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Hi, and welcome to NASCIO Voices, where we talk all things state IT.
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I'm Amy Glasscock in Lexington, Kentucky.
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And I'm Alex Whitaker in Washington, D.C.
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Today we have our very own Kalea Young Gibson back on the podcast to talk about NASCIO's new survey of state accessibility officers.
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Kalea, welcome back.
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I feel like you're becoming a regular.
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Oh yeah, for sure.
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Thanks for having me again.
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Absolutely.
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So before we get into what the survey says, give us the quick overview.
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Why did NASCIO want to survey state accessibility officers and what were you hoping to learn?
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Yeah, so I accessibility was the first really big issue that I started at NASCIO, which was in 2024, I believe.
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Feels a lot longer than two years.
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But you know, while we were doing the working group and kind of just kind of gathering states for the first time under NASIO's banner, we kind of realized that all of a sudden states were relying on accessibility officers for huge responsibilities, right?
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You know, talking final rule compliance, enterprise standards, procurement guidance, but there was no really like national picture of who these officers were or how their programs worked on a state-by-state level.
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The role was emerging everywhere, and yet it was still largely undocumented.
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So the goal was really simple.
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It was just to understand the AO landscape.
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NASCIO wanted to learn how states are structuring accessibility, what authority these officers have, where the biggest gaps are, and what support they need to meet rising expectations, both, you know, just on a general enterprise level and under the DOJ final rule.
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In a lot of ways, this survey was about giving accessibility officers a shared baseline and states, you know, wanting to know more about accessibility, a shared baseline, so they could see themselves in kind of like the national landscape and understand that they are not building these programs alone.
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Yeah, that sounds great.
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And uh, you know, we've done similar things with CISOs and CPOs.
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So it it is Yeah, yeah.
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We took a a lot of a lot of inspiration from your CPO work, Amy, in in the early days when you were still building it.
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So shout out to you.
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Thank you.
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Yep.
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And we just had uh did one for the CDOs as well.
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So yeah, it's it is it's great to get that national snapshot.
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Now the number of other letters I have to follow it.
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That letter is getting long because it's CTOs and CDOs and which I'm happy to do.
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I love it.
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We represent everybody.
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Yeah, we really do.
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And our staff is not really growing at the same rate.
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So give us some give us some grace.
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One thing that really comes through in the report is just kind of how differently accessibility programs have developed from state to state.
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How do we get there?
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What are some of the forces that have shaped these programs over the last 10 years or so?
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Right.
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So if you kind of zoom out from like this, you know, current what I've been calling a digital accessibility renaissance, right?
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It kind of shows that states didn't suddenly discover accessibility, but it was kind of pushed to the front, especially over the last couple of years, by policy pressure, cultural awakenings, and you know, just the reality of technology in today's age.
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But by far the biggest accelerant was the 2024 DOJ final rule, and that essentially forced states, every state, to take stock of their digital services and ask, are we actually serving everyone?
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That mandate didn't come out of nowhere either.
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It landed on top of years of rising expectations around digital government, more online services, a growing recognition that accessibility is a civil right, not a nice to have, and also, you know, the legal responses to accessibility being a civil right.
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But the report, it also shows that states were kind of already inching forward in that direction before the rule, right?
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Which is why the rule is kind of like an accelerant, not something that just started it altogether.
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You see policy updates in 58% of states, training expansion, and agency level accessibility leads popping up in 71% of states as of the summer when this array was issued.
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So the final rule didn't necessarily start the movement, but definitely crystallize it.
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I mean, it definitely started with kind of you know just understanding what technology can do and building off of like the surrounding cultural moment we're in.
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We prefer, you know, equity, inclusion, more of that for everyone.
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So we to we talked about this just a moment ago when you mentioned the accessibility rule and sort of the requirements and and mandates that have been created.
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But you know, I think that one of the things that you've talked about, Khalia, is that a lot of these programs seem to have started because somebody, or maybe a small group of somebody, really cared about accessibility and pushed it forward.
