Compliance · United States federal
Section 508 and web accessibility
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires U.S. federal agencies to make the information and communication technology they develop, procure, maintain or use accessible (29 U.S.C. § 794d). It reaches private companies through procurement: a vendor selling software or web services to an agency is asked to show how the product conforms. This page summarises the standard. It is not legal advice.
The standard is WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA
The U.S. Access Board's Revised 508 Standards were published on 18 January 2017, and compliance has been required since 18 January 2018. Under provision E205.4, electronic content must conform to the Level A and Level AA success criteria and conformance requirements of WCAG 2.0, which the standards incorporate by reference.
WCAG 2.0, not 2.1 or 2.2. As of September 2026 the 508 Standards still reference WCAG 2.0. Meeting WCAG 2.1 Level AA also meets WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Meeting WCAG 2.2 Level AA does too, with one gap: WCAG 2.2 removed 4.1.1 Parsing, which remains a 508 requirement and still needs a line in a 508 report. The Access Board's own testing baseline follows the W3C errata and treats 4.1.1 as always satisfied for content using HTML or XML.
Documents. Non-web documents are exempt from four criteria that only make sense for sets of web pages: 2.4.1, 2.4.5, 3.2.3 and 3.2.4.
Selling to federal agencies
Section 508 requirements are part of the Federal Acquisition Regulation. The FAR text was last formally amended for Section 508 on 11 August 2021; since June 2025, under the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, agencies have been applying a rewritten FAR Part 39 through class deviations. OMB Memorandum M-24-08 sets how agencies manage their Section 508 programs. Vendors usually describe their product's conformance in an Accessibility Conformance Report: a completed Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), published by the Information Technology Industry Council. The current version is VPAT 2.5Rev, in four editions: Section 508, EU, WCAG and International.
What a scan contributes to a 508 evaluation
An Accessibility Conformance Report is a statement about every criterion, and many criteria need a person to evaluate. A scanner contributes the criteria that can be measured automatically and flags the rest as not tested. Accessibility Pro's Team plan adds a VPAT 2.4 text export built from a scan, which is a starting point for a report that someone still has to complete and sign off, not a finished one.
For the criteria themselves, see the WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA checklist; for the European equivalent of 508, see EN 301 549; and for plans, see pricing
Sources
Checked on 2026-09-24. The Access Board may update the standards. This page is a summary, not legal advice.