THE ULTIMATE
With the increase of awareness due to recent court cases involving access to websites for individuals with a disability, there has been and increase in website owners and companies with a web presences taking a proactive effort to understand and implement various protocols in order to ensure that their website is compliant. For most companies in the United States, developers turn to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), to better understand the criteria used to test their websites using Section 508 compliance testing standards.
As of January 18, 2017, the United States Access Board (USAB) published the final rule that updated the accessibility requirements covered in Section 508. Though Section 508 lacks a descriptive measurement of compliance, court settlements have made it clear that companies should rely on the standards laid out by the Worldwide Web Consortium’s (W3C’s) WCAG 1.0 Level A and AA and WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA criteria. The WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA criteria identify several deficiencies in the USAB’s final rule. Of the 38 criteria mentioned in WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA, only 22 are addressed in Section 508, 16 are not addressed, the 16 provide guidance for criteria such as the logical order of content, audio controls, contrast, text size, headlines, and labels, to name a few. One of the goals of updated standards prepared by the USAB was to harmonize technologies with European ICT standards, by creating better uniformity and awareness worldwide. As such, the USAB encourages web developers to conduct website testing and remediation using automated 508 website testing tools that are able to crawl a website and evaluate various aspects of compliance and determine if a website contains accessibility barriers for users. Automated screening is considered the quickest and most cost effective way to determine if a website is not accessible and do not comply with the accessibility standards used by many countries. In the General Services Administration (GSA) encourages companies doing business with the US government to ensure that technologies purchased by the US government meet various technological and accessibility standards. In order to meet part of their mission the GSA created the GSA Government-wide Section 508 Accessibility Program to assist contractors in this area. Because Section 508 and W3C standards are technical, and due to the complexity of the coding of websites, companies have relied upon 508 compliance testing tools, like AuditGenie, to assist them with the task of identifying if their website is compliant and meets the W3C standards. AuditGenie is listed as a GSA Section 508 compliance testing resource vendor. The failure of a company with a web presence to conduct 508 compliance testing could result in being sued by an individual or a special interest groups. The continued increase of demand letters issued by law firms and court settlements should encourage any company with a web presence to seek out a 508 website testing tool, and test their website.
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