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So, what did you make of that idea when you looked at the actual survey results?
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Yeah, so I think you know, this is actually a really good case study for how modernization actually happens in government, right?
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So the report it makes it clear that accessibility accessibility programs they often sprouted from these small pockets of passion.
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People who cared enough to push the work forward, even when they didn't have the authority, staff, or budget, and in some cases, people being personally impacted by digital inaccessibility and getting into the work that way.
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And I do think that it's telling that 23% of accessibility officers still have no formal authority, and 67% of states don't have any dedicated funding.
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So I think it says that government modernization is still a very deeply human process when it starts off at least, and big shifts often start with the individuals who see that gap and just refuse to ignore it.
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Accessibility hasn't grown because states designed, you know, perfect enterprise structures and every state has, you know, a standard digital accessibility policy.
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It grew because people kept showing up and they kept building communities of practice, hosting office hours, building national communities of practice, and continuing to convince leadership that accessibility mattered.
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So, in sum, I think it really showed me in this report can tell a lot of people that whether it's accessibility or anything you want to start the modernization process on in your enterprise, your best bet is to start at grassroots first and then address governance second.
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So let's talk about where states are still struggling.
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Document remediation and some of those really high traffic digital services came up as significant gaps.
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So I'm wondering, is there a common reason for why those areas are still so hard?
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Is it a technology problem?
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Is it resources?
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Is it organizational culture?
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You know, is there any kind of key thread that you've identified?
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Yeah, so all the things you mentioned definitely play a role into that.
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But the key thread, and I think the one that is the most straightforward, is capacity.
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Like you mentioned, document remediation is the number one non-compliance area.
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75% of states have not achieved full compliance there, and high traffic remediating high traffic systems are right behind it at 70%.
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And so it's like these aren't areas where people don't want to do the work, right?
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And we just talked, you know, in a little bit a few moments ago about how the accessibility professionals are super passionate about doing the work.
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They want to do the work.
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These areas are super labor-intensive, they are very technically complex, and they are chronically understaffed.
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Half of states in this report say that they don't have the resources or staff to remediate everything statewide, and this is even under the recently extended DOJ final rule.
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And most remediation timelines fall into the 30 to 90 day range once an issue is identified.
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But again, that is just, you know, an average, it's not taking into account all of the you know different staffing shortages and whatnot that could impact any individual state's remediation time.
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So, yeah, you know, technical debt plays a role, especially when you're dealing with older systems that require a lot of like hands-on fixes, and yeah, culture matters.
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Optional training and decentralized governments, governings, excuse me, do create uneven readiness.
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But I think the biggest theme is simply that states know what needs to be done, they just don't have the capacity, the operational capacity to do it.
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It's definitely less of a resistance thing and more of a technological reality thing for sure.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Got it.
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Thanks.
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So there is another finding that jumped out at me.
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So states are often relying on vendors to tell them that their products are accessible, but they aren't necessarily independently verifying those claims.
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So what does that tell us?
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Yeah, so I was this was something that I sat with as well because I also had done an earlier piece, I think it was earlier this year or last year, about procurement and accessibility.
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And so I think the report paints a pretty clear picture that yes, states overwhelmingly trust vendors and they're not verifying it consistently.
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And again, I think that also kind of speaks into you know, it's not that they don't want to, there's that operational capacity piece.
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But even though 77% of states say that they do validate vendor claims, the most common methods are your standard things like accessibility conformance reports, in-house testing, and demonstrations.
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But now you're not really seeing a lot of like deep in-depth audits, only four states maintain vetted vendor databases, which is basically where if a state has an existing relationship with the vendor and they know that that vendor is reliable and will consistently meet or exceed web content and accessibility guidelines 2.1 criteria, they get put into this vetted vendor database.
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And so the next time that that state has a need, they consort with that database first.
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Only four states across the nation do that.
