Making electronic information accessible to everyone

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1998 requires that all electronic information used by federal agencies be accessible to people with vision, hearing, and mobility impairments. Section 508 only applies to federal agencies at this time. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C defines three levels of priority for Web accessibility. Some of the Section 508 requirements are based on Priority I of the WAI. However, WAI recommendations are entirely voluntary. Even though there is no mandate to impose these requirements on commercial software or web pages, most of these requirements are not difficult to meet. If you are involved in the design and development and documentation of software applications, or Web pages, you should know how to apply accessibility features to your applications.