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Re: What is happening with the update of section 508?

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From: Jared Smith
Date: Nov 28, 2011 6:54PM

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Ryan Hemphill wrote:
> In the case of 508's internet
> protocol, I think it will 'never come to market' in terms of keeping up
> with internet technologies and this bothers me a great deal.

I agree. I fear that when the guidelines are finalized, they'll
already be terribly irrelevant and out-of-date. If future updates
occur at the rate this one has, we'd then be looking at 2025 before we
see another update to Section 508.

> I look at the
> ARIA spec and I see some serious problems there too.

While the W3C process is also slow, do consider that ARIA isn't even
yet a finalized spec. Despite this, it already has good (and
continually improving) support in most modern web technologies. And
the next version of ARIA is already in development.

> Is there any way to get things like section 508 and even the ARIA spec to
> really translate into more of a 'living document' or a software version?
>  Has there been any interest in that idea?

This approach just doesn't work well in the standards realm, and fails
altogether in the legal arena. However, this is precisely how
developers and vendors need to view true accessibility requirements.
Technology and accessibility requirements are constantly shifting
(even WCAG 2.0 has a few elements I think are in need of change
already). We need to be responsive to these changes so we provide
optimal accessibility rather than merely compliance to a set of
guidelines.

Jared