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But consequence-based accountability mechanisms like breach, like breach of penalties for contracts, they only show up in 37% of states.
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So I think that tells us that the relationship between government and industry is still largely built on trust over verification, largely because states just don't have the capacity to do these rigorous checks on top of their own managing their own state-maintained systems.
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Procurement is decentralized in a lot of states, testing staff is limited in a lamas in a lot of states, and accessibility officers also lack that authority across the board to be able to really, really kind of push this in the right direction and implement it how they see it fit themselves.
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In this digital era, that does create a lot of tension.
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States need vendors more than vendors need states in some cases, and when that capacity is thin, the trust becomes the default even when the risk is high.
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Yeah, that's a really good point.
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Yeah, so hopefully, you know, this report will shed some light on that issue as well.
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So obviously, we can't have a state IT conversation in 2026 without talking about AI, and um, you know, AI can help states do accessibility work faster at a larger scale, but at the end of the day, accessibility is always gonna be about people.
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So, how do states make sure that human experience doesn't get lost when they're bringing more AI into the process?
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Right.
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So I think the report is it sounds very poetic at times.
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AI is super helpful and we know that, but in the accessibility realm, it can only be helpful in the places where straight up judgment is not required.
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So looking into kind of the data from the report, states are using AI for automated testing.
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71% of states are doing that.
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71% of states are also using AI to help with document remediation, captioning, content checks, and monitoring.
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And so all of these tasks are very repetitive and they are very high-volume tasks that can bog down staff.
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But when it comes to anything that could even remotely touch civil rights, risk, or open up any, you know, legal interpretation, states are cautious as they should be.
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53% of states report that this their caution comes from the biases and inequity and the risk of AI-generated content introducing accessibility barriers like that and potentially accessibility barriers that are yet to be known.
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So I wouldn't say that the tension, at least in the accessibility sphere, is AI versus humans.
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It's AI for scale versus humans for judgment and trying to continue to balance that.
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Because at the end of the day, accessibility is ultimately about lived experience, about whether a disabled person can actually use a service.
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And AI can accelerate that work, but it can't replace the human understanding of what equitable digital government looks like.
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Yeah, that's that's really fascinating.
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I think it really kind of mirrors a lot of the other questions that as we're incorporating more and more AI into our governance.
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You know, the report paints a picture of accessibility officers really as emerging enterprise leaders.
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And as this role becomes more common in state governance, what does that really tell us about where things are headed?
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And also what does it tell us about how accessibility fits into bigger conversations about technology, equity, decision making, kind of all the above?
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Yeah, so accessibility officers are far beyond being niche specialists.
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They are real big deal enterprise leaders.
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They are reporting to CIOs and equivalent positions, directly shaping and influencing procurement, influencing policy, guiding governance, and they are increasingly acting as the architects of statewide digital equity.
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Even with their limited authority, they're still finding ways to drive training, set standards, and build communities of practice.
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And you know, their rise just signals a shift in government as a whole.
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Equity is becoming an operational discipline, an operational mandate, and it's no longer just a value statement.
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That reshapes the relationship between technology and state power as a whole, I think.
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It means states are beginning to treat accessibility the way they treat things like cybersecurity as a core requirement of digital service delivery.
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Governments is expanding to include civil rights as a measurable, trackable performance domain.
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And it means future digital government leaders will need fluency, not just in tech, but in equity as well.
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And accessibility officers are right now actively showing us exactly what that future looks like.
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All right.
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Well, that is all really fascinating.
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And I know that everybody's gonna want to take a look at that report to learn more.
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But Calillo, today we have covered surveys, vendors, AI, and accessibility governments, which means that you have officially entered the lightning round.
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Are you ready?
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I am.
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All right, so I'm excited for this first question.
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What's something you've gotten way too into lately?
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So for me, it's been tattoos, specifically getting them and their meaning.
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So, you know, we've all obviously met in person.
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I I've always loved the art form, and you know, I have a few small tattoos.
