our networks down to subgroups within the disabled community helps not only the communities gel but has us recognizing special issues with each community. Another support is built into Management Training, which you raised, Kelby. This is a huge area for a company our size for it involves changing attitudes across the globe. For instance, how do you ensure that all managers have the same open attitude on hiring diversity when you have a company that is in 170 countries worldwide? How do we get to all those people to see it right? It's tough but at IBM diversity is a core part of every manager’s training and responsibility. One tool the company has used to support our diverse employee base is Corporate Instruction 162. This corporate directive predates Section 508 and provides direction to the organization for the accessibility of information technology. It requires all IBM products and service engagement deliverables to be accessible. Further it also applies to Internet and intranet systems, Web services offerings, and internal tools and applications. Our goal is 100% accessibility corporate wide. Now, that's a lofty goal our progress is measured every year. The last report I saw had us close to 90% in many areas but only 67% overall. Now, that doesn’t seem very good with a corporate instruction that came out in 1992. Well, the problem is that at IBM we buy a lot of companies. And every time we buy a new company, it brings our accessibility score down because many of these companies are not focused in accessible IT. Once they become a part of IBM we develop a plan for bringing them into compliance with our corporate instruction. So in the big corporate world, we have some great goals driving accessibility, but they are hard to achieve when you're always buying other companies! We also have a real estate team that travels worldwide and ensure that our buildings -- as we buy these new companies, we buy their buildings -- are accessible. One other tool that I think is important; we have a global people with disabilities executive task force to work on issues at the highest corporate levels. I think I'm going to skip this slide which talks about the people with disabilities task force. It just started a program called the Triple A initiative, to drive accommodation, accessibility and attitude in the company and the marketplace. These are the kinds of things HR is developing to support our employees. I'm going to skip all the technology slides I brought. I was going to talk about the technology we are developing under a corporate Innovation initiative but I think I can skip over that because I really want to address some of the stuff that Kelby and Paul brought up, the policy stuff. From our perspective, as I mentioned, the technology for our employees is not our issue. We are a technology company and we do accommodate and give our employees the technology they need to be productive in the work force. I would also like to add that some of our most far-reaching technologies in the area of assistive technology have come from our employees with disabilities who are in the research. Significant Unresolved Policy Issues When I went to the diversity network and asked “What are the issues you have right now for bringing on more people with disabilities?” and “What are the employment issues that stop us from hiring more people?” they came up with these three areas. These are what I would call gaps in policy coverage for hiring people with disabilities. Transportation issues. For blind and mobility impaired persons, transportation to get to the job location. We can hire them, we can give them all the accommodation they need at work but employees have got to be able to get to the front door, and in some areas where we are located, that's a big issue. We are a company where many people work virtually from their homes but we don't want to require people with disabilities to always be working at home. The network feels strongly that this would ghettoize them. We want our employees to have all the options available and so transportation is a problem for some our employees. One of my colleagues wanted me to stress to you that -- and he happens to be a quadriplegic -- for 20 years he's been traveling for the company and for 20 years the airline industry has not gotten any better in accommodating his travel. He says it is just so frustrating! And I have heard this from another of my colleagues in Australia who says: “I fly Qantas Air every single week and every single week it's like it's the first time they have seen me. They don't know what I need to get on the plane, they don't know what I need to get off and it's the same thing when I fly to the U.S.” So our employees wanted me to stress that one of the areas we really need to address is the Department of Transportation; they are not promoting policies that make airline travel easily accessible to all. Another issue, the relief for retro fitting cars and vans for the mobility impaired. I know, Paul, you talked about the cost of technology and the assistive technology and how that's going up. Well, it is also increasing for people who need vans and cars. Spending $90,000 to $100,000 for a specially equipped car is not within everyone’s means and there's no relief for people who are employed. Once you are employed, you have to cover that cost and it becomes prohibitive. Personal Assistance Services. Secondly, the cost for personal care for non-medical issues is an issue for us. We hope there would be a policy that could address this. Tax Relief. And the third gap is certain IRS tax relief for disabilities that right now is only available for the blind employees. So those are the issues we're dealing with as a technology company with the gaps that could help us to hire more people with disabilities. It is not that we don't have a commitment but these are areas in the policy that need to be addressed. The Future of Technology and Accessibility Now, the thing I really wanted to emphasize today is the three areas I see evolving and where we need to pay close attention because the technology is moving fast and the policy is not keeping up. These are also areas where the advocate community has to be thinking creatively on how to stay on top of developments and exploring ways to participate more fully in the technology, policy and standards development. Virtual Worlds. One issue is the rapid development of new technologies without accessible formats or alternatives, such as virtual worlds. 3D services or 3D learning environments are really starting to take off and there is slow or no development of new assistive technologies. Someone mentioned e-recruiting before. I read in the Washington Post last month about a company that was using Second Life as a recruitment tool for new employees. Second Life is a virtual world on the web. It is like a 3D game where you can create your own character or avatar and interact with others. This company decided to use Second Life for their first round interviews and make potential hiring decisions based on the virtual interview. So one had to create an avatar and operate it smoothly to be able to apply for a job and make it to the round of face-to-face interviews. I read that Google, Microsoft, eBay and this other company were all starting to use this new 3D technology, which is not accessible, to recruit and winnow down their applicants. So that's the first issue. We have got to figure out how to make emerging technologies accessible. And we have got to figure out how to do it before the technology becomes mature and then is ultra expensive to make it accessible. Standards Developed Too Slowly. Secondly, Paul talked about the global accessibility standards that we're both involved in and working on. And, Paul, you said the rapid development of these standards is a concern. I'm going to take the other side of this. My problem is the slow development of these standards is really the problem. I mean, we are now talking about standards in web accessibility, WAI WCAG 1.0, which is a web technical standard that is seven years old. And in Europe, countries are still adopting this standard today. This standard was great five years ago but now the technology has moved so far beyond it that nobody is going to design a website in DOS anymore. They are just not going to do it so we have to figure out a way to move these standards much faster to keep up with developing technologies. WCAG 2.0 has now has gone to final ballot and is almost complete but again, it doesn't take in this new 3D technology. So we now we have a new standard about to be finalized, functionally based, but it is still going to be behind the technology curve. So we're looking at these standards and trying to improve them Paul and I are sitting on a committee that's developing the refresh of the Section 508. In addition the European Commission just moved last week on a mandate to look at enforcement issues and also to look at what their procurement law. Japan and China are both exploring standards. Without a harmonized global standard that takes into account where technology is developing, we're always going to be behind the curve in enforcement. As I said, you can't force WCAG 1.0 compliance anymore because the technology has moved so far beyond it.. Interoperability. The third issue is interoperability. As we move in these web-based standards, open standards becomes a priority to be able to build on all the applications that are emerging. And so interoperability is a real issue, not only with assistive technology, but with all the technology. And unless we have open standards -- and that's my plug -- all these new technologies are not going to be able to work together or across platforms. With open standards the possibilities for technology are expanded and we see this as a key to innovation. So those are the three issues I would like to throw out that I think we all should be thinking about. And thank you.
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