We govies have been waiting for the Section 508 refresh for almost seven years. It was April 2008 when an advisory committee presented the first draft of the refresh to the U.S. Access Board. Section 508 is part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended in 1998. The amendment includes accessibility requirements for government agenciesRead… Read more »
Gian Wild of AccessibilityOz made me aware of this awesome accessibility alphabet of mini-personas, reflecting a large group of people for whom accessibility in websites and documents is critical. This is the sort of material I think agencies should make available to all their staff to help them be more mindful of the range ofRead… Read more »
The first thing I did was look for a mention of “.pdf” in the document, but I didn’t find it. That made me wonder how effective this will be if specifics aren’t incorporated about requiring data formats that are more amenable for manipulation. Yes, I know that many tools exist for scraping and extracting structureRead… Read more »
Deque Systems is hosting a free seminar titled “A Case Study in Real-World Section 508 Compliance: How the VA is deploying the largest section 508 program in government” at the National Press Club on February 21st. This seminar will present the inside story of how the VA is deploying the largest Section 508 Compliance programRead… Read more »
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 »
It’s the time of year for Spring cleaning, time to sweep out those dust bunnies that have been collecting under your couch all Winter long. How about hopping on over to your website to see if it needs some cleaning up too? When is the last time you checked your agency’s website to see ifRead… Read more »
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 »
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 »
I have been seeing notifications all over media about the upcoming Nationwide Test of the Emergency Alert System on Wednesday, November 9 at 2:00 PM EST. The FEMA website states that the test will be broadcasted on TV and radio stations. Does anyone know if there are social media aspects included in the EAS andRead… Read more »
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 »