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But now that I kind of have like a more developed sense of self and I kind of know what I guess life and personal meanings I'm going to carry with me for the rest of mine, I'm starting to get my actual big theme pieces.
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And so my theme for my arms is the intersection of African and African American culture and fantasy and horrorcore, which is heavily influenced, you know, by black culture as it is.
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And so the bicep piece that was wrapped up at Summit is actually a Caribbean vampire, so you'll be able to see her fully healed.
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I'm excited.
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You know, that's also why I am just now getting my enterprise architecture and Doug Robinson tattooed.
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It's taking me a little while, but I'm I'm ready to do it.
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So you know it's a value you'll carry throughout the rest of your life.
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Right.
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Yeah, EA is life just across my back.
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All right.
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Next question.
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What's one app on your phone that you probably use more than you should?
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Honestly, it's Chewy.
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Yeah, you know, they have, yeah, we we are all pet parents.
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We know they have the most amazing deals.
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And we are the pet parents that pretend like they're like real kids, so we buy them like two to three toys every week.
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Um so Chewy makes spoiling pets affordable, and no, they did not pay me to say this.
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They really do.
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Do you have like the the yearly membership so you get like free shipping no matter what you buy?
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Me too.
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I'm like, no-brainer, they give you money back.
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Yeah.
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We did that.
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And then we also had like the automatic refill for the for the dog food.
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So we had accident we moved houses and and and we forgot to change it, and so we had like a 75-pound of dog food sent to our old house.
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And fortunately, the new owners were very chill about it, but it was it wasn't fun to go get it.
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They didn't have a dog, did they?
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They did not.
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Okay, so not needed.
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I will say too, when we had to cancel our subscription because our cat passed away, Chewy was so lovely about it, and I think they might have like sent us a letter or something.
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So yeah, because they sent us a card for Fade's first birthday, and he got like a little free like just $15 off.
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And I'm like, Chewy is great.
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They are.
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Yeah.
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All right, Kalea, what's the completely unnecessary purchase that has brought you an unreasonable amount of joy?
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Okay, so I have to say I just got a Nintendo Switch OLED.
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So the the system itself wasn't a purchase, it was a gift for my best friend who actually got it from a Nintendo store while she was working in China.
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She upgraded, so she gave me the OLED, but I did just buy like a full game suite for it: Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros.
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But I'm a gamer and I definitely did not need another console.
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Like my partner already has a Switch, and I still have a PS4 and a PS5.
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And my iPad also looks like it's owned by a 12-year-old, not someone who's almost 30.
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Like I just love games.
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So any game that was definitely unnecessary, but I loved it.
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Well, I have to say, my husband and daughter also love playing video games, and they have like a new like FIFA World Cup game or something like that.
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And my daughter like played exceptionally well in her soccer game this past weekend, and my husband was like, Is it because of that video game?
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She's like, I was thinking about it the whole time.
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Free free world class training.
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Yeah, we have to they say visualizing athletics can be just as helpful as practicing.
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So you know, there's a there's a there's a cardio train going on right now where you do the subway surfers run.
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So it's literally just like on YouTube, and you just run and jump whenever like the trains come as if you are actually the subway surfer.
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That's awesome.
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Um, yeah, I did that last week and I was tired, like it worked.
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So I'm really loving this renaissance of like gaming influencing our physical activity.
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Yes.
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All right, Kalea.
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Well, that is our time.
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Thanks for coming back and walking us through the new accessibility officer survey.
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Absolutely.
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Thank y'all always for having me.
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You bet.
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And if you work in State IT, whether accessibility is already part of your day-to-day work or not, we definitely encourage you to check out the full report at nascio.org.
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Thanks again for listening to NASIO Voices.
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NASIO Voices is a production of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.
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You can find this report and all of our other publications at nascio.org.
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Bye.
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Hi, and welcome to NASCIO Voices, where we talk all things state IT.
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I'm Amy Glasscock in Lexington, Kentucky.
