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Highlights from the new Government-wide Section 508 Assessment

January 30, 2024 Presented on: January 30, 2024

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.

Continuing Education Recognition Available

Certificate Credit hours
ACTCP 1.5
Certificate of Attendance 1.5

Speakers

Timothy Creagan, Senior Accessibility Specialist, U.S. Access Board

Katherine Eng, Senior ICT Accessibility Specialist, U.S. Access Board

Andrew Nielson, Director of the Government-wide IT Accessibility Program, Office of Government-wide Policy, General Services Administration

Kristen Smith-O’Connor, Senior ICT Accessibility Specialist, Government-wide IT Accessibility Program, Office of Government-wide Policy, General Services Administration

Session Questions

This session is accepting questions from registered users. After you have registered to participate in this session you can submit your questions on your Account Manager page. Please note: the number of questions will be limited and submissions will be closed well before the session starts to provide time to prepare answers.

Privacy Statement

In order to register for this webinar you will need to create an account and provide, at a minimum, your name, email address, phone number, city, and country. If you do not wish to create an account, you may watch this webinar after it has been recorded. Webinars are typically posted two days after the live session. You can access previously recorded Section 508 webinars on the Great Lakes ADA Center Section 508 Best Practices Archives webpage. Be advised that in order to obtain continuing education credits, you must register and create an account. See Continuing Education Recognition Request Policy.