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Section 508 Compliance

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 requires all Federal agencies that develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology, to ensure that their technology is accessible to employees and members of the public with disabilities to the extent it does not pose an 'undue burden.'

When customizing the FileNet Open Client or performing Process integration, the following guidelines should be followed in order to comply with Section 508:

General HTML Guidelines

  • Documents should be organized so they are readable without requiring an associated style sheet.
  • Toolbar icons should have two distinct states: enabled and disabled. The states cannot only differ by color; they should also differ in shape or contrast by supplying different quantities of graphical information.
  • Alternate text or a description should be provided for every non-text element that does not otherwise have related text.
  • A method should be provided that enables users to skip repetitive navigation links. For examples: navigation links in the banner or toolbar have to use skip-links:
    • <A Name=”skip navigation and toolbar” href=”#FolderContent>
    • <A Name=”FolderContent”>
  • Pages in the site should use the correct tab order as understood by Assistive Technology (AT) software and devices.
  • The document type should be defined in the beginning of the page. Many AT products depend on the document type, as well as well-defined, correctly structured, standard HTML.
  • Row and column headers should be identified for data tables.
  • Markup should be used to associate data cells and header cells for data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers.
  • Frames should be titled with text that facilitates frame identification and navigation.
  • A text-only page, with equivalent information or functionality, should be provided to make a Web site comply with the provisions of this part, when compliance cannot be accomplished in any other way. The content of the text-only page should be updated whenever the primary page changes.

General Scripting Guidelines

  • When pages utilize scripting languages to display content, or to create interface elements, the information provided by the script should be identified with functional text that can be read by assistive technology.
  • When electronic forms are designed to be completed on-line, the form should allow people using assistive technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues.
  • When a timed response is required, the user should be alerted and given sufficient time to indicate more time is required.

ASPX Pages

  • The .NET datagrid uses table headers for sorting and ASP.NET implements the headers as links. ASP.NET also generates the datagrid table headers using the <TD> tag, not <TH>. Developers should use <TH>, as this tag makes it clear that the first table row is a header.
  • When software is designed to run on a system that has a keyboard, product functions shall be executable from a keyboard where the function itself or the result of performing a function can be discerned textually.
  • Applications are prohibited from disrupting or disabling activated features of other products that are identified as accessibility features, where those features are developed and documented according to industry standards. Applications also shall not disrupt or disable activated features of any operating system that are identified as accessibility features where the application programming interface for those accessibility features is documented by the manufacturer of the operating system and is available to the product developer.

For more information about Assistive Technology, visit http://www.microsoft.com/enable.