by Nikhil Vohra
Nearly a third of Federal government websites tested in a recent study failed to meet the minimum accessibility standards mandated by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act on their home pages. Going beyond the homepages, the study, conducted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) , found that about half of government sites failed to meet the standards when analyzing the second and third top pages. Thankfully, the White House and CDC domains met the minimum standards, although the study reports a general lack of adequate accessibility on Federal government sites. Since the start of the pandemic, many government services were moved online, including Social Security and passport renewals and others. Gaps in digital accessibility represent barriers to those services – as well as obstacles to critical information – for the millions of Americans living with disabilities. You can read more about the study on the Federal Computers Week site, which also published a deeper analysis of the study’s results and explored the underlying problems causing this digital divide.