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And I'm Alex Whitaker in Washington, D.C.
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Today we have our very own Kalea Young Gibson back on the podcast to talk about NASCIO's new survey of state accessibility officers.
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Kalea, welcome back.
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I feel like you're becoming a regular.
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Oh yeah, for sure.
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Thanks for having me again.
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Absolutely.
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So before we get into what the survey says, give us the quick overview.
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Why did NASCIO want to survey state accessibility officers and what were you hoping to learn?
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Yeah, so I accessibility was the first really big issue that I started at NASCIO, which was in 2024, I believe.
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Feels a lot longer than two years.
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But you know, while we were doing the working group and kind of just kind of gathering states for the first time under NASIO's banner, we kind of realized that all of a sudden states were relying on accessibility officers for huge responsibilities, right?
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You know, talking final rule compliance, enterprise standards, procurement guidance, but there was no really like national picture of who these officers were or how their programs worked on a state-by-state level.
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The role was emerging everywhere, and yet it was still largely undocumented.
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So the goal was really simple.
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It was just to understand the AO landscape.
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NASCIO wanted to learn how states are structuring accessibility, what authority these officers have, where the biggest gaps are, and what support they need to meet rising expectations, both, you know, just on a general enterprise level and under the DOJ final rule.
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In a lot of ways, this survey was about giving accessibility officers a shared baseline and states, you know, wanting to know more about accessibility, a shared baseline, so they could see themselves in kind of like the national landscape and understand that they are not building these programs alone.
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Yeah, that sounds great.
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And uh, you know, we've done similar things with CISOs and CPOs.
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So it it is Yeah, yeah.
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We took a a lot of a lot of inspiration from your CPO work, Amy, in in the early days when you were still building it.
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So shout out to you.
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Thank you.
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Yep.
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And we just had uh did one for the CDOs as well.
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So yeah, it's it is it's great to get that national snapshot.
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Now the number of other letters I have to follow it.
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That letter is getting long because it's CTOs and CDOs and which I'm happy to do.
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I love it.
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We represent everybody.
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Yeah, we really do.
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And our staff is not really growing at the same rate.
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So give us some give us some grace.
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One thing that really comes through in the report is just kind of how differently accessibility programs have developed from state to state.
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How do we get there?
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What are some of the forces that have shaped these programs over the last 10 years or so?
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Right.
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So if you kind of zoom out from like this, you know, current what I've been calling a digital accessibility renaissance, right?
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It kind of shows that states didn't suddenly discover accessibility, but it was kind of pushed to the front, especially over the last couple of years, by policy pressure, cultural awakenings, and you know, just the reality of technology in today's age.
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But by far the biggest accelerant was the 2024 DOJ final rule, and that essentially forced states, every state, to take stock of their digital services and ask, are we actually serving everyone?
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That mandate didn't come out of nowhere either.
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It landed on top of years of rising expectations around digital government, more online services, a growing recognition that accessibility is a civil right, not a nice to have, and also, you know, the legal responses to accessibility being a civil right.
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But the report, it also shows that states were kind of already inching forward in that direction before the rule, right?
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Which is why the rule is kind of like an accelerant, not something that just started it altogether.
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You see policy updates in 58% of states, training expansion, and agency level accessibility leads popping up in 71% of states as of the summer when this array was issued.
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So the final rule didn't necessarily start the movement, but definitely crystallize it.
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I mean, it definitely started with kind of you know just understanding what technology can do and building off of like the surrounding cultural moment we're in.
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We prefer, you know, equity, inclusion, more of that for everyone.
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So we to we talked about this just a moment ago when you mentioned the accessibility rule and sort of the requirements and and mandates that have been created.
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But you know, I think that one of the things that you've talked about, Khalia, is that a lot of these programs seem to have started because somebody, or maybe a small group of somebody, really cared about accessibility and pushed it forward.
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So, what did you make of that idea when you looked at the actual survey results?
