Section 508 Accessibility: Federal ICT Compliance

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to ensure that all information and communication technology (ICT) they develop, procure, maintain, or use is accessible to people with disabilities. Since the 2017 Refresh incorporated WCAG 2.

1 Level AA as the technical standard, the scope of that obligation now reaches web content, software, electronic documents, multimedia, hardware, and support services. This course gives you a thorough, practical grounding in Section 508 compliance from the statute through implementation. You will start with the legal framework: the Rehabilitation Act, the Access Board, GSA, and the functional performance criteria that define what accessible means in practice.

From there the course works through the WCAG 2. 1 Level AA success criteria — organized under the four POUR principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) — and applies them to the most common ICT types federal agencies deal with: websites, PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and video with captions and audio description. The final section covers testing and procurement: how to use automated and manual tools to evaluate conformance, how to apply the Revised 508 Standards in an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR), and how to build and sustain an agency Section 508 program.

By the end of this course you will be able to create, test, and procure accessible federal ICT with confidence.