Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) - an emerging standard for Section 508 Compliance documentation

In 2001, the Information Technology Industry Council partnered with the General Services Administration to create a tool that would assist Federal contracting and procurement officials in fulfilling the market research requirements specified in Section 508 (governing the accessiblity of Web sites and software applications to disabled users). The result of their collaboration was the 508 Evaluation Template – a simple, web-based checklist that allows Vendors to document how their product did or did not meet the various Section 508 Requirements.

Today, I finally got around to producing a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) document that defines our committment to Section 508, which I've blogged about many times. Recently, we have seen versions of the VPAT attached to several RFPs from various federal agencies and public institutions, so it appears to be heading towards becoming a standard first step for 508 Compliance evaluation.

Now we are at the point with Section 508 compliance where we were in 2001 with PCI compliance (self-assessment). Over time, I expect that we and others in our industry will move towards fully-audited compliance and independent reports for Section 508, as we now have with PCI level 1 compliance.

Third Annual MSR Partner Forum

On march 12th, I attended the Meeting Sites Resource Partner Forum in Anaheim. Tim and Jennifer Brown and their son Rob Wilson have built a great site selection company, and they hosted a first-class event. Because Certain is focused on the meeting planners' perspective, it was interesting for me to see the events industry from hoteliers' viewpoint. I also enjoyed seeing the new features for hotels in Meeting Evolution, their new web-based application for Site Selection and Event RFP management.

Exchanging cancelled meeting space - A great idea, right?

The event had two round-table brain-storming discussions. The first was on the benefits and issues involved in trying to broker cancelled meeting space to companies that could use it. In theory, taking cancelled meeting space and re-selling it to another group seems like an effective way to offer discount meetings to a new group while saving cancellation penalties for the original group. After listening to these discussions, however, I believe that in practice the concept of re-using cancelled meeting space can only work profitably when exchanged within a single organization.

Only very large organizations would need enough meeting space to potentially be able to switch groups into cancelled space without changing the contract with the hotel. And these companies tend to cancel a large number of their meetings at once, as is happening now during the current recession, making it less likely that the cancelled space can be re-used on a broad scale.

I've read a lot of sales pitches about the benefits of re-selling or exchanging cancelled meeting space. It's worth a shot to try doing so internally within large organizations, but I don't think I'd want to be in the business of brokering cancelled space among different organizations. If someone has a proven way of doing this profitably, I'd love to hear about it.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

The second round table discussion covered changes in hoteliers' business practices in this recession. During the 2003-8 expansion, many hotels' ownership structure changed dramatically. Hedge funds discovered that they could buy hotel chains, sell the land, lease the buildings to franchise owners, hire hotel management companies, and move hotels under different brands. This created a profitable re-organization of assets for a while, but now that occupancy rates are falling and cancellations are rising, the sales managers at my table discovered they have multiple owners, with conflicting goals.

During the 2001-2 downturn, one sales manager received a call every day from her boss, imploring her to drive more business into their hotels. But now she gets calls from three "bosses" each day. The first comes from hotel owners who want business driven to their property, not caring about the other properties in the same brand who may be a better fit for the business. The second call comes from the hotel management company, who wants her to maximize sales and profit across the entire chain. The third comes from various brands, who want leads to come into their brand over others. With the media mania about companies hosting "extravagant" events at resorts, high-end brands are competing for business that previously would have gone to mid-range brands, who in turn want the business of economy brands.

Somebody made billions re-organizing the hotel industry, but I think a chain who owns and manages it's hotels and brand could have an advantage in this market over the complexity of multiple competing "owners".

Identity theft - the most prevalent crime in America?

I spoke at the Society of Government Meeting Professionals regional meeting in Oklahoma City this weekend. If you haven't been to Oklahoma City recently, its Bricktown area is nice - with a great baseball park, new NBA stadium, and a nice "riverwalk" (really a concrete canal, but well done anyway).

Enter the Secret Service

Daniel A. Baker spoke immediately before me. He's a Special Agent from the Oklahoma City Field Office of the U.S. Secret Service and he gave a fascinating talk on identity theft. I spend most of my time trying to prevent credit card and information theft, so it was interesting to see the law enforcement perspective that takes over when prevention fails.

One statistic that hit me was that 3 or 4 out of ten Americans have been victims of identity or related theft (e.g. credit card fraud) either directly or through family members. To me, that implies that identity theft is the most prevalent crime in America.

Do we spend most of our time fighting crimes people don't commit?

Another interesting statistic came in my mail from the City of Lewisville. Homeowners with registered alarm systems now must pay $50 per year, because 99% of the 6,000 residential alarms that Lewisville police respond to are false. So, last year our police spent more time responding to about 50 break-ins (and nearly 6,000 false alarms) than to the several hundred identity fraud crimes that I'd expect in a city of 100,000. As I've blogged in the past, I've had $1500 stolen (and refunded) from credit card fraud and an attempted theft of nearly $24,000 in check fraud, yet no law enforcement agency I contact has the resources to tackle such "small" crimes.

I'll keep working on fraud prevention, but I wonder if the criminals are staying a step ahead of us with these newer electronic crimes?

How long do you want to be a clerk?

I spoke about the APEX Initiative at MPI's Meet Different conference in Atlanta on February 9th with Terri Breining from Concepts Worldwide. During the Q&A period at the end, Alisen Herman stood up in the back of the room and explained how her organization, Acord, had helped the insurance industry through electronic data standards. These standards allow you to submit an insurance bid online and receive dozens of quotes within minutes. Such response is expected in the insurance and banking industries, but is not common within meetings and events.


I thought her final comment, to the audience, was especially relevant. She told the collection of meeting planners that they needed to insist that their suppliers and software providers adhere to the APEX standards, or else the industry would never move forward while everyone waits for "everyone else" to move first. She said, "How long do you want to be a clerk?", because that is what meeting planners often end up being when they spend the majority of their time copying information from one place to another and re-typing data over and over.


Welcome to APEX


Here are the slides we presented:

Losing customers without letting go completely

I just cancelled my home VOIP phone service, which Lingo raised to $33/month from $21/month in 2003. The service agent was polite in handling my cancellation request, and then she offered me the option to downgrade to $7/month for a “basic plan", which allows free incoming calls forwarded to my new phone number and $0.03/minute for outbound calls. Since many people still have my old number, I took their offer because it's worth $7 not to lose incoming calls while I transfer people to my new number.

Losing customers the wrong way

No one wants to lose customers, but companies handle this inevitable situation differently. AOL made it easy for me to sign up for a "free trial", but I found it almost impossible to figure out how to cancel after the trial ended so I wouldn't get charged every month. I finally cancelled and never would consider going back. When my wife cancelled our weekly house-cleaning service, the owner lost her temper and verbally berated my wife before slamming the phone down. The business owner never got to hear my wife ask about the bi-monthly or periodic service we wanted to switch to.

Let go, but keep the door open

Lost customers are still customers, and the conversation around cancelling a service is also an opportunity to offer another service of value. For example, a meeting planner may want to cancel their online registration service, but still retain access to their data for past events. So we offer a low-cost basic service that allows access to existing data and retains their web site and event configurations in case they return to use our service in the future. Many clients don't know that they need all of their historical data, but they are terrified of losing it - and they'll pay us to keep it stored, just in case they need it later.