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Yeah, so I think you know, this is actually a really good case study for how modernization actually happens in government, right?
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So the report it makes it clear that accessibility accessibility programs they often sprouted from these small pockets of passion.
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People who cared enough to push the work forward, even when they didn't have the authority, staff, or budget, and in some cases, people being personally impacted by digital inaccessibility and getting into the work that way.
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And I do think that it's telling that 23% of accessibility officers still have no formal authority, and 67% of states don't have any dedicated funding.
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So I think it says that government modernization is still a very deeply human process when it starts off at least, and big shifts often start with the individuals who see that gap and just refuse to ignore it.
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Accessibility hasn't grown because states designed, you know, perfect enterprise structures and every state has, you know, a standard digital accessibility policy.
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It grew because people kept showing up and they kept building communities of practice, hosting office hours, building national communities of practice, and continuing to convince leadership that accessibility mattered.
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So, in sum, I think it really showed me in this report can tell a lot of people that whether it's accessibility or anything you want to start the modernization process on in your enterprise, your best bet is to start at grassroots first and then address governance second.
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So let's talk about where states are still struggling.
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Document remediation and some of those really high traffic digital services came up as significant gaps.
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So I'm wondering, is there a common reason for why those areas are still so hard?
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Is it a technology problem?
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Is it resources?
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Is it organizational culture?
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You know, is there any kind of key thread that you've identified?
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Yeah, so all the things you mentioned definitely play a role into that.
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But the key thread, and I think the one that is the most straightforward, is capacity.
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Like you mentioned, document remediation is the number one non-compliance area.
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75% of states have not achieved full compliance there, and high traffic remediating high traffic systems are right behind it at 70%.
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And so it's like these aren't areas where people don't want to do the work, right?
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And we just talked, you know, in a little bit a few moments ago about how the accessibility professionals are super passionate about doing the work.
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They want to do the work.
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These areas are super labor-intensive, they are very technically complex, and they are chronically understaffed.
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Half of states in this report say that they don't have the resources or staff to remediate everything statewide, and this is even under the recently extended DOJ final rule.
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And most remediation timelines fall into the 30 to 90 day range once an issue is identified.
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But again, that is just, you know, an average, it's not taking into account all of the you know different staffing shortages and whatnot that could impact any individual state's remediation time.
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So, yeah, you know, technical debt plays a role, especially when you're dealing with older systems that require a lot of like hands-on fixes, and yeah, culture matters.
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Optional training and decentralized governments, governings, excuse me, do create uneven readiness.
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But I think the biggest theme is simply that states know what needs to be done, they just don't have the capacity, the operational capacity to do it.
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It's definitely less of a resistance thing and more of a technological reality thing for sure.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Got it.
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Thanks.
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So there is another finding that jumped out at me.
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So states are often relying on vendors to tell them that their products are accessible, but they aren't necessarily independently verifying those claims.
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So what does that tell us?
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Yeah, so I was this was something that I sat with as well because I also had done an earlier piece, I think it was earlier this year or last year, about procurement and accessibility.
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And so I think the report paints a pretty clear picture that yes, states overwhelmingly trust vendors and they're not verifying it consistently.
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And again, I think that also kind of speaks into you know, it's not that they don't want to, there's that operational capacity piece.
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But even though 77% of states say that they do validate vendor claims, the most common methods are your standard things like accessibility conformance reports, in-house testing, and demonstrations.
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But now you're not really seeing a lot of like deep in-depth audits, only four states maintain vetted vendor databases, which is basically where if a state has an existing relationship with the vendor and they know that that vendor is reliable and will consistently meet or exceed web content and accessibility guidelines 2.1 criteria, they get put into this vetted vendor database.
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And so the next time that that state has a need, they consort with that database first.
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Only four states across the nation do that.
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But consequence-based accountability mechanisms like breach, like breach of penalties for contracts, they only show up in 37% of states.
