Posts By Melinda Davey

New posts about IT Accessibility

The Accessibility Forum 2.0 blog added some great new content this Summer. Check it out and join the voices from the front line discussing Section 508. A new blog series called, “Department/Agency Section 508 Roles and Responsibilities.” Each post will be discussing different roles and responsibilities with regard to the implementation of Section 508. Department/AgencyRead… Read more »

A Section 508 Solicitation Assessment Success Story

Here is another post from GSA’s Buy Accessible team: GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy, Information Resources Management Division, Section 508 Program Office assesses samples of Federal EIT solicitations to see if they contain the required Section 508 technical standards and sends feedback to the department/agency and the procurement officials. Here is an example of aRead… Read more »

How the Quick Reference Guide can help you understand Section 508

This week the BuyAccessible team attended the IDEAS 2012 conference. At our booth, people told us that the technical language in the GPAT was difficult to understand. That language comes from the Section 508 standard, so we can’t change it. But… a long time ago we created a resource called Quick Reference Guide that wasRead… Read more »

Accessibility issues with GovLoop

I just ran an web accessibility checker on GovLoop and found some errors: Missing form label on the search box Missing alt text on the sponsor graphics/links on the home page Sign up form: has good form labels on all fields except the date My page: No form label on “What are you up to?”Read… Read more »

A few of my favorite things

As a gift to you, here are a few of my favorite accessibility resources: Accessibility Resource Center: a list of company websites with links to their product and services accessibility information Quick Links: quick and easy pre-packaged Section 508 documentation for a number of standard EIT deliverables, for example solicitation language and guidance to helpRead… Read more »

Mobile Apps – a series on their accessibility

The Accessibility Forum 2.0 blog recently started a series on mobile apps and their accessibility to people with disabilities. First they looked into the question of how Section 508 relates to mobile apps. Then they discussed their accessibility in more detail. Copies of both posts are included below. Mobile Web apps and Section 508 MobileRead… Read more »

Launching Accessibility Resource Center

Government buyers can now use the Accessibility Resource Center to find accessibility information on the product or service they intended to buy. The Accessibility Resource Center contains an alphabetic list of many company websites with links to their product and service accessibility information, including VPATs when available. Many of these companies participate in the BuyAccessibleRead… Read more »

How to tell if a keyboard is accessible

The BuyAccessible Wizard frequently receives comments from buyers trying to buy keyboards. Few keyboard manufacturers provide accessibility information for common, inexpensive keyboards. Buyers are not likely to have much luck asking for a VPAT on a $9.99 keyboard and it should be pretty easy to determine if it is accessible. To meet the Section 508Read… Read more »