Section 508

Section 508 is a provision of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act that requires federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology (ICT) accessible to people with disabilities, both federal employees and members of the public. The modern, enforceable form of the law comes from a 1998 amendment, and its technical requirements are set by the U.S. Access Board.

The technical bar is defined by the Revised 508 Standards, published by the Access Board in 2017 with a compliance date of January 18, 2018. The single most important thing to know about these standards is that they incorporate WCAG 2.0 Level A and Level AA by reference for web content, and extend those same criteria to non-web software and electronic documents. In practical terms, for a website, testing against WCAG is testing against Section 508.

Section 508 is as much a procurement law as a civil-rights law. Federal agencies are required to buy accessible ICT, and that obligation flows to vendors through the Federal Acquisition Regulation. Solicitations commonly ask vendors to document how their product conforms, which is where the VPAT and its resulting Accessibility Conformance Report enter the process. For a vendor, 508 conformance is effectively a condition of selling to the federal government.

The law's reach extends past federal agencies themselves. Many states have adopted accessibility requirements for their own IT that mirror or reference Section 508, sometimes informally called little 508 laws, so vendors selling to state governments frequently face 508-equivalent expectations even though the federal statute does not bind those buyers directly.