100 Days of A11y

Day 90: Section 508 and the ADA

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I've had an accessibility-heavy week! However, it's not without it's rewards. I've found that sometimes on these journeys, ideas start to synchronize, articles relevant to what I'm questioning start to emerge in my Twitter feed, and people approach me about ideas or questions they have that spur me on further. In line with a talk I'm giving this weekend and the classes I'm taking through Deque, the U.S. laws that protect the civil rights of people with disabilities kept coming into question in my mind. It's only appropriate that I spent a little bit of time with those fundamentals today.

Things I accomplished

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What I reviewed today

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The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

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Covers:

[Federal] Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (amended in 1998)

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What I learned from it

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Federal laws were instated to protect people with disabilities, as well as present an example to state and local governments, plus private entities. Laws focus on physical and electronic access.

Physical:

Electronic:

The ADA is essential a blanket civil rights law that protects the equal treatment of people with disabilities. Many lawsuits are championed with the ADA.

The Section 508 refresh specifically references WCAG 2.0, Level AA:

"E205.4 under Electronic Content indicates the accessibility standards for electronic content shall conform to WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA Success Criteria and Conformance Requirements"

However, non-web documents and non-web software are not required to meet four criteria:

There are some ICT exceptions in Section 508. These exceptions are:

The only exceptions to agency official communication (as opposed to public facing) being compliant with Section 508 are any records maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) obsolete to Federal recordkeeping statutes.

Whew! And there's still so much to learn...