What is 508 compliance and how do I ensure it gets done?

[CSawatzky]

Greetings Mozzers,

I'm completely new to 508 compliance and I hadn't really heard of it until yesterday. It came up in a conversation about W3C compliance (which I know Google doesn't necessarily validate for), but I hadn't ever heard of 508.

So question is, what is 508 and what needs to be done on the back end to become compliant here or to check for compliance. I do know that 508 refers to government regulation to make your website accessible to all.

Thanks for helping out on a rookie question

Cheers,
Pedram

[JaneCopland]

Hi Pedram,

It looks like 508 compliance is legislation in the US referring only to federal agencies and their information technology properties, so unless you are building for a federal agency, this won't be something you need to worry about.

Looking at your profile, it looks like your company supplies government clients but isn't a federal agency, is this right? (I was looking at this page http://www.learningtree.com/government/.)

If you are building for a federal body, the act refers mainly to accessibility issues and is part of the Rehabilitation Act (not the Americans with Disabilities Act as might be assumed). Sorry to link to Wikipedia, but information on the full act (with links to 508) is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_Act_of_1973

Hope this helps! Perhaps check with an internal person at Learning Tree who knows about compliance issues relating to your government work, but I do not see where contractors to government agencies are included in this. I could be wrong though.