Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

Chief Operations Officer of FEDVC Torsten Oberst demonstrates how their software reads any web content/text into an audio Cloud service at the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Section 508 and Disability Awareness Program in Washington, DC, on Monday, October 31, 2011.

Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities and to encourage the development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. The law applies to all federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology. Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C. § 794d), agencies must give employees with disabilities and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others. In 1998, the U.S. Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities.

History

Section 508 was originally added as an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 in 1986. The original section 508 dealt with electronic and information technologies, in recognition of the growth of this field.

In 1997, the Federal Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility and Compliance Act was proposed in the U.S. legislature to correct the shortcomings of the original section 508; the original Section 508 had non-binding guidelines which impacted enforceability. To rectify these issues, the Federal Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility and Compliance Act was enacted with revisions as the new Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 in 1998.

Section 508 addresses legal compliance through the process of market research and government procurement and also has technical standards against which products can be evaluated to determine if they meet the technical compliance. Because technology can meet the legal provisions and be legally compliant (e.g., no such product exists at time of purchase) but may not meet the United States Access Board's technical accessibility standards, users are often confused between these two issues. Additionally, evaluation of compliance can be done only when reviewing the procurement process and documentation used when making a purchase or contracting for development, the changes in technologies and standards themselves, it requires a more detailed understanding of the law and technology than at first seems necessary.

There is nothing in Section 508 that requires private web sites to comply unless they are receiving federal funds or under contract with a federal agency. Commercial best practices include voluntary standards and guidelines as the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Automatic accessibility checkers (engines) such as "IBM Rational Policy Tester" and AccVerify, refer to Section 508 guidelines but have difficulty in accurately testing content for accessibility.

In 2006, the United States Access Board organized the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC) to review and recommend updates to its Section 508 standards and Telecommunications Act Accessibility Guidelines. TEITAC issued its report to the Board in April 2008. The Board released drafts of proposed rules based on the committee's recommendations in 2010 and 2011 for public comment. In February 2015, the Board released a notice of proposed rulemaking for the Section 508 standards.

In 2017 the Section 508 Refresh came into effect. This was then updated a year later in January 2018 to restore TTY access provisions. This refresh essentially aligned the web elements with the W3C's WCAG 2.0 AA criteria. Major updates included clarifications on interoperability for software and a focus on function to allow for new and emerging technologies to be covered. The refresh mandated all agency public business content to be accessible to individuals with disabilities. Additionally, there were more standards added to specify accessibility for some non-public-facing agency business.

The law

Qualifications

• Federal agencies can be in legal compliance and still not meet the technical standards. Section 508 §1194.3 General exceptions describe exceptions for national security (e.g., most of the primary systems used by the National Security Agency (NSA)), incidental items not procured as work products, individual requests for non-public access, fundamental alteration of a product's key requirements, or maintenance access.
• In the case that implementation of such standards causes undue hardship to the federal agency or department involved, the agency or department is required to supply the data and information to covered disabled persons by alternative means that allow them to make use of such information and data. To determine if there is an exception for an undue burden, there must be significant financial burden or a "fundamental alteration in the nature of the ICT [Information and Communication Technology]".
• Section 508 requires that all Federal information that is accessible electronically must be accessible for those with disabilities. This information must be accessible in a variety of ways, which are specific to each disability.

Provisions

The original legislation mandated that the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, known as the Access Board, establish a draft for their Final Standards for accessibility for such electronic and information technologies in December 2001. The final standards were approved in April 2001 and became enforceable on June 25, 2001. On July 6, 2006, the Access Board created the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC) to develop updated Section 508 standards which were presented in a report on April 3, 2008. This report then was drafted into proposed changes on December 8, 2011 for public comment. Eventually, these proposed new standards were implemented in the Section 508 Refresh.

