What is
Section 508?
Millions of US citizens must use assistive technology (AT) in order to read electronic content.
To meet their needs and to ensure equal access to information, the US Congress enacted legislation in 1998 to require U.S. Federal agencies and contractors to procure accessible software and to produce accessible electronic documents.
The regulation, known as Section 508, went into effect in June, 2001.
Learn more about PDF accessibility
This website contains a number of resources:
Get the facts about Section 508 and PDF.
Adobe's Acrobat accessibility training resources
Duff Johnson's presentation (PDF) for the December, 2009 AcrobatUsers Tech Talk (eSeminar)
How Section 508 Applies to PDF
Section 508 Policies for PDF content
Blind Spots: PDF and Section 508 compliance
Knocking Down the Section 508 Myths
Adobe's accessibility manual for Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0.
Find more on Talking PDF
What you need to know
PDF files cannot be validated for compliance with Section 508 by automation alone. There are two options.
1) Structure the document correctly in the authoring software (for example, Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign), then retain this structure when creating your PDF, OR
2) When option 1 is unavailable, you must structure and tag your PDF files after creation, a time-consuming and expensive exercise.
To ensure compliance with Section 508, the results of any tagging effort must be checked (and when necessary, corrected) by a trained individual to ascertain or assure compliance with the law.
Why Appligent Document Solutions?
Many organizations lack the skills or capacity to ensure their PDF files meet accessibility requirements, much less make them genuinely and reliably usable by AT users.
We've specialized in PDF accessibility since 2000, longer than any other service provider in the world.
We offer the best-available and most cost-effective PDF tagging services available.
Our service comes with our unique certification of Section 508 compliance; a simple, no-questions asked guarantee.
We lead the industry in other ways as well:
We participate in standards development through AIIM's PDF/Universal Accessibility Standards Committee, chaired by Appligent Document Solutions CEO Duff Johnson since 2005. PDF/UA is now at Committee Draft stage, and will (hopefully) be published as ISO 14289 in 2011.
We provide education about accessible PDF in articles, blogs and presentations, and in webinars such as on Adobe's AcrobatUsers.com.
We provide strategic and implementation consulting for content publishers and managers. Get in touch to learn more.
We offer advanced remediation and optimization services to maximize PDF accessibility and usability beyond Section 508.
Section 508 Remediation Services
Appligent Document Solutions can correct PDF files to bring them into compliance with Section 508. This service is offered by quotation only.
To get started, email a few representative files to section508@appligent.com, and we'll respond with a comprehensive quotation within 24 hours.
Section 508 Compliance Services
Appligent Document Solutions can assess your PDF files, advise on compliance status and as requested, deliver detailed information to assist your users or testers in making corrections. Contact us with a description of your needs.
FREE Section 508 Demonstration with YOUR content
See what your PDF's tags should really look like!
Simply email us a PDF and pick a page you'd like us to make Section 508 compliant. We'll tag and return it to you within 48 hours at no charge.
Limit of one page / customer. Offer not good for fillable PDF forms. We reserve the right to refuse this free service for extraordinarily difficult pages!
