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Will Section 508 Be Taken More Seriously?
Just recently, the National Federation of the Blind filed the third Section 508 related complaint in a row. Will this change how seriously Section 508 compliance will be taken?
It is rather frequent that a government agency or a contractor states Section 508 compliance because this is the law. But these statements do not always correct. There is a large number of federal sites and applications which do not meet the mandated Section 508 requirements.
The National Federation of the Blind recently filed complaints against the Department of Education, Social Security Administration, and the Small Business Administration. The first two are known to have one of the most well-known and effective Section 508 programs. It was rather unexpected that in case of a Section 508 complaint, these agencies will come to the spotlight.
While NFB filed a Section 508 complaint, they are primarily monitoring accessibility for visually impaired people. NFB is committed to continue monitoring federal sites, and filing more complaints as necessary if they find issues which interfere with accessibility for people with visual impairment.
NFB being such a powerful organization with thousands of members, it does not seem to be impossible that they will track down many other issues which exist and have not been reported. It appears that agencies and contractors won't be able to get away with anything in the future. And I'm not saying that it is deliberate. But NFB is definitely establishing a precedence that inappropriate accessibility testing will not be able to suffice in the future.
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Sec 508 & Social Security and DOJ
Social Security & DOJ are notorious violators of Sec. 508 compliance for peopel with Autism who use speech recognition like Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Obama and money
I think first that Section 508 badly needs to be updated, technically. Then, the U.S. govt needs to allocate more funds to this cause (web accessibility). And states as well. But I think money is a big issue. I really like President Obama and hope he can turn this country around, at least financially, so that enforcement of Section 508 has a better chance of happening.
Probably not, unless
Probably not, unless disability organizations (National Federation of the Blind, American Federation of the Blind, National Association of the Deaf, National Epilepsy Foundation, and other disability related organizations file class action lawsuits against to almost half the United States Government.
The Small Business Administration did not take it seriously until the compliant was filed, and I recently found out from evergrounds that the Justice Department and the Education Department has a lawsuit against them.
There needs to be a lawsuit against all federal agencies for the federal government to take Section 508 seriously.
Obama and Money
In response to Web Axe, I have went to an accessibility seminar, and I learned there is a significant difference between Section 508 compliance vs. Accessibility. During the seminiar a question was raised "How does the federal government plan to close the gap between accessibility vs. complinace?".
Their response was with WCAG 2.0 standards.
I hate that response, because I hate the WCAG 2.0 standards.
WCAG or Section 508
Chris,
This answer is true, but very over-simplified. The U.S. government will not adopt WCAG as it is. It will, however, most likely synchronize the new 508 standards with WCAG 2.0. If you think about it, the current standards are synchronized with WCAG 1.0, and they don't look alike at all.
Besides, the gap between standards and actual accessibility will always remain open. It can be much smaller, but unfortunately, there's no such application that will be accessible and usable to all people on the same level. We can just get close to it.
WCAG or Section 508 (Will Section 508 be taken seriously)
Tom, my point was even if they keep some items on WCAG 1 and synchronize some with WCAG 2, federal agencies will not take it seriously. There will still be too many federal websites that fail Section 508.
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