Website Accessibility - Federal Laws

I've been looking for references/links regarding standards and rules for website accessibility.

I know there are laws in many US States and Canadian Provinces that pretty much say "Federal Websites must be accessible via screen readers, search e开发者_运维百科ngines, etc. and that you can get sued if you don't comply...."

However, I cannot find an actual source for that. I'm looking for a list of what rules/accessibility/etc. a web site must adhere to if federal money was used to build it.

Most of what I get from searching gives me European laws... which is good for them. But I need North American laws.... Maybe I just need more coffee...

The primary standard for accessibility of web sites in America is Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1978 (as amended in 1998). You can see the full text of that standard (the parts related to web sites specifically) on section508.gov.

Section 508 is now rather decidedly outdated. Also, it applies ONLY to federally funded institutions/projects, not to private sector businesses. The status of hybrid institutions (such as universities where some but not all of their funding is public) is uncertain and may vary state to state. The University of Pennsylvania is currently being sued by the American Federation for the Blind over inaccessible web sites, so that status may get settled by court precedent in the next year or two.

For a more recent and more thorough standard for web accessibility, consult the voluminous Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 standard. WCAG 2 can be quite overwhelming; you might start with WebAIM's WCAG 2 check list instead, which condenses it reasonably well.

Note that the Americans with Disabilities Act does not mandate web accessibility, because the ADA was passed in 1990 before the web was on Washington's radar. The Justice Department recently began holding hearings to discuss the idea of amending ADA to cover the web, but it will be a long time yet before that gets to actual legislation.

I don't know about Canadian accessibility laws.

We don't really have any laws requiring stuff like 508c and other standards currently. However the US Gov't at least posts their guidelines on usability and touches on accessibility at usability.gov

This is for the general public, now your contract or government contract in particular may require that the projects support accessibility standards. However it is always good to support web and accessibility standards even if not required.