Congress ordered agencies to use tech that works for people with disabilities 24

Congress made a portion of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act known as Section 508, which asks federal agencies to make technology accessible, mandatory in 1998. But nearly a quarter century later, they are still failing to do so. And it’s not just about ordering lunch. Roughly 30 percent of the most popular federal websites don’t meet accessibility standards, according to a 2021 report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Enforcement is virtually nonexistent, and agencies are spending little effort or money to comply.

“Clients of my firm right now are dealing with trainings required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that don’t work with blind people screen readers and with intake kiosks at the Social Security Administration that are not accessible,” said Eve Hill, a lawyer with Brown, Goldstein & Levy, who testified about the problems before the Senate Aging Committee last month.

Hill, along with Anil Lewis, executive director for blindness initiatives at the National Federation of the Blind, and Jule Ann Lieberman, assistive technology program coordinator at Temple University’s Institute on Disabilities, asked senators to ensure the federal government is complying with federal disability law.

Most frustrating, the advocates said, is that making technology accessible isn’t difficult. It just requires forethought. And it’s important. More than a quarter of Americans have a disability.

For the past 10 years, the DOJ hasn’t made public any of the biennial reports that Congress mandated on compliance with Section 508. As of the DOJ’s last report in September 2012, less than half of federal agencies had established a compliance plan. Those that did had an average operating budget of $35,000 a year devoted to the task.

In June, Senate Aging Committee Chair Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and ranking member Tim Scott (R-S.C.), along with other lawmakers, wrote to Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

They asked McDonough to provide detailed information about the accessibility of VA websites and plans to bring them into compliance, noting that only 8 percent of its public sites and even fewer of its intranet sites complied with the law. “The lack of fully accessible websites at VA is a potential barrier for the one-quarter of all veterans with a service-connected disability, and may well be a harbinger of similar shortfalls at other federal agencies and departments,” the senators wrote.

In a letter responding to Casey, McDonough said that the VA’s most-used websites have accessibility ratings of 95 percent or higher. The department is now conducting daily accessibility scans, he said, to bring other sites into compliance.

In their letter to Garland, the lawmakers asked why the DOJ has not made public more of its reporting on agency compliance. The department said it is working with the White House Office of Management and Budget and…