Department of Veterans Affairs Website Accessibility Act of 2019

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 3587, the Department of Veterans Affairs Website Accessibility Act of 2019. This bill will require the Department of Veterans Affairs to conduct a study of all VA websites, apps, and electronic forms; determine which are inaccessible to veterans with disabilities; and develop a plan to make each of them accessible and compliant with section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

Although the VA has taken steps to improve the accessibility of its website, the committee has heard concerns from Blinded Veterans of America that ``a web page that was easily accessed one day cannot be read or even located during the next visit to the site.'' Of course that is unacceptable as far as I am concerned.

Moreover, visually impaired veterans, in particular, often face barriers to accessing information from VA because they are directed to forms or pages that are incompatible with screen readers.

Given that over 4.9 million veterans have at least one service- connected disability, it is unacceptable that the VA's delivery of information falls short of disabled veterans' needs. This bill will require the VA to take systematic action to address these issues.

I applaud Senator Bob Casey and Congresswoman Elaine Luria, who does an outstanding job on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, for their leadership on this particular bill and their efforts to ensure that all veterans are able to access the information they need from the VA.

I will be supporting this bill today, and I urge my colleagues to join me.

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