Section 508 hoopla is here!  Below is an article from CNN on this important issue.
The related link citations included at the end of the article.  Go directly to the
article to access them.

Kelly

 From the Web page:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industry/06/15/web.site.accessibility.idg/index.html

Web site accessibility goes mainstream
From... Network World Fusion
June 15, 2001 Posted: 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 GMT)
By Carolyn Duffy Marsan
(IDG) -- A federal government initiative aimed at making Web sites
accessible to
people with disabilities is raising awareness of accessibility issues among
corporate
Web developers and spawning software that helps fix accessibility problems.
The government's so-called Section 508 goes into effect on June 21, leaving
federal
agencies, IT vendors and government contractors scrambling to comply with
the stringent
new rules.
While the new version of Section 508 was written for federal agencies, it
is having
broad impact on companies that sell IT systems to the federal government.
Section 508 is part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which requires the
federal
government to buy and develop information systems that are accessible to
people with
disabilities.
In 1998, President Clinton added teeth to the Section 508 guidelines by
creating
enforceable standards for accessibility and incorporating them into the
federal acquisition
regulations.
"When the government says you need to build technology a certain way, for
vendors
like ourselves that's a very compelling maxim," says Christy Hubbard,
product marketing
manager for Adobe's ePaper Solutions Group. "We need to build products that
can be
sold to the government. It's not very practical for us to build multiple
versions
of our products."
Section 508 applies to all IT systems purchased by the federal government,
including
PCs, software and office equipment such as copiers and fax machines. Much
of the
angst over the new rules surrounds the requirement to make federal Web
sites accessible
to people with disabilities.
"The most difficult problem with 508 is Web sites," says Bill Sahlberg, an
accessibility
consultant at JetForm.
"Federal agencies have already built these sites. There's a huge amount of
information
in them. . . . In the blink of an eye, they have to convert everything to
work with
assistive technology like screen readers," he adds.
Easy navigation
Federal agencies and their contractors need to ensure that their Web sites
are easy
to navigate with devices ranging from screen readers to head-mounted
devices that
track eye movement. They need to provide accurate text descriptions of
graphic and
sound elements.
They need to provide accessible hooks into drop-down menus and online
forms. And
they need to make sure color doesn't convey meaning as in a stop sign image
or bar
chart.
These challenges have spawned a new class of Web development tools. In the
past two
months, several vendors, including JetForm, Adobe and Macromedia, have
started shipping
Section 508-related products.
These tools range in price from free for Macromedia's Dreamweaver 4
accessibility
extension to more than $2,600 for SSB Technologies' InFocus software that
fixes common
accessibility problems.
"Eighteen months ago, the only tool out there was Bobby, a free software
package
with very limited capabilities," says Marco Sorani, president of SSB
Technologies.
"We've come a long way since Bobby."
Several of the new tools crawl through Web pages to find common
accessibility problems
and offer advice about fixing them. Other tools help developers create
templates
that generate accessible pages and forms. Still others provide regular
reports on
Web site accessibility that can be used as an audit trail in litigation.
Interest in these tools is high. Macromedia says more than 8,000 people
downloaded
its new Section 508 extension in the first two weeks of availability in
May. Federal
agencies, IT suppliers and educational institutions have expressed the most
interest,
says Pat Brogan, vice president of solutions at Macromedia.
"People feel like their Web sites must be compliant," Brogan says. "They're
wondering
what the enforcement is going to be like and what the penalties will be.
People are
taking this very seriously."
Indeed, it's mainly fear of Section 508-related lawsuits that is driving
companies
to get serious about accessibility.
Among the IT vendors that are ramping up their accessibility efforts in
light of
Section 508 are Adobe, Macromedia, Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard and
Booz Allen
& Hamilton.
"508 was the wake-up call for many high-tech companies to take
accessibility seriously,"
says Mike Paciello, founder of WebABLE, an accessibility consultancy, and
author
of a book on Web site accessibility. Paciello says only a handful of
companies, including
IBM, Microsoft and Apple, focused on accessibility prior to the federal
government's
mandate.
"Corporations realized there was too much at stake by not being able to do
business
with the feds," Paciello says. "They realized they needed to do what was
necessary
to comply."
Companies that get serious about Web site accessibility find it to be a
time-consuming
and iterative process. Even with the new automated tools, Web developers
will spend
a couple of hours per page diagnosing and fixing accessibility problems.
Static Web
pages are easier to fix than dynamically generated Web pages, and pages
built from
templates are easier than those without templates.
"If you've got a company or a government agency with 1,000 templates, it'll
take
three to six months to retrofit that site," Sorani says.
Redesigning sites
Most companies are addressing accessibility issues as part of an overall
redesign
effort for their Web sites. The process involves defining accessibility
standards
for all Web pages. Then content contributors need to be trained in the new
standards.
Testing for accessibility becomes part of the development process, like
spell checking
or load testing.
That's the case at Compaq, which began a Web site redesign effort last fall
that
includes a top-to-bottom review for accessibility.
Compaq's Web development team established accessibility guidelines that met
the Section
508 rules. Those guidelines were published in May to several hundred people
who design
Web pages or publish content to Compaq's site. Now the team is adding
accessibility
to its regular training.
"If anybody touches a page, they touch it for accessibility," says Robert
Folk, manager
of editorial and content operations for Compaq.com.
Compaq's Web developers use two automated tools: Bobby and Macromedia's
Dreamweaver
4 extension. They also use screen readers and speech browsers to test pages.
"If we can make the site more usable for people with assistive technology,
we can
make it more usable for everybody," Folk says. For example, the new
Compaq.com home
page will have 20 links instead of 50 links when it launches in June.
"There's no end date here," Folk says.
"We will continue to make our site more accessible and usable," he adds.
RELATED STORIES:
.
Fed Web sites soon accessible by the blind, deaf
June 13, 2001
.
Making IT accessible to all is latest challenge
May 31, 2001
RELATED IDG.net STORIES:
Sites for the blind
(
The Industry Standard
)
Macromedia delivers Web accessibility
(
Publish.com
)
Organization unveils portal for disabled users
(
InfoWorld.com
)
Top 10 Dreamweaver extensions
(
Publish.com
)
Flash meets usability
(
Publish.com
)
Senators propose e-government bill
(
IDG.net
)
Report: Many federal Web sites use cookies to track users
(
Computerworld
)
RELATED SITES:
Federal IT Accessibility Initiative (Home Page)
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