Exploring Section 508 Compliance with Denise Collison of SHI International at Fall Summit 2025
In this insightful discussion, Denise Collison, Senior Vice President of Public Sector Sales at SHI International Corp., joins the CUBE's Enterprise Editor at the SHI International Fall Summit 2025. The event, in collaboration with Unleash AI by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, centers on the pressing topic of Section 508 compliance in government digital services.
Ms. Collison, bringing extensive expertise in public sector sales, delves into Section 508, underscoring its growing significance for digital inclusivity and legal compliance. The conversation, moderated by the CUBE Research's Enterprise Editor, covers the challenges government agencies face, such as the cost and effort of updating millions of web pages, and introduces the innovative AI-driven solution developed by SHI, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Kamiwaza.
Key takeaways from the discussion include the urgency for Section 508 compliance by January 2026, the revolutionary AI-powered solution's ability to automate and streamline compliance processes, and the significant cost and time savings realized by agencies. Collison emphasizes the added value and quick return on investment, highlighting how this solution serves as an entry point for broader AI adoption across government agencies.
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Denise Collison, SHI International Corp
Exploring Section 508 Compliance with Denise Collison of SHI International at Fall Summit 2025
In this insightful discussion, Denise Collison, Senior Vice President of Public Sector Sales at SHI International Corp., joins the CUBE's Enterprise Editor at the SHI International Fall Summit 2025. The event, in collaboration with Unleash AI by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, centers on the pressing topic of Section 508 compliance in government digital services.
Ms. Collison, bringing extensive expertise in public sector sales, delves into Section 508, underscoring its growing significance for digital inclusivity and legal compliance. The conversation, moderated by the CUBE Research's Enterprise Editor, covers the challenges government agencies face, such as the cost and effort of updating millions of web pages, and introduces the innovative AI-driven solution developed by SHI, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Kamiwaza.
Key takeaways from the discussion include the urgency for Section 508 compliance by January 2026, the revolutionary AI-powered solution's ability to automate and streamline compliance processes, and the significant cost and time savings realized by agencies. Collison emphasizes the added value and quick return on investment, highlighting how this solution serves as an entry point for broader AI adoption across government agencies.
In this SHI Fall Summit interview from Somerset, NJ, Denise Collison, senior vice president of public sector sales at SHI, joins theCUBE’s Paul Gillin to unpack how agencies can meet looming Section 508 accessibility requirements – with urgency rising ahead of the January 2026 compliance deadline. Collison explains the operational reality: legacy government sites can span millions of pages, and manual remediation has been the norm. She details a jointly packaged solution from SHI, Unleash AI by HPE and Kamiwaza – combining HPE and NVIDIA architecture, Kamiwaz...Read more
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What is 508 compliance and what does it entail regarding digital accessibility?add
What solution have SHI, HPE, and Kamiwaza developed to address compliance issues for government agencies, and how does artificial intelligence play a role in this solution?add
What is the recommended first step for obtaining assistance with 508 compliance?add
>> This is theCUBE, I'm Paul Gillin here at SHI International's Fall Summit 2025 here in Somerset, New Jersey. Welcome. This is event is being put on with cooperation of HPE Unleash AI, and we're talking about AI all the next two days. But in particular, a hot topic of this summit is Section 508. And joining me is Denise Collison, who is the Senior Vice President of Public Sector Sales at SHI to talk about this very important subject. Denise, welcome.
Denise Collison
>> Thank you for having me.
Paul Gillin
>> Start with some basis, what is Section 508 and why is it important now?
Denise Collison
>> Yeah, absolutely. So 508 compliance has to do with making all digital technology and sites, all websites from the federal government all the way down to state government, down to local government, accessible and usable by everyone. So it's a legal requirement, yes. But it's also about digital inclusivity and accessibility of constituents for government services.
Paul Gillin
>> My understanding is that Section 508 has been in existence for some time. Why is it now becoming such an urgent issue?
Denise Collison
>> It's a great question. It has been moving around. There's been, I would call it threats that it would be, there would be a drop-dead date for getting compliant, and that time is now. And so most of the government has to be compliant by January 2026, and so it's becoming an urgent situation now.
Paul Gillin
>> When you say compliant for accessibility, what are some of the accessibility issues that these websites have to address? For example, vision issues or hearing issues.
Denise Collison
>> Absolutely. And so what an accessible website or webpage might look like is having a description of an image or a chart that clearly says what is happening in that photo or in that chart. So a user who maybe can't see the color contrast or who can't see at all, but has to have that description read to them, understands what's happening on that page. So it's things like that. So visually impaired, site impaired for them to be able to access these services and understand what's happening on these web pages just as any other individual might.
Paul Gillin
>> So they can use their screen readers, for example, for audio from the text?
Denise Collison
>> Exactly.
Paul Gillin
>> Now you think, well, it's just a website. How big a problem can this be? But a lot of these government websites go way back and have a lot of pages. How extensive is the issue?
Denise Collison
>> Depending on the size of the agency, there can be millions of pages. And so the issue can be very cost prohibitive, time prohibitive to go back and actually get every single page up to compliance standards. But it doesn't really stop there, that's just getting compliant. Staying compliant is also an issue because anytime any changes to those pages are made, the agency then has to go and make sure those changes are also compliant. And it's typically the case that you don't just have one publisher to a website in any given agency, there are usually multiple publishers, sometimes hundreds of people who can publish to a site. And so having governance around that on an ongoing manner is really difficult and challenging.
Paul Gillin
>> And has compliance largely been a manual process of many of these organizations?
Denise Collison
>> Today it's a manual process at pretty much every single organization. Do you have a set of developers and or users who are going into each individual page and taking the images, putting the description in, making sure all of that entire page is accessible, and then uploading that page back to the website and that again, they have to do that not just to get compliant, but to stay compliant as well.
