Section 508 Policy. Slightly more than fifty percent of agency components established a formal, written policy to implement and comply with Section 508. The head of an agency or the agency’s office of the chief information officer established the majority of the agency components’ Section 508 policies. Most Section 508 policies identified the office or person responsible, and defined some roles and responsibilities for Section 508 coordinators, requiring officials, contracting officers, application developers, and web content managers and authors. • Section 508 Office or Program. Nearly seventy percent of agency components appointed a Section 508 coordinator. Also, nearly thirty-five percent of agency components established a Section 508 office or program. On average, agency components assigned 2.5 full time equivalents (FTEs) and allocated a budget of $413,497 to their Section 508 office or program. [8] However, it is important to note that the average budget for larger agency components was significantly higher than the average budget for smaller agency components, which has an effect of skewing the figure. Across all agency size categories, the median budget was $35,000 for their Section 508 office or program. In addition, the most common service provided by agency components that had established a Section 508 office or program was to evaluate the accessibility of websites, and the least common service provided was to evaluate the accessibility of hardware.
Section 508 Policy. Agencies and their components were asked questions relating to their policies and procedures to implement Section 508. A total of 318 agency components participated in this section. The following provides a summary description of the agency components’ responses: • Slightly more than fifty percent of agency components reported they established a formal, written policy to implement and comply with Section 508. • The majority of the Section 508 policies were established by the head of the agency or the agency’s office of the chief information officer. • Most agency components reported that their Section 508 policy identified the office or person responsible for implementing and complying with Section 508. • A majority of the agency components reported that their Section 508 policy defined some roles and responsibilities for Section 508 coordinators, requiring officials, contracting officers, application developers, and web content managers and authors. Question 1 asked whether agency components established a formal, written policy to implement and comply with Section 508. Those agency components that did not establish a formal, written policy were asked to skip the remaining questions in this section and proceed to the next section regarding the Section 508 Office or Program. In general, a majority of agency components (51.3%) established a Section 508 policy. More components of larger agencies established a Section 508 policy compared to components of smaller agencies. Seventy-seven agency components (24.2%) reported not establishing a Section 508 policy but established a schedule to develop a policy. Surprisingly, 76 agency components (23.9%) reported not establishing a Section 508 policy and had no plan to develop a policy. The following table provides the specific responses by the agency components: Section 508 Policy by Number (Percent) of Components in Differently-Sized Agencies Answer All Very Large Large Mid- Size Small Very Small
