Section 508 Compliance

What is Section 508?

Although many people mistakenly believe that it’s part of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 508 is part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended in 1998. Section 508 requires that federal agencies’ electronic and information technology (EIT) be accessible to people with disabilities. This means that U.S. federal agencies that develop, procure, maintain, or use E&IT design in their products must ensure that people with disabilities have access comparable to people without disabilities.

ABCs: Our Approach, Background, and Clients

RGM is a creative and professional services firm, supporting a broad range of services for business to business, consumer, retail, government, and not-for-profit enterprises. We regularly evaluate, assess, convert, and remediate Microsoft Office documents (e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Adobe Creative Cloud (e.g., InDesign and Adobe PDF), and electronic content (e.g., websites, web applications, social media, and multimedia) for compliance to the latest Section 508 accessibility standards and government mandates. In doing so, RGM fully supports the efforts of the federal government and legislature to make electronic information and web-based products accessible to all federal employees and to the public. We do not simply remediate items for our clients, we help our clients learn Section 508 principles and apply them to future content authoring.

RGM evaluates, assesses, and remedies issues in websites; Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files; and PDF documents for compliance with Section 508. In doing so, we fully support the federal government’s efforts to make electronic information and web-based products accessible to all users. We reduce the administrative burden associated with compliance for federal agencies and provide 508 optimizations for all federal EIT efforts. We produce Section 508 compliant documents for a range of federal agencies, including:

• Department of Education
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
• National Institutes of Health
• U.S. Health and Human Services subagencies (health-related PDF documents into Section 508 compliant website content; under a subcontract with Thomson Reuters and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago)
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
• U.S. Government Accountability Office
• U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Our solutions are not only Section 508 compliant but also improve technology to make it more user friendly for people with disabilities. The goal is to encourage the disabled community to make full use of the technology. With our expertise, businesses can offer the same benefits and services to people with and without disabilities, enabling businesses to become more involved in the community while simultaneously extending their reach.

RGM’s testing team is fully knowledgeable on 508 testing standards and analysis. We evaluate, test, and perform remediation on a broad range of technology products for Section 508 conformance and expertly conduct Section 508 compliance assessments by leveraging our extensive technical knowledge with mastery of EIT accessibility. RGM constantly monitors the Section 508 website to identify real-time changes in policy guidance. When changes are identified, those are immediately addressed by our accessibility compliance team to determine the impact and timeline for changing our internal processes. Additionally, we review other agencies’ processes—Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Trusted Tester Program (TTP)—to identify best practices and potential improvements from within the compliance community.

We produce Section 508 compliant websites by reviewing items such as:

• Accessible forms
• Accessible frame labelling
• Accessible script content
• Alternate text equivalents for images
• Client-side image maps
• Color contrast for low vision
• Device-independent content
• Multimedia alternatives
• Navigational shortcuts
• Screen flicker
• Server-side image maps
• Structural elements
• Stylistic independence
• Tables for data
• Tables for layout purposes
• Text-only alternate versions
• Timed responses
• Use of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications)
• Video captioning

RGM ensures that all websites and postings designed for our federal clients meet Section 508 compliance standards. To that end, we have invested in Criterion® Section 508 Solutions training and certification for all project staff involved in any web development or materials designed for electronic posting.

• Download our Voluntary Product Accessibility Template
• 508 3.0 – 508 Compliance: Web Design and Content Development
• Section 508 Compliance: Multimedia Platforms
• Section 508 Compliance: Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDFs
• Section 508 Compliance and Mobile Accessibility
• Documenting Accessibility: The Importance of 508 Compliance for Federal Agencies