Best Section 508 Compliance Testing Tools & Checklists
The digital presence of your business makes it easy for your offerings to reach the disabled population. On the other hand, the increasing number of disabled users in the country makes your business vulnerable to digital accessibility lawsuits, especially with serial litigant law firms, looking to profit off of such ADA lawsuits. ADA and Section 508 guidelines cover a lot of technical offerings such as software, hardware, electronic documents and more. In simple words, these laws are designed to make the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offerings accessible to everyone.
A set of guidelines or roadmap is provided by the government to achieve the 508 compliance certification. Following the directives can help businesses to make their products accessible to disabled users. Complying with the regulations also offers peace of mind that the business is protected from the risk of expensive litigations. So what are included in these regulations? Is there a checklist that we can quickly follow and develop a Section 508 compliant website? Let’s find out.
Things you should know about Section 508 testing
The latest refresh of Section 508 mandates that organizations should follow the guidelines mentioned in WCAG 2.0. Following the universal approach is beneficial for businesses that are already complying with the latest versions of WCAG to attain ADA compliance.
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which are released by the World Wide Web Consortium. The guidelines are frequently updated and have three levels of accessibility compliance, i.e. A, AA and AAA. The checklist for Section 508 can be made by adhering to the attributes mentioned in the AA level of WCAG.
Checklist For Website 508 Compliance
To make your website or ICT offerings compliant with Section 508, you can refer to the following checklist:
- Screen reader functionality: Users with vision impairment use screen readers to access the content. Therefore, every non-text element presented to the users should be assigned a text alternative. For instance, a caption for the images mentioned on the page which a user can interpret via a screen reader.
- Assistive technology:For tasks like form filling, users should be able to implement an assistive technology or may substitute the mouse usage with keyword or vice versa.
- Navigation: Accessing the content can be long and daunting for users with a physical disability. When they use a screen reader, they should be able to skip the navigation to read the content they want.
- Visibility standards: There are certain guidelines for contrast ratio to make the content accessible for visually impaired users. Additionally, the content displayed on the screen should not trigger seizures. For instance, flashes, blinks, flickers or Gifs can induce seizures so the issue should be addressed when you aim for accessibility.
How to start?
Checking the violations of Section 508 is not an easy task. The checklist mentioned above looks pretty straightforward. Though the process of remediation and ongoing monitoring is quite complicated. You can start with automated testing but manual audits are considered useful to identify every possible accessibility barrier.
A useful tool for Section 508 testing is WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool). For precise monitoring, it is best to talk to the manual audit specialists. If you want to learn more about the process of section 508 guidelines audits, visit the link given below.