Paul Gillin
>> And we're talking about some web pages that may go back 10, 15, 20?
Denise Collison
>> Absolutely. Absolutely.
Paul Gillin
>> So I understand that SHI has partnered with HPE and Kamiwaza to develop an automated solution. What form does that take?
Denise Collison
>> Yeah, that's great. SHI, HPE and Kamiwaza have come together to put together an incredible solution to address exactly this problem. And so what that looks like is it's HPE and NVIDIA architecture, hardware, Kamiwaza application, and SHI services that provide the government agencies, the government customers instant ROI, pretty much instant remediation, fully remediated solution to get compliant without the manual work.
Paul Gillin
>> And artificial intelligence is part of this solution. What form does that take?
Denise Collison
>> It's a couple of things. There's a visual AI component, and this is where the Kamiwaza application comes in. The visual AI component can actually go out and sort of as a human user would do, interact with the web pages, take the images, actually put the descriptions down in a systematic, concise, organized approach. It will also all the other features of those web pages like a human would do and define what needs to be changed. And then it delivers all of that back to the government agency to then only just has to take that final image that's already compliant and just upload it to the site, and then they're done.
Paul Gillin
>> Does it actually automate the addition of alt text, for example?
Denise Collison
>> Exactly right. It automates exactly alt text and all the other accessibility features that you would need to be be compliant for 508.
Paul Gillin
>> And how would a government agency engage with you to provision these services? Are they packaged?
Denise Collison
>> Yes, thank you. That's a great question. And so yes, we bundled this solution up. So the customer will get the HPE NVIDIA hardware with the Kamiwaza application and the SHI services all together. And where the services come in is we will help you, SHI will help you imagine, experiment, and then adopt. And so what that is, is just making sure that the hardware is right-sized for that specific customer's needs, that we are taking account of everything that customer wants to accomplish in terms of the number of web pages and the different agencies that might be impacted by this that they want to have within that solution. And then we will help them experiment, make sure we have it all right, and then we will help them stand it up, make sure everyone is trained on exactly how to use it, and off they go.
Paul Gillin
>> Is this an on-prem solution or a cloud solution or both?
Denise Collison
>> I love that question because we know that OpEx versus CapEx matters a lot in government. It can be either way. So HPE has the ability to package all of that up, and it also offers HPE GreenLake, which can do exactly the same thing in an OpEx model.
Paul Gillin
>> What kind of results are your customers seeing in these initial trials?
Denise Collison
>> So I love that question too, and so it's immediate. The remediation is immediate versus could be months long, years long of manual labor to get this done. This is an immediate response. So basically it goes from months long, years long to potentially a week long to remediate fully.
Paul Gillin
>> So you're literally taking a years-long process and condensing it down to a week or two?
Denise Collison
>> A week or two. Yeah, absolutely.
Paul Gillin
>> What does that do to cost?
Denise Collison
>> It's an incredible ROI for the government agencies, and the great thing about this is it's a great place to start with AI. And from there, because the ROI is so fast and so high, they can use that as a justification to get the next use case in the door and then the next use case, and it also helped pay for those use cases as well.
Paul Gillin
>> Do you find that agencies are aware of the extent of the size of this task?
Denise Collison
>> I think agencies are just figuring it out. Honestly, we talked about in the beginning that this has kind of been looming around, but now that there's this urgency and they're really sitting down to identify exactly what needs to happen, how much that costs, that budget line item addition, not just again, to get it compliant, but to keep it compliant. So that's an ongoing budget line item. They are really starting to panic.
Paul Gillin
>> What are we talking in terms of cost savings here? Is it 50%, 80%?
Denise Collison
>> In terms of cost savings. It depends on the size of the agency, but I'd say generally speaking, you're looking at somewhere around MSRP for a solution somewhere around 300, 200, $300,000. So that's a cost of one fully loaded headcount typically in a government. And so for that price, you're getting a fully remediated solution instead of 20 people, 30 people who however many they might need to actually remediate this over length of time.
Paul Gillin
>> And this is a foot in the door for AI and a lot of government agencies, I imagine.
Denise Collison
>> Absolutely. In fact, I heard it referred to as a wedge AI solution, which I love because it is. It's that first and really practical foot in the door. You get started with AI and this application, everyone sees the ROI, the impact and how easy it is to use, and then you build your next use case and your next use case from there. And the great thing about this solution is it's fully scalable. So you don't need to then replace or buy all new architecture to start the next use case. You can just build on what you already have.
Paul Gillin
>> Can your solution be applied to other aspects of an organization's digital infrastructure?
Denise Collison
>> Yes, absolutely, it can. Kamiwaza offers all sorts of different applications that can help the government. In this case, the government continue that journey. So yeah, it is just a matter of imagining what the government customer wants to do next and creating it.
Paul Gillin
>> And how did this partnership between you, HPE and Kamiwaza come together?
Denise Collison
>> Yeah, it's such a great example of what a partnership should look like. So it's a collaboration between SHI, Unleash AI by HPE and Kamiwaza. And the three companies just understood that this was something that was going to be, again, urgent and relevant, and that Kamiwaza had an already baked solution. So bringing three companies together just made perfect sense.
Paul Gillin
>> Now, if you're a government IT employee watching this, you want to get started on solution. How should they start?
Denise Collison
>> Yeah. Well, they should start by calling their SHI account executive and or their HPE account executive and just saying, "I really need help with 508 compliance. Can you help me?" And the answer will be absolutely yes, and it's easier than you think.
Paul Gillin
>> Well, practical application of AI that has real short-term benefits and can unleash greater opportunities to apply AI in the future. Denise Collison, thanks very much for joining us.
Paul Gillin