Section 508 is a procurement requirement, not a nice-to-have

In commercial software, accessibility is something teams get to eventually. In government, it is a condition of the sale. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to procure information technology that is accessible to people with disabilities, and the same expectation flows down through state and local procurement. If your product can’t document conformance, it can be disqualified before anyone evaluates the features.

What the standards actually require

Section 508 points to the WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria as its technical baseline. In practice that means a set of concrete, testable obligations:

• Everything operable by keyboard, with a visible focus indicator and a logical order.
• Sufficient color contrast, and never using color as the only way to convey meaning.
• Semantic structure, landmarks, labels, and roles, so screen readers can navigate the interface.
• Respecting reduced-motion preferences and avoiding content that moves or auto-updates without user control.
• Text alternatives for non-text content, and status messages exposed to assistive technology.

The VPAT is the document that unblocks the deal

A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is how a vendor reports conformance against those criteria. Procurement teams ask for it, and an honest, current VPAT signals that accessibility was engineered, not asserted. A missing or vague one is a red flag that the product will create a compliance problem for the agency that buys it.

Why retrofitting fails

Accessibility added at the end is brittle. A contrast fix here, an aria label there, and the next feature breaks it because nothing in the system enforces the baseline. The only durable approach is to make accessibility a property of the shared components every screen is built from, so reduced-motion honoring, AT-stable text, keyboard operability, and contrast are inherited rather than re-implemented per page.

That is the posture we hold Ithil to: built to WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508, enforced at the component layer, with a VPAT available for the procurement conversation. You can read the specifics in our accessibility statement.

Treat it as a gate, evaluate it early

If you procure government software, ask for the VPAT in the first conversation, not the last. It tells you whether accessibility is real before you invest in an evaluation, and it protects your agency from inheriting a 508 liability you didn’t create.