Section 508 of the 1998 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act covers accessibility for systems in the United States Federal sector, including systems developed, maintained, used, or procured by US Federal agencies. It mandates that agencies must provide appropriate and comparable access to information to persons with disabilities, including both employees and members of the public.

Exemptions include systems for military command, weaponry, intelligence and cryptologic activities. In these cases we would expect to see this kind of accessibility addressed through the use of personnel controls, such as the act of ensuring that staff members meet the standard military health and fitness checks. (In military engineering practice, the study of accessibility falls within what they call "Human Factors", which tends to look at the question more broadly, considering things such as system usage under severe stress.)

The amendment notes the following types of systems:

• Software applications and Operating Systems
• Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications
• Telecommunications Products
• Video or Multimedia Products
• Self contained, closed products.
• Desktop and Portable computers.

Alternative means

Section 508 allows for the use of "Alternative means" of providing information and data using another means, when meeting the standard would impose an undue burden. Agencies may wish to conduct a risk/cost/benefit analysis of these provisions. For example, it may be more cost-effective to provide a physical, hard copy of information on request in comparison to the effort and risk involved in tailoring complicated legacy systems.

Section 508 Compliance with SharePoint

SharePoint is a web-based application, and so accessibility compliance is often assessed against:

1. The technical standards listed in Section 508  http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12#Web . In general SharePoint is achieves partial compliance with these requirements; and 
2. The standards defined by the W3C group. (The W3C group is a consortium formed of a wide range of federal and private sector bodies, including Microsoft IBM corporation, and Adobe.)The most relevant of these standards is the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 1.0. Unfortunately the web pages that SharePoint generates are not compliant with these guidelines, and fall short of web development best practice by a large margin. Microsoft appear to be addressing this in the next version of SharePoint, but for the moment tailoring SharePoint requires substantial development effort, or the usage of 3rd party products.

Section 508 Compliance can be achieved with SharePoint, but doing so typically requires substantial development effort, or the use of third-party products. Of particular concern in SharePoint are the use of a number of ActiveX browser plugin controls, the use of non-compliant markup, and overdepedence on client-side scripting.

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)

Vendors have created VPATs to indicate the accessibility of their own product against the criteria defined in Section 508. Microsoft provide VPATs for its products (http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/products/section508.mspx) including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition (http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/2/3/c23bc250-5f80-4d0c-a29d-877355ff91e8/Microsoft%20Office%20Sharepoint%20Server%202007%20(Enterprise)%20VPAT.doc). Other products, including SQL Server 2008, SharePoint Designer, and Internet Explorer, are also included.

Third party software options

A number of vendors have produced products aimed at improving SharePoint accessibility and compliance.

Accessibility Kit for SharePoint v2.0 

HiSoftware has produced a framework product called the "Accessibility Kit for SharePoint". It is said by vendor HiSoftware to "significantly reduce the time, knowledge, and effort required to implement a SharePoint-based Web site that conforms to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints, which are collectively known as WCAG 1.0 AA. The AKS can also be used to address the exceptions that have been identified in the U.S. government’s Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act’s Voluntary Product Accessibility Template or VPAT documents for MOSS 2007."

The Accessibility Kit provides a number of artefacts that are useful in developing compliant content.

Telerik RAD Editor

The company Telerik produces a text editor that pops into SharePoint, replacing its page-content-editor control. The Telerik RAD editor can produce WCAG compliant output.

Custom development

 It is possible to develop a more compliant system by re-developing a number of SharePoint assets. One of these is the minimal master page template, upon which developers can develop a relatively WCAG-compliant page layout. It is necessary to look at a number of artefacts, including master pages, page layouts, and content when developing accessible sites in SharePoint.

The skillset required of developers to do this includes skills in HTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, SharePoint control adapters, ASP.NET web controls, and ASP.NET master pages. This can be a broad set of skills, and may require roles to be filled by multiple specialised individuals.

We recommend incorporating accessibility testing into development and system assessment activities.

SharePoint 2010

We anticipate Accessibility and browser compatibility improvements in SharePoint 2010.

Recommendations

• Assess 3rd Party add-ons to address accessibility concerns;
• Establish alternate means of accessing information (for example printed copies of key documents);
• Train developers in web accessibility 
• Test SharePoint deployments with web accessibility software such as screen readers.
• Monitor the market and future versions of SharePoint for improved compliance.