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So I think that tells us that the relationship between government and industry is still largely built on trust over verification, largely because states just don't have the capacity to do these rigorous checks on top of their own managing their own state-maintained systems.
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Procurement is decentralized in a lot of states, testing staff is limited in a lamas in a lot of states, and accessibility officers also lack that authority across the board to be able to really, really kind of push this in the right direction and implement it how they see it fit themselves.
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In this digital era, that does create a lot of tension.
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States need vendors more than vendors need states in some cases, and when that capacity is thin, the trust becomes the default even when the risk is high.
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Yeah, that's a really good point.
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Yeah, so hopefully, you know, this report will shed some light on that issue as well.
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So obviously, we can't have a state IT conversation in 2026 without talking about AI, and um, you know, AI can help states do accessibility work faster at a larger scale, but at the end of the day, accessibility is always gonna be about people.
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So, how do states make sure that human experience doesn't get lost when they're bringing more AI into the process?
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Right.
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So I think the report is it sounds very poetic at times.
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AI is super helpful and we know that, but in the accessibility realm, it can only be helpful in the places where straight up judgment is not required.
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So looking into kind of the data from the report, states are using AI for automated testing.
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71% of states are doing that.
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71% of states are also using AI to help with document remediation, captioning, content checks, and monitoring.
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And so all of these tasks are very repetitive and they are very high-volume tasks that can bog down staff.
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But when it comes to anything that could even remotely touch civil rights, risk, or open up any, you know, legal interpretation, states are cautious as they should be.
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53% of states report that this their caution comes from the biases and inequity and the risk of AI-generated content introducing accessibility barriers like that and potentially accessibility barriers that are yet to be known.
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So I wouldn't say that the tension, at least in the accessibility sphere, is AI versus humans.
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It's AI for scale versus humans for judgment and trying to continue to balance that.
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Because at the end of the day, accessibility is ultimately about lived experience, about whether a disabled person can actually use a service.
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And AI can accelerate that work, but it can't replace the human understanding of what equitable digital government looks like.
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Yeah, that's that's really fascinating.
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I think it really kind of mirrors a lot of the other questions that as we're incorporating more and more AI into our governance.
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You know, the report paints a picture of accessibility officers really as emerging enterprise leaders.
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And as this role becomes more common in state governance, what does that really tell us about where things are headed?
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And also what does it tell us about how accessibility fits into bigger conversations about technology, equity, decision making, kind of all the above?
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Yeah, so accessibility officers are far beyond being niche specialists.
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They are real big deal enterprise leaders.
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They are reporting to CIOs and equivalent positions, directly shaping and influencing procurement, influencing policy, guiding governance, and they are increasingly acting as the architects of statewide digital equity.
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Even with their limited authority, they're still finding ways to drive training, set standards, and build communities of practice.
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And you know, their rise just signals a shift in government as a whole.
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Equity is becoming an operational discipline, an operational mandate, and it's no longer just a value statement.
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That reshapes the relationship between technology and state power as a whole, I think.
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It means states are beginning to treat accessibility the way they treat things like cybersecurity as a core requirement of digital service delivery.
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Governments is expanding to include civil rights as a measurable, trackable performance domain.
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And it means future digital government leaders will need fluency, not just in tech, but in equity as well.
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And accessibility officers are right now actively showing us exactly what that future looks like.
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All right.
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Well, that is all really fascinating.
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And I know that everybody's gonna want to take a look at that report to learn more.
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But Calillo, today we have covered surveys, vendors, AI, and accessibility governments, which means that you have officially entered the lightning round.
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Are you ready?
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I am.
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All right, so I'm excited for this first question.
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What's something you've gotten way too into lately?
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So for me, it's been tattoos, specifically getting them and their meaning.
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So, you know, we've all obviously met in person.
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I I've always loved the art form, and you know, I have a few small tattoos.
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But now that I kind of have like a more developed sense of self and I kind of know what I guess life and personal meanings I'm going to carry with me for the rest of mine, I'm starting to get my actual big theme pieces.
