Section 508 Not as Hard as People Thought
From: Washington Technology - May 20, 2002 - Vol. 17, No. 4, page 10
By: Gail Repsher Emery

Government and Information Technology (IT) industry experts say considerable
progress has been made in agencies' efforts to make their electronic and
information technology applications accessible to people with disabilities.
Although government IT is not fully accessible today, many agencies now
realize meeting the accessibility requirements of Section 508 is not as
difficult as initially believed. A year ago, agencies and IT vendors appeared
to be in state of panic because of Section 508, which took effect June 25,
2001. Agencies were afraid of lawsuits for not having accessible Web-based
and IT applications, while IT companies had doubts about whether they could
produce the IT accessible products that the agencies needed. Officials say
much of the compliance comes as a result of collaborations involving the
government, industry, and the disability community. The latest efforts
include the General Services Administration's purchase of a Section 508
training CD-ROM and the agency's' new lab for testing assistive products,
such as screen readers for the blind. Section 508 required agencies to
purchase accessible Web-based and IT applications after June 25 last year,
but some agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service, are updating older Web
sites and IT systems. "We took the approach that the customer isn't going to
know and won't care when a particular application or document was created,"
but would want all applications to be accessible, says Ray Morgan, manager of
the Postal Service's Section 508 program. 

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