Updates to Section 508 Guidelines and Standards

Topic: Reviewing proposed updates in the Section 508 guidelines and standards
(http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/draft-rule.htm)

Speaker: Terrill Thompson, Technology Accessibility Specialist, UW-IT

• Section 508 is an amendment in 1998 to the Rehabilitation Act
  
  
  • Requires access to electronic and information provided by the Federal government
  • Standards were written by the Access Board to clarify what it meant, published in Federal Register on December 21, 2000
    
    
    • http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/standards.html
    • Clear, consistent, rule expressed language
    • Web accessibility included
      
      
      • Informed by the WCAG priority 1 checkpoints
      • 16 standards statements
      • Very HTML-centric
    • Comparing with WCAG guidelines
      
      
      • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
      • Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG)
      • User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG)
    • WCAG 2.0 has supporting documents
      
      
      • Techniques for WCAG 2.0
      • How to Meet WCAG 2.0
      • Understanding WCAG 2.0
      • The WCAG 2.0 Documents
  • Does 508 apply to us?
    
    
    • 508 as written applies explicitly to federal agencies
    • State Guidelines - Accessibility to Information Technology for Individuals With Disabilities - http://isb.wa.gov/policies/1000g.doc (Word)
      
      
      • Adopted by ISB, May 2005
      • Says it applies to educational institutions
      • Adopts Section 508 standards + WCAG 2.0 for Web
  • We are required to provide accessible programs and services for other reasons
    
    
    • Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
    • Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
    • Section 508 is a standard written into law that might be used by courts as a gauge of current practice
    • The UW does recognize that being sued over accessibility is a potential risk for the university
    • Section 255 of Telecom Act of 1996
      
      
      • Requires telecommunications equipment manufacturers and service providers to make their products and services accessible
• The refresh of 508 guidelines and standards
  
  
  • Access Board assembled the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC) to update 508 and 255 standards and guidlines
  • TEITAC recommendations presented April 2008
  • Accepting public comment through June 21, 2010
  • More info at www.access-board.gov/508.htm
• Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Standards & Guidelines
  
  
  • Reviewing chapter organization, it is not clear which are the operative parts and which are explanatory
  • Hard to extract the standards from the text and translate it to how it would apply to what we are doing
  • Significantly changed how it is organized - original version was much easier to point to specific rules
  • Level of detail is higher but consistency of editing is worse
  • Numbering and organization takes getting use to; some items are recursive, lowest levels referring to higher levels
  • Advisory content boxes help explain rules and give many examples, but sometimes occur before the rules they explain
  • Each of the two introductory chapters (one for ICT and one for telecommunications and VoIP) have detailed glossaries
• Section E107: Harmonization with W3C Guidelines
  
  
  • Section E107 states that goal is harmonization with WCAG 2.0
  • If web pages meets WCAG 2.0 then they comply, as long as they also conform with 409, 413, 606.4, 604.5, 607, 608
    
    
    • user platform preferences (409)
    • authoring tool standards ( 413)
    • real-time video description (604.4 and 604.5)
    • user controls for captions and video descritption (607)
    • user controls to adjust foreground and background sound independently (608) - not widely supported at this time
  • Authoring Tool and User Agent guidelines are integrated throughout, but ATAG and UAAG are not explicitly referenced (both are under revision at W3C)
• Section E108: Best Meets
  
  
  • Odd title, an example of occasionally creative language use in the document
  • "agency must produce the product that best meets the provisions of this part, consistent with the business needs of the agency"
  • Essentially an exception or loophole
• What can we do?
  
  
  • Terry is working on a First Impressions of ICT Accessibility Standards and Guidelines statement that he hopes to submit as a comment on the draft guidelines before June. Please review his statement and post any comments to the AccessibleWeb@U email list.
  • With so few exceptions, we could just focus on WCAG 2.0 since it seems better documented, at least so far