Assessing the accessibility of fifty United States government Web pages: Using Bobby to check on Uncle Sam by Jim Ellison

This study evaluates the current accessibility of U.S. Government Web pages for people with disabilities. Several Federal laws, and specifically Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act, require Web pages of government agencies to be accessible to people with disabilities. This investigation built on past studies that used the Web accessibility evaluation tool Bobby to assess various types of Web sites. The home pages of fifty U.S. government agencies were reviewed for accessibility based on Section 508 guidelines. This study establishes that the U.S. government has not met its accessibility goals.

Accessability and standards compliance are hard. But, like accurate cataloging and indexing, they are things that must be done and kept up with.