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http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/06/21/section.508/

Section 508 provides accessible Web sites

updated 01:20 pm EDT, Thu June 21, 2001

 
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Section 508 of the United States Rehabilitation Act goes in effect today, requiring that federal agencies purchase or use electronic and information technology that can be made accessible to government employees with disabilities. The regulations also apply to information citizens encounter on government Web sites. Adobe, as well as many other software companies, have added support and enhancements for the regulations within their publishing software in order to make content more accessible.


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    06/21, 01:48pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    problem for OS X

    this is a major problem for OS X, which lacks any of the accessibility features of previous MacOS versions. I have a visually impaired (legally blind, but not 100% blind) friend who is able to use OS X with the help of Blacklight (which reverses the gamma) and Pixie (part of the dev tools package; it zooms in on the screen). But Apple needs to make nicer, built-in tools available or the gov't WILL NOT BE ABLE to use OS X - and this will include schools!!

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    06/21, 02:14pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Adobe & Section 508 ...

    For more information on Acrobat 5.0 and Adobe PDF in the context of Section 508 guidelines, please visit http://access.adobe.com . -Ed Edell, Adobe Systems Inc.

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    06/21, 03:26pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    No More ".doc" ! Please

    I hope that the government stops using ".doc" formats. I wish Microsoft Word was never made.

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    06/21, 03:31pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    re: No More ".doc"! Ple

    Actually, where I work (National Institutes of Health), WordPerfect is still the default word processor, with Word a close second. Unfortunately, WP for the Mac is end-of-lifed and unsupported by Corel, so most of the Mac users use Word.

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    06/21, 05:45pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    too limiting

    I'm a little worried by this. Will this mean that websites are far poorer in the rich content that they might have had? These regulations have a history of going overboard. It's one thing to say, Make accessible where possible/feasible/reasonable, but it is quite another to say that all content must be in a format that is accessible. That is far too limiting. It is a great compassionate idea, and the US is ahead of other countries in this, but it has gone too far; it should apply to essential things, but not everything. For example, recently I went to a bar in an old building, with a downstairs and a tiny upstairs patio. The charm of the upstairs patio was its cramped nature and the narrow stairway used to reach it... that was, in itself, an experience. You could not build this bar today. But there is an argument that some experiences are available only to, say, people who can walk on their own, and it is not right to deny me the ability to provide those as an architect. The handicapped-accessible regulations are perfectly sensible in so many ways, e.g. in removing an unneccessary lintel across the bottom of a doorway and so forth. So many pointless impedients have been removed and this is great. But it's not right that my options are now limited to what's compatible with the abilities of the handicapped. Of course all floors of a goverment buiding should be handicapped accessible. But not all floors of a bar need be. Another example is the charming and fantastic use of space along Boston's Newbury Street, with shops both up and down from the street along short steps. That is a precious public space and it would not have its character if it were forced to comply with handicapped regulations. No one is proposing it be, but a new one can't be built. And one day will it be forced to comply? In that case it would have to be destroyed.
    So, in short, these regulations should apply to essential services, but should not apply as a blanket to all public spaces-- e.g. Will the Smithsonian's website be unable to provide VR images at all, because there is no good way to translate that into an experience for the blind?

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    06/21, 07:03pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    RE: Too Limiting

    The problem here is not that the disabled want to either be able to use it or you cannot, but to offer an alternative. If its a VR image, have a text with a description of what it is. If its a "image map", at least make standard links at the bottom of the page to the areas on the image map, so a blind persons screen reader can find a link, instead of just a page with your software finding one thing there, and saying "image". I have a completely blind roomate, he works in a Call Center for the Fed. Gov, and has difficulty getting the changes he needs in a format he can deal with. They monitor the calls on occasion, and hes been called to the carpet on a policy change they failed to tell him about. Of course it was in a interoffice written memo, that no one took either the time to tell him, or put in braile. its not like they ask to tear buildings down because they have steps out front, but take a bit more time to code a bit more on that web page, or use the braile printer to copy that document.

    Anyway, X is going to be a mother to make accessable, and the Mac OS before that, has no software I know of that is blind friendly enough for my roomate to use, as in, the ability for it to be as robust as the screenreaders for the PC, like "Jaws" or "Window Eyes". You will never see a Mac, in this light, in an office enviroment, especially for a disabled person.

    (if anyone knows of an app as robust as "Jaws" for the Mac, I would love to know please)

    zero_wing (at) mac.com


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