Free · Section 508 · Revised 508 · WCAG 2.0 AA
Free Section 508 checker
Free conformance check against the Revised Section 508 Standards (29 U.S.C. § 794d, 36 CFR Part 1194). The regulation references WCAG 2.0 Level AA for web content plus a small number of platform-specific criteria. Required for US federal agencies and the contractors that sell to them, and increasingly used as a procurement gate by state and local government and federally-funded universities.
Who needs Section 508 conformance
- Federal agencies directly, for any electronic / information technology they develop, procure, maintain, or use.
- Federal contractors and SaaS vendorsselling to federal agencies — Section 508 conformance shows up in nearly every federal RFP under the “ICT” clause.
- State + local government that adopted Section 508 by reference (most have) or have parallel state laws (CA, NY, MA).
- Higher education receiving federal funding (Title VI / Title IX adjacent obligations).
- Healthcare covered entities under Section 504, which references many of the same standards.
Section 508 vs WCAG vs ADA
Common confusion among engineering teams. The short version:
- WCAG 2.0 / 2.1 / 2.2 — international technical standard from W3C. Defines success criteria.
- Section 508 (Revised, 2018) — US federal regulation. Adopts WCAG 2.0 Level A + AA by reference for web content, plus adds a few platform / hardware criteria. Section 508 is what federal procurement enforces.
- ADA Title III— broader US civil-rights statute for “places of public accommodation”. The DOJ's 2024 final rule (24 USC 12182) referenced WCAG 2.1 AA for state / local government public-facing websites. ADA is what private- sector lawsuits invoke.
- EN 301 549 — the EU equivalent of Section 508, also WCAG-derived but with EU-specific clauses. The EAA references EN 301 549.
For a SaaS vendor: if you pass WCAG 2.2 AA cleanly, you cover Section 508 (which only requires 2.0 AA), you cover the ADA practical compliance bar, and you cover EN 301 549 for EU sales. Build to the highest standard once.
Procurement: VPAT and ACR
Federal procurement asks for an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR), almost always produced from the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). The completed VPAT IS the ACR. Procurement teams verify your VPAT claims with their own automated scans — a VPAT that claims “Supports” on criteria your product fails will be caught and the bid will be rejected.
Strong VPATs attach: dated automated scan output (axe-core JSON), a recent human audit, and a CI-pipeline link showing ongoing scans. For the technical evidence side, this checker plus continuous CI gives you everything procurement asks for. See the VPAT template guide for the full breakdown.
What this checker covers — and doesn't
Covers: Section 508 §1194.21 (software) and §1194.22 (web) success criteria that map to WCAG 2.0 AA — color contrast, alt text presence, keyboard navigability, ARIA consistency, form labels, etc.
Doesn't cover (need a human auditor):meaningful alt text quality, heading order semantics, screen-reader UX quality, captions for video, audio descriptions, the “Functional Performance Criteria” outcome-based section (“use without vision”, “use without hearing”, etc.).
About 57% of Section 508 / WCAG criteria are objectively machine-detectable. The remaining 43% require human judgement. Most federal procurement reviewers know this and expect both an automated baseline + a human audit dated within the last 12 months.
Continuous Section 508 in CI
For federal contractors, Section 508 conformance isn't a point-in-time event — every release that ships during the contract period needs to remain conformant. The contract's ICT clause usually says so explicitly. Without a CI gate, regressions accumulate between audits and the next renewal cycle finds you non-conforming.
axle's GitHub Action runs the same automated checks on every PR and blocks merges on serious-severity regressions. Free for one repository. The CI scan history is the most defensible ongoing-conformance record in a federal renewal review.