WASHINGTON — Thursday, U.S. Senate Aging Committee Chairman Bob Casey, D-PA, led a bipartisan group of Senators in sending a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding information on web accessibility across the federal government.
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires the federal government to make all its information technology accessible to people with disabilities. The law also requires the DOJ to publicly report on the federal government’s compliance with accessibility standards every two years. However, the DOJ has not provided a publicly available report since 2012, leaving taxpayers in the dark about the progress government agencies are making toward meeting accessibility standards. That 2012 report reflected serious gaps in accessibility across the federal government and the Senators are demanding the DOJ address these issues for people with disabilities.
The letter was signed by Senate Aging Committee Ranking Member Tim Scott, R-SC, Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-IL, and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, R-IA, Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Chair Patty Murray, D-WA, and Ranking Member Richard Burr, R-NC, as well as Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-IL.
“On behalf of the 26 percent of Americans living with a disability, including the 40 percent of people over age 65 who have a disability, we write to urge the DOJ to take immediate steps to meet its obligations and once again issue these biennial reports… Without regular reports, Congress, taxpayers, and agencies themselves lack a crucial source of feedback for identifying and resolving longstanding accessibility issues,” wrote the senators.
The latest report on federal government accessibility compliance in 2012 included recommendations for federal agencies to meet accessibility requirements, including appointing “Section 508 coordinators” and establishing “[Section] 508 offices or programs” to ensure every agency is equipped to meet the accessibility standards set by the Rehabilitation Act. A recent third party report from 2021 found that 30 percent of the most popular federal website homepages did not pass standard accessibility test.
Earlier this month, Chairman Casey sent a letter to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Denis McDonough urging the agency to improve VA website accessibility for disabled veterans. He also released a recent report from the VA which showed only 10 percent of VA websites are fully accessible for people with disabilities, as required by law, posing barriers to deaf, blind and paralyzed veterans as well as tens of thousands of veterans with other disabilities.
This report was required by Chairman Casey’s bipartisan VA Website Accessibility Act, which became law in 2020, and mandates that the VA issue reports to Congress on the accessibility of its websites, along with a plan to make them accessible. Because the report lacked key details, such as a detailed remediation plan and timeline, Chairman Casey and his colleagues are calling on the VA to resubmit its report with more information, including what the agency is doing to fix its websites.
In a separate letter to the DOJ earlier this month, Chairman Casey called on Attorney General Garland to provide better guidance and regulations to help state and local governments better comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act’s accessibility requirements on their websites, mobile applications and other forms of technology.
Read the letter to Attorney General Garland visit www.aging.senate.gov/press-releases/casey-leads-bipartisan-letter-demanding-answers-from-department-of-justice-on-lack-of-web-accessibility-for-people-with-disabilities.