The latest information about these standards and about support available from the Access Board in implementing them, as well as the results of surveys conducted to assess compliance, is available from the Board's newsletter Access Currents. The Section 508 standards, tools, and resources are available from the Center for Information Technology Accommodation (CITA), in the U.S. General Services Administration's Office of Government-wide Policy.

Summary of Section 508 technical standards

• Software Applications and Operating Systems: includes accessibility to software, e.g. keyboard navigation and focus is supplied by a web browser.
• Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications: assures accessibility to web content, e.g., text description for any visuals such that users with a disability or users that need assistive technology such as screen readers and refreshable Braille displays, can access the content.
• Telecommunications Products: addresses accessibility for telecommunications products such as cell phones or voice mail systems. It includes addressing technology compatibility with hearing aids, assistive listening devices, and telecommunications devices for the deaf (TTYs).
• Videos or Multimedia Products: includes requirements for captioning and audio description of multimedia products such as training or informational multimedia productions.
• Self Contained, Closed Products: products where end users cannot typically add or connect their own assistive technologies, such as information kiosks, copiers, and fax machines. This standard links to the other standards and generally requires that access features be built into these systems.
• Desktop and Portable Computers: discusses accessibility related to standardized ports, and mechanically operated controls such as keyboards and touch screens.

Practice and impact

When evaluating a computer hardware or software product which could be used in a U.S. government agency, information technology managers now look to see if the vendor has provided an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR). The most common ACR is known as Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) although some departments historically promoted a Government Product Accessibility Template (GPAT). The VPAT template was created by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). A VPAT lists potential attributes of the product that affect the degree to which it is accessible. Nearly 48% of 72 different federal websites had accessibility issues on at least one of three webpages analyzed according to WCAG 2.0 Level A or AA standards. One challenge to the adoption of open-source software in the U.S. government has been that there is no vendor to provide support or write a VPAT, but a VPAT can be written by volunteers if they can find the necessary information.

Benefits of including accessible features in ICT can help a number of individuals with a variety of disabilities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 19.9 million adults over the age of 15 have grip and lift issues and an additional 8.1 million have some visual impairment such as color blindness. Furthermore, 7.6 million people have some hearing loss or impairment. Accessible ICT allows a large number of Americans to engage with information online, demonstrating the potential impacts of maintaining Section 508 compliance for federal agencies.

Trusted Tester

Trusted Tester is a manual conformance testing process for Section 508, and a related certification program for testers, developed by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The test process evaluates web content against the Revised Section 508 Standards by inspecting the underlying code rather than relying only on assistive technology or automated checkers, and the certification program trains testers to apply the process in a consistent and repeatable way so that agencies can share test results. Since December 2023 the Office of Management and Budget has advised federal agencies to use the process and its training program.

History

The test process originated in the DHS Office of Accessible Systems and Technology (OAST), which developed and refined the "DHS Section 508 Application Test Process" together with a training course for applying it; the main course was a three-day class that taught the process and the associated set of free code inspection tools. By April 2011 the process had reached version 2.8, and people who passed the examination at the end of the course were designated "Trusted Testers". In 2012 DHS and the Social Security Administration jointly produced the Harmonized Processes for Section 508 Testing: Baseline Tests for Software & Web Accessibility, a set of 28 test requirements that covered the Section 508 standards and were aligned with WCAG 2.0; this became the common foundation for both agencies' test processes.

From the fall of 2013 to the summer of 2015 DHS ran the Unified Testing for Accessibility Project (UTAP), a pilot in which the United States Mint, the Department of Education, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Department of Labor adopted the Trusted Tester process. An online version of the training was launched at the end of March 2015 through the Defense Acquisition University learning management system, and DHS subsequently established the Interagency Trusted Tester Program to help other agencies adopt the process, with the stated aim of a "unified, consistent, sharable, and repeatable" approach to Section 508 conformance testing.

