How NSA Ensures Technology Remains Accessible and Usable for All Employees

“We have benchmarks and review criteria for our program,” Kron says. “We advise on which programs are priorities for development, and we test and evaluate vendor products under consideration.”

The office has driven recent accessibility improvements throughout the NSA, including providing automated captioning in its auditorium and improving the resolution of its video service. In addition, a pilot is being run to test secure, on-demand text-to-speech and speech-to-text technology to assist employees with hearing disabilities.

The NSA is also tackling a particularly difficult accessibility challenge: multifactor authentication. With two-step authentication, the second piece of authentication is usually generated on a smartphone, but those are not permitted in sensitive compartmented information facilities, so intelligence agencies generally use tokens with codes instead. However, those tokens are often not accessible for employees who are blind or have low vision, and outside the SCIF, standard smartphones are not accessible for some workers with disabilities.

“We’ve been challenged to find accessible authentication that doesn’t require access to the internet because that is a security risk,” Kron says. “We have some fascinating pilots right now looking at this challenge.”

Identifying Accessibility Barriers in the Workplace

One of the highlights of the NSA’s approach to accessibility is its close collaboration with its community of employees with disabilities. Kron also serves as co-chair of the NSA’s Enterprise Accessibility Council, an internal advisory body that includes representatives from the People With Disabilities employee resource group.

“PWD’s participation is critical. The very people who use the program can talk about barriers that they encounter in the workplace,” says Kron. “They help identify the major issues we want to prioritize and focus on. And we regularly review and see where we are at in meeting our accessibility goals.”

NSA leadership’s engagement and close work with its employees with disabilities has met with results: “Leadership is much more aware of the internal needs out there,” says Katherine Zuback, director of diversity, equality, inclusion and accessibility at the NSA. “We are seeing a threefold increase in accommodation requests received at my office. The feedback on our efforts from the agency’s People With Disabilities community has been very positive.”

Collaboration with the PWD group has also shifted the focus of the program from simply meeting requirements to providing employees with truly useful tools that help them perform their day-to-day work. Resources as mundane as timesheets have been updated to be fully accessible and highly usable by all employees.

“I like that the deputy CIO’s team provides standards and does testing, and that they bring in our community to determine usability,” Zuback says. “It might pass the standards, but is it usable? This is greatly appreciated by our community.”

“This is not just about checking a box,” Kron says. “We are aiming for usability, not just accessibility.”

The NSA’s accessibility standards are the same as those of other agencies in their overall alignment to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The agency reinforces Section 508-specific contract language in its technology acquisition processes. All NSA websites and applications must meet the NSA’s Information and Communication Technology Accessibility Standards (excluding certain missions or imported collateral) using the NSA ICT Accessibility Standards scoresheet. Whether through its own development or by testing third-party products, the NSA maintains a scoresheet that rates accessibility, using a scale of 1 to 5 to assess whether a project or product is fundamentally inaccessible for all persons with disabilities (1) or functionally accessible (5).

Using AI to Improve Digital Accessibility

Nearly 60 percent of federal websites are not fully usable by those who require assistive technology, according to comments from Federal CIO Clare Martorana regarding the Office of Management and Budget’s memorandum M-23-22, “Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience.” The issue of digital accessibility, and employees’ ability to access both external and internal systems and intranets, is a particular challenge, not just within the IC but within all federal agencies, Martorana notes.

Generative AI represents just one rapidly developing resource that could address accessibility issues on digital systems, says Gina Bhawalkar, principal analyst of design and accessibility at Forrester.

“Responsible use of AI is set to transform the accessibility market and the state of digital accessibility,” she says. “We’re seeing significant advancements in using AI to improve the coverage and accuracy of automated issue detection and to generate remediation suggestions. One example is using computer vision to more accurately detect issues like text on images without sufficient contrast, or generating code suggestions for developers and suggesting 508-compliant color combinations for designers.”

“AI and machine learning techniques offer great promise for addressing digital accessibility issues,” says Ash Johnson, senior policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “There are plenty of AI tools today that can help benchmark websites and other work areas. The potential of AI is enormous in helping to make a lot of these technologies easier to use for people with disabilities.”

Currently, the NSA’s blind and low-vision community can take advantage of the latest JAWS (Job Access With Speech) assistive technology screen reader. Version 2024 includes an AI feature called Picture Smart, which describes photos to users — especially useful where the text alternative on the web page may be missing or incorrect. In the near future, the agency plans to roll out an automated testing tool that will increase accessibility testing efficiency with human-centered AI, Kron says.

Development Standards Ensure Accessibility from the Start

NSA today strives to make digital tools and resources accessible from the start.

“If you structure a website incorrectly, it can get jumbled or unusable for visual assistance readers,” Zuback says. “We set up standards for development so these readers get a clean experience from the very beginning.”

Getting accessibility right at the start proves less expensive and problematic than addressing issues after tools are released.

“Some agencies will have an accessibility person or team responsible for accessibility needs,” Johnson says. “It’s important that those people are integrated into the workflow from the beginning. It’s hard to address accessibility after the fact.”

The NSA’s goal should not be to provide a technology fix after a system is deployed, Zuback and Kron agree, but instead to design systems and workflows with accessibility considerations top of mind at the start.

LEARN MORE: Section 508 helps feds ensure everyone has access to digital tools.

Procuring Accessible Systems Reduces the Need for Accommodations

Prioritizing accessibility from the start is essential not only for internal development and projects but also for external procurement. Intelligence agencies work with third-party vendors to acquire a variety of needed assistive technologies, including headsets and digital adapters, speech recognition software, adjustable monitor stands and adjustable keyboards.

“Organizations recognize the link between accessible procurement and accommodations,” Forrester’s Bhawalkar says. “When employees have accessible systems to do their jobs, the need for accommodations decreases. Providing accessible experiences helps organizations increase revenue, decrease costs, improve resilience and build trust.”

“We want every system and program we procure to be accessible from the start,” Kron says. “In terms of our procurement, for assistive — and all — technology, we put out the message that we expect what we buy to be fully accessible from the start. It is a big priority for us, and we want our industry partners to feel the same way about this issue.”