Highlights from the New Government-Wide Section 508 Assessment

At the end of 2022, Congress enacted the Consolidated Appropriations Act, Section 752. This required an update of Section 508 Assessment Criteria across government. During 2023, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) the General Services administration (GSA), the U.S. Access Board (USAB) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the White House worked closely together developing new Section 508 Assessment Criteria. The Criteria were used to create a survey containing 105 questions, targeting specific areas of agency Section 508 programs. The survey was disseminated across government. Forty questions addressed accessibility program maturity, 43 addressed conformance questions, eliciting specific performance metrics for web, hardware, software, documents, and selected enterprise applications, among other features. Finally, there were 22 general information questions about Section 508 programs themselves, asking about staffing levels, task organization, and complaint processes, to name a few.

Once agencies submitted their responses, GSA, OSTP, OMB and USAB analyzed and compiled the results into a report which was submitted to Congress in December 2023. The report contained summaries of the conclusions derived from analysis of the data received, as well as recommendations to Congress for further action to improve 508 Implementation across government. This webinar will review the processes used to create maturity metrics, discuss some of the analysis used in evaluating the survey results, and touching on the recommendations in the report.

Questions can be submitted in advance of the session or can be posed during the live webinar.

Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) and real-time captioning will be provided.