After the 2017 refresh of the Section 508 standards, DHS announced version 5 of the program in April 2018 to align it with the Revised 508 Standards and WCAG 2.0. Enrollment in version 3 closed on June 30, 2018, enrollment in version 5 opened on October 1, 2018, and after September 30, 2019 DHS no longer accepted version 3 or version 4 test results in its own governance processes. The version 5.0 test process was published in June 2019. In April 2024 DHS released version 5.1.3 of the test process and the certification courses, which introduced plain language course material with fuller exam feedback and lowered the passing score of the certification exam from 90 percent to 85 percent. The program is now administered by the Accessibility and Language Services Division of the DHS Customer Experience Directorate.

Test process

The Trusted Tester Conformance Test Process for Web is organized into 20 test categories, including keyboard access and focus, forms, links, images, content structure, tables, synchronized media and parsing, with a total of 63 test conditions, each of which must receive a result for a test to be complete. The process incorporates all of the tests in the Harmonized Processes for Revised 508 Testing: Baseline Tests for Web Accessibility, known as the ICT Testing Baseline for Web, a set of minimum test components maintained by the interagency ICT Testing Baseline Working Group and recognized as a best practice by the Accessibility Community of Practice of the Federal Chief Information Officers Council. Testers use a small set of free tools: ANDI (Accessible Name and Description Inspector), an open-source bookmarklet created by the Accessible Solutions Branch of the Social Security Administration, together with the Colour Contrast Analyser or Microsoft Accessibility Insights for measuring color contrast. Version 5.1.3 supports Chrome, Firefox and Edge on Windows 10 and 11, and Safari on macOS. Results can be recorded with the Section 508 Compliance Reporting Tool, which DHS publishes on GitHub together with the test process itself. DHS also publishes separate conformance test processes for software, electronic documents and mobile applications.

Certification

DHS offers the Trusted Tester for Web Certification Program free of charge as web-based, self-paced training through the training portal of its Customer Experience Directorate. The program consists of six courses that must be completed in order within 180 days: an introduction to Section 508, the Section 508 standards for web, the Trusted Tester testing tools, Trusted Tester training for web, a practice exam and the certification exam, in which candidates test sample web pages using the process. When version 5 was introduced, DHS estimated that new testers would need 40 to 80 hours to complete the training. Agencies that adopt the process accept test results only from certified Trusted Testers, and DHS no longer trains or certifies testers on version 4.

Adoption

In December 2023 the Office of Management and Budget issued memorandum M-24-08, which advises agencies to use the ICT Testing Baseline for Web, to perform manual conformance testing "such as the Trusted Tester Conformance Test Process for the Web" in addition to automated testing, and to ensure that staff who test digital accessibility have at least completed a certified Section 508 conformance training program "such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Trusted Tester Certification Program". The Technology Accessibility Playbook of the General Services Administration likewise recommends that agencies evaluate technology using the DHS Trusted Tester process and certification. In the government-wide Section 508 assessment for fiscal year 2024, 49 percent of the 245 reporting entities said they used Trusted Tester version 5 to test web content, up from 39 percent in fiscal year 2023, and some entities reported it as their only test process.

See also

• Computer accessibility
• ICT accessibility laws by state
• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act
• Universal usability
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• Web accessibility

References

• Reuters, T. (2011). Rehabilitation act. Retrieved from Castro, I. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, (2000). Policy guidance on executive order 13164: establishing procedures to facilitate the provision of reasonable accommodation
• Weaver, T. Office of Governmentwide Policy, (2011). Section 508 laws

External links

• CITES/DRES Web Accessibility Best practices
• United States Access Board Archived 2013-11-09 at the Wayback Machine the Federal Agency responsible for Section 508 technical standards
• Section 508 Checklist from WebAIM.org
• USPS AS-508-A, Section 508 Technical Reference Guide in HTML Format
• Federal Register December 2000 Section 508 Electronic and information technology accessibility standards
• Federal Register April 2005 Section 508 related Federal Acquisition Rules
• Section508.gov - free Section 508 training.
• buyaccessible.gov/ - the place for Section 508 procurement assistance