Section 508 and Web Accessibility Compliance

Section 508 and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 support is available across the entire DevExpress ASP.NET Product line. For more information on Section 508 and accessibility compliance, refer to the following document:

DXperience ASP.NET Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)

What is Section 508?

Section 508 and the web accessibility guidelines make Web content accessible to people with disabilities or those that are technically limited. In the US and several other countries, these guidelines are a software requirement for government agencies.

The web accessibility initiative says that you should design your website so that disabled (including blind) users can use and navigate the website. This means using ALT text for images, providing description of videos and transcription for audio, use the NOFRAMES element and provide titles, and several other guidelines.

In case you're wondering, blind and low-vision users can make use of text-to-speech(screen readers/OCR), Braille display, and other methods which you read more about here.

Why is Accessibility Important?

These numbers may surprise you but approximately 20% of the US population has some form of disability. If you want to ensure that your website is accessible by everyone then web accessibility should be a top priority. In fact, accessibility design improvements to your website will benefit all users. For example, an accessible web site is usually easier to read, easier to navigate and faster to download.

The web accessibility initiative (WAI) says that accessibility is also important for users of mobile devices. If you've ever tried to browse a website on a mobile device then you'll wish that every website was accessible. Yahoo! is a great example of a web accessible site.

Enabling Accessibility Compliance in DevExpress Controls

To enable accessibility, ASP.NET controls must obviously generate more code. For instance, many elements must include links simply to allow keyboard navigation. Because of this additional HTML code, accessibility rendering is disabled by default in advanced controls like the ASPxGridView. If you don't need accessibility support in your application, you will still have optimized rendering.

If you need Section 508 and WAI compliance, simply toggle the AccessibilityCompliant property to enable it.

What Happens when Accessible Rendering is Enabled?

When this property is set to true then the control will be generated with accessible HTML and provide:

• Hyperlinks for buttons that usually need focus
• Keyboard support

In addition to this, once you enable Section 508 compliance, all DevExpress ASP.NET controls will take care of the following Section 508 requirements:

• All buttons and images will generate an ALT attribute that describes their function. You can specify custom ALT text.
• ALT text will be generated for NOEMBED (ObjectContainer) elements.
• Within dialogs, all the input editors will be associated with corresponding labels.
• In tables, column and row headers will be identified with the TH element.

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