Section 508 Refresh (Part 2)

Updated 6/29/2023

In Part 1 of our Section 508 Refresh, we focused on the background, history and highlighted some of the key changes influencing the revised Section 508 standards. In today’s article, we are shifting focus to the important initiatives that have taken place to better prepare agencies and vendors to support this new accessibility standard.

Original Section 508 vs Revised Section 508 Standards

While you can expect many new requirements, most are substantially the same but renamed or expanded upon.

To ease this transition the US Access Board has created a variety of comparative tables to reinforce what is new and where existing requirements may still live under a different name or category.

Defining Requirements

When developing and testing new ICT that meets these standards, organizations must first accurately define which requirements apply. While a shift to a function-based approach improves accuracy, this exercise places a greater emphasis on knowledge of the ICT’s feature-set.

To meet this challenge, the U.S. General Service Administration (GSA) developed the Accessibility Requirements Tool (ART). This step-by-step guide assists in the accurate identification and documentation of accessibility requirements.

WCAG 2.0

Though the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) is only one of ten different standards incorporated by reference, this W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) standard had perhaps the most significant influence with it came to global harmonization and testing.

WCAG 2.0 is designed to apply broadly to different Web technologies now and in the future and be testable with automated testing and human evaluation. By incorporating these guidelines by reference, organizations can leverage a considerable amount of technical documentation the community has developed for many years.

While the inclusion of WCAG 2.0 was viewed as a significant leap forward, please keep the perspective that this was initially published in 2008. The W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (W3C) continues to make updates to WCAG to address gaps with user needs and technology advancement. 2.1 was released in June 2018 and 2.2 is coming out later this year.

It’s important to note that updates to this guideline do not automatically roll into Section 508. Section 508 will only require conformance with the Success Criteria defined in WCAG 2.0 Level A & AA until the law is revised again. At that point in time, we may be discussing a whole new version of WCAG!

Accessibility Conformance Documentation

When Section 508 originally became law, federal procurement officials were expected to purchase the most compliant product – but how could they possibly make this determination? Hence the creation of the VPAT® 1.0 format, which was developed by the ITI – Information Technology Industry Council in partnership with GSA in 2001.

A VPAT®, or Voluntary Product Accessibility Template®, is a self-disclosing document produced by the vendor which details each aspect of the Section 508 requirements and how the product supports each criterion.

On March 16, 2022, ITI released the latest version of this accessibility conformance report — VPAT® 2.4 Rev. 508.

Additional Resources on Section 508

Categories: Accessibility Strategy, Technical
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