I met a fellow govie recently, and when I told him that I work in digital media accessibility, he said, “OMG, I could not review code all day, every day!” Well…neither could I, and although that’s what most people think we accessibility peeps do, that’s not the case. I may or may not look atRead… Read more »
The Plain Writing Act of 2010 and Executive Order 13563 both require that we communicate clearly, accessibly, consistently so that government information is easy to understand. The principles of plain language help us provide universal access to government information, for many people. We’re told to “write for average comprehension,” when we use those principles. So,Read… Read more »
I just read a blog post about the benefits of an accessible site. Despite working in accessibility for the past 15 years, sometimes I still get surprised that we even need to have the conversation about accessibility being necessary and the right thing to do–particularly in government where we’re required to comply with Section 508.Read… Read more »
We govies have been waiting for the Section 508 refresh for almost seven years. It was April 2008 when an advisory committee presented the first draft of the refresh to the U.S. Access Board. Section 508 is part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended in 1998. The amendment includes accessibility requirements for government agenciesRead… Read more »
Gian Wild of AccessibilityOz made me aware of this awesome accessibility alphabet of mini-personas, reflecting a large group of people for whom accessibility in websites and documents is critical. This is the sort of material I think agencies should make available to all their staff to help them be more mindful of the range ofRead… Read more »
The first thing I did was look for a mention of “.pdf” in the document, but I didn’t find it. That made me wonder how effective this will be if specifics aren’t incorporated about requiring data formats that are more amenable for manipulation. Yes, I know that many tools exist for scraping and extracting structureRead… Read more »
Deque Systems is hosting a free seminar titled “A Case Study in Real-World Section 508 Compliance: How the VA is deploying the largest section 508 program in government” at the National Press Club on February 21st. This seminar will present the inside story of how the VA is deploying the largest Section 508 Compliance programRead… Read more »
The Accessibility Forum 2.0 blog added some great new content this Summer. Check it out and join the voices from the front line discussing Section 508. A new blog series called, “Department/Agency Section 508 Roles and Responsibilities.” Each post will be discussing different roles and responsibilities with regard to the implementation of Section 508. Department/AgencyRead… Read more »
It’s the time of year for Spring cleaning, time to sweep out those dust bunnies that have been collecting under your couch all Winter long. How about hopping on over to your website to see if it needs some cleaning up too? When is the last time you checked your agency’s website to see ifRead… Read more »
This week the BuyAccessible team attended the IDEAS 2012 conference. At our booth, people told us that the technical language in the GPAT was difficult to understand. That language comes from the Section 508 standard, so we can’t change it. But… a long time ago we created a resource called Quick Reference Guide that wasRead… Read more »