IATAC Section 508 Compliance Policy

IATAC is committed to making our information accessible to Americans with disabilities. Our process to meet this commitment has three components:

• Analysis
• Design
• Modification

IATAC continually analyzes our web content in light of section 508 accessibility requirements.

We then design new web content or re-design old content so that alternate media forms are available for all IATAC web site users. This can be as simple as adding ATL-tags to graphics to as complicated as offering text file narrations of audio files, or presenting MPEG sound files to describe video media forms.

As additional lessons are learned regarding Web site accessibility issues, IATAC modifies its internal content. This includes making navigation menus more useful for all users, creating Portable Document Format (PDF) files with Adobe accessibility features, and offering a help “point of contact” if any users have trouble receiving information from the site.

The IATAC compliance plan is organized according to the following priorities:

• Providing text equivalents for every non-text element including but not limited to: image maps, animations, GIFs, JPEGs, MPEGS, applets, frames, audio files, video files, and other streaming media forms.
• Ensuring all information conveyed with color is also available without color
• Organizing documents to ensure they may be read without the use of style sheets
• Ensuring that equivalents of dynamic content are updated when dynamic content changes
• Use clear and simple language for the site’s content
• Provide client-side image maps rather than server-side image maps
• Provide row and column headers for all tables
• Title each frame to facilitate frame identification and navigation
• Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmable objects are turned off or not supported
• Provide audio descriptions of any streaming video media files
• When other accessibility measures fail, provide a link to an alternate page that features equivalent information
• Ensure all foreground and background color combinations have sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color vision deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen
• Use header elements as appropriate to convey document structure
• Inform the user if they chose a selection that will generate a pop-up window and/or provide the means to close the pop-up window
• Provide metadata to add information about the general content of each web page
• Create a logical tab order through links, form controls, and objects
• Create keyboard shortcuts to important links
• Enable search functions for different skill levels and user preferences
• Provide redundant text links for each active region of a client-side image map
• Provide summaries for tables
• Provide abbreviations for header labels
• Include default, place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas

IATAC’s information accessibility plan is not a linear “waterfall” scheme where the requirements are fulfilled once and then never re-evaluated; IATAC’s plan of action is a spiral of continually analyzing, designing, and modifying all web content to make sure that it is available and useful for all users.

For further information please send us an e-mail at iatac@dtic.mil