WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: 508 compliant checkbox form controls

for

From: Hoffman, Allen
Date: Aug 2, 2011 1:15PM

My opinion regarding some of the comments below about 508 and WCAG is
that while WCAG 2.0 contains additional detailed requirements, for the
most part, they are refinements, and alternatives which fall under the
original WCAG 1.0 guidance, and the associated Section 508 standards
existing today. For example, for nontext alternatives, WCAG has nine
items broken down--this is nice guidance, but really does not change the
overall requirement, but does make reading a lot longer process. Such
guidance was developed as a natural response to questions and answers
practitioners have encountered over time, but ITS kind of like a
frequently asked question section rather than a more terse standard.
I'm not knocking WCAG 2.0, but taken along with the sufficient
techniques, it is a steep learning curve. I don't believe there are
many sites which will become noncompliant when they are reassessed for
compliance with WCAG 2.0 vs. old 508 standards, at least for the
refinements of existing standards, but such things as delineation of
natural language will cause sites to do some remediation work. In
addition, I foresee a lot of remediation work for some sites to address
unfocused error messages, and a huge set of work to address document
content.





-----Original Message-----
From: Bevi Chagnon [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 5:25 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] 508 compliant checkbox form controls

The difference between "accessible" and "Section 508 compliant":

"Accessible" refers to "generally accepted standards and guidelines."
They
are neither laws nor regulations but instead are voluntary guidelines
that
governments, entities, individuals, corporations, and institutions
choose to
follow. These guidelines were developed and are maintained by the W3C's
WAI
which produces WCAG.

"Section 508 compliant" refers to the U.S. legislation that requires all
federal ICT (information communication technology) be accessible to
federal
employees and the U.S. general public. U.S. federal agencies must
produce
accessible ICR: it is not voluntary but mandatory.

Sec. 508 does not affect these entities:
1. State and local governments unless they choose to adopt the federal
standards.
2. Corporations, educational institutions, and other entities unless
they
choose to adopt the federal standards.
3. Individuals, private businesses, and organizations unless they choose
to
adopt the federal standards.
4. Non-U.S. governments and entities, institutions, businesses, and
individuals. They are governed by their country's accessibility
guidelines,
not the U.S. federal guidelines.

Current U.S. guidelines for Sec. 508 accessibility are outdated so they
do
not match the international WCAG 2.0 guidelines. (Shame on us!) But the
U.S.
Access Board is in the process of "refreshing" the U.S. requirements to
bring them up to date and match WCAG 2.0. Hopefully we'll have new
guidelines by the end of this year. See the Access Board's website
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/draft-rule.htm for the latest
draft of the revised guidelines.

Summary:
If something is Section 508 compliant, it is accessible according to the
current 508 standards, but not might be accessible according to the
better
international WCAG 2.0 standards.

However, if something meets the current WCAG 2.0 standards, it will be
Section 508 accessible too.

WebAIM promotes the better WCAG 2.0 standards, so when in doubt trust
their
guidance as you did regarding forms. I can't recall any techniques they
recommend that conflict with Section 508's federal requirements.

Hope this helps.

- Bevi Chagnon
(A Washington D.C. inside-the-Beltway type
who has to explain this distinction several times a day)

--
Bevi Chagnon | <EMAIL REMOVED>
PubCom - Trainers, consultants, designers, and developers
Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, and Federal Section 508
--
* It's our 30th Year! *

-----Original Message-----
I know that there are times when 'accessible" and "Section 508
compliant"
don't always mean the same thing.
A colleague and I are arguing over this regarding checkbox form
controls.