Accessibility

 Subscribe for email updates on Accessibility and Section 508

What It Is

Web accessibility is ensuring that people with any disability type—including motor, auditory, cognitive, seizure/neurological, and visual impairments—are able to use Web content, and ensuring that content is "perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust."

Why It's Important

In creating an accessible experience, it's essential to understand the needs of each disability type and build agency sites accordingly. When you create accessible sites, it provides the opportunity for all citizens to participate in, and contribute to, the Web.

Specific Requirements

To meet the mandates of Section 508, Web content managers, developers, designers, and all those involved in building government websites, must endeavor to provide all U.S. citizens with timely, usable access to government information. As more agencies use social media, it's important that our users have the ability to interact with government at every level.

We recommend you provide your organization's accessibility policies. The most–useful locations for your policy (or a link to this policy) are on your site's policies and notices page and your help page.

How to Implement

Explore our content for help in creating a rich, accessible experience for your website users.

• Provide Access for People With Disabilities (Section 508)
• Provide Common Access for a Broad Range of Visitors
• Provide Appropriate Access to Data
• Use Appropriate File Formats
• Create Accessible PDFs
• Make Videos, Audio Files, Podcasts, and Other Multimedia Section 508 Compliant and Accessible

Content Lead: Angela Hooker
Page Reviewed/Updated: August 2, 2012