| Section 508 : Background
Information
In 1998, the United States Congress
amended the Rehabilitation Act to require government
agencies to make their electronic and information technology
accessible to people with disabilities. Section 508
was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology
and applies to all government agencies when they develop,
procure, maintain or use electronic and information
technology. Under Section 508, agencies must
give disabled employees and members of the public access
to information that is comparable to the access available
to others.
This legislation means that government agencies need
to ensure that most of the software programs that they
develop, as well as most of the software products that
they purchase, meet specific accessibility guidelines.
This applies to internally developed programs, custom
programs provided by consulting organizations, and computer
programs licensed from commercial companies.
However, a recent government survey of
1,676 commonly used software products within the government
found that 1,550 of these products (92.5%) do not comply
with the Section 508 regulations. (Source:
United States Department of Justice, Attorney General,
April 2000). Much of this delay in adhering
to the Section 508 regulations is due to the
tremendous amount of manual testing efforts
required to conform to this wide-reaching regulation.
A major purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act
of 1990 was to increase the employment rate of people
with disabilities by making it illegal to practice discrimination
against individuals who happen to have a disability.
About 1 In 5 Americans have some kind of disability,
and 1 in 10 have a severe disability. And, with the
population aging and the likelihood of having a disability
increasing with age, the growth in the number of people
with disabilities can be expected to accelerate in the coming decades. (source: U.S. Department of Commerce)
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More Information
on Section 508
For more information on the Section 508 regulations,
please refer to the following web sites:
 http://www.govexec.com/508/
http://www.hhs.gov/siteinfo/508synopsis.html
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/508/508home.html
http://www.gcn.com/Resource/section508/
http://www.opm.gov/html/508-textOfLaw.htm |