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And so my theme for my arms is the intersection of African and African American culture and fantasy and horrorcore, which is heavily influenced, you know, by black culture as it is.
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And so the bicep piece that was wrapped up at Summit is actually a Caribbean vampire, so you'll be able to see her fully healed.
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I'm excited.
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You know, that's also why I am just now getting my enterprise architecture and Doug Robinson tattooed.
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It's taking me a little while, but I'm I'm ready to do it.
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So you know it's a value you'll carry throughout the rest of your life.
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Right.
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Yeah, EA is life just across my back.
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All right.
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Next question.
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What's one app on your phone that you probably use more than you should?
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Honestly, it's Chewy.
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Yeah, you know, they have, yeah, we we are all pet parents.
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We know they have the most amazing deals.
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And we are the pet parents that pretend like they're like real kids, so we buy them like two to three toys every week.
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Um so Chewy makes spoiling pets affordable, and no, they did not pay me to say this.
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They really do.
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Do you have like the the yearly membership so you get like free shipping no matter what you buy?
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Me too.
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I'm like, no-brainer, they give you money back.
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Yeah.
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We did that.
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And then we also had like the automatic refill for the for the dog food.
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So we had accident we moved houses and and and we forgot to change it, and so we had like a 75-pound of dog food sent to our old house.
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And fortunately, the new owners were very chill about it, but it was it wasn't fun to go get it.
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They didn't have a dog, did they?
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They did not.
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Okay, so not needed.
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I will say too, when we had to cancel our subscription because our cat passed away, Chewy was so lovely about it, and I think they might have like sent us a letter or something.
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So yeah, because they sent us a card for Fade's first birthday, and he got like a little free like just $15 off.
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And I'm like, Chewy is great.
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They are.
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Yeah.
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All right, Kalea, what's the completely unnecessary purchase that has brought you an unreasonable amount of joy?
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Okay, so I have to say I just got a Nintendo Switch OLED.
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So the the system itself wasn't a purchase, it was a gift for my best friend who actually got it from a Nintendo store while she was working in China.
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She upgraded, so she gave me the OLED, but I did just buy like a full game suite for it: Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros.
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But I'm a gamer and I definitely did not need another console.
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Like my partner already has a Switch, and I still have a PS4 and a PS5.
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And my iPad also looks like it's owned by a 12-year-old, not someone who's almost 30.
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Like I just love games.
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So any game that was definitely unnecessary, but I loved it.
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Well, I have to say, my husband and daughter also love playing video games, and they have like a new like FIFA World Cup game or something like that.
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And my daughter like played exceptionally well in her soccer game this past weekend, and my husband was like, Is it because of that video game?
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She's like, I was thinking about it the whole time.
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Free free world class training.
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Yeah, we have to they say visualizing athletics can be just as helpful as practicing.
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So you know, there's a there's a there's a cardio train going on right now where you do the subway surfers run.
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So it's literally just like on YouTube, and you just run and jump whenever like the trains come as if you are actually the subway surfer.
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That's awesome.
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Um, yeah, I did that last week and I was tired, like it worked.
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So I'm really loving this renaissance of like gaming influencing our physical activity.
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Yes.
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All right, Kalea.
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Well, that is our time.
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Thanks for coming back and walking us through the new accessibility officer survey.
00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:36.799
Absolutely.
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Thank y'all always for having me.
00:18:38.640 --> 00:18:39.200
You bet.
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And if you work in State IT, whether accessibility is already part of your day-to-day work or not, we definitely encourage you to check out the full report at nascio.org.
00:18:48.319 --> 00:18:51.440
Thanks again for listening to NASIO Voices.
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NASIO Voices is a production of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.
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You can find this report and all of our other publications at nascio.org.
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And if you enjoyed the episode, share with a colleague and subscribe wherever you listen to the podcast so you don't miss what's coming up.
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We'll be back soon with more state IT conversations.
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Bye.
