By name: section-508 description: "US Section 508 ICT Accessibility Standards (revised 2017) knowledge base for accessibility assessment"
Section 508 ICT Accessibility Standards
This skill packages the US Section 508 ICT Refresh (revised 2017) standards as an accessibility assessment knowledge base. It covers four normative chapters: E202 (General Requirements), E205 (Electronic Content), E207 (Software), and E208 (Support Documentation and Services). Section 508 incorporates the W3C WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA success criteria by reference, so most clauses below carry WCAG cross-references that link into the sibling wcag-22 skill's per-guideline reference files (anchored at #sc-<n>-<m>-<k>).
Source: US Access Board, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Accessibility Standards, https://www.access-board.gov/ict/. Section 508 standards are works of the US federal government and reside in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. Clause summaries in this skill are paraphrased in the authors' own words for stylistic consistency with sibling W3C-licensed framework skills.
Clause Roll-up
Total: 30 clauses (E202: 4; E205: 11; E207: 11; E208: 4).
Assessment Heuristics
Use these heuristics when applying the Section 508 standard against an ICT artifact:
- Treat WCAG 2.0 Level AA conformance as the baseline target for any electronic content covered by E205, and confirm it by running WCAG-based automated tooling plus targeted manual checks for each cited SC.
- For software covered by E207, validate keyboard operation, visible focus, status announcements, and 4.5:1 contrast first; these account for the majority of real-world Section 508 findings.
- For PDF and office documents under E205.3, verify the source authoring tool produced a tagged structure rather than relying on post-hoc remediation, and provide an HTML alternative whenever a scanned PDF cannot be tagged.
- For documentation and support under E208, audit each support channel (phone, chat, email, training) for an equivalent accessible path before treating documentation alone as compliant.
- When a clause is marked
n/afor WCAG cross-reference, treat the Access Board URL as the authoritative source and rely on procurement and policy controls rather than automated WCAG tooling. - Record every E207.2 exception with a documented rationale, a mitigation plan, and a review date so the exception does not silently expand over time.
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