36 CFR Part 1194 Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (Section 508 Standards) - Preamble

Alternate formats. Certain product information is required to be made available in alternate formats to be usable by individuals with various disabilities. Consistent with the Board's Telecommunications Act Accessibility Guidelines (36 CFR part 1193), the proposed rule defined alternate formats as those formats which are usable by people with disabilities. The proposed definition noted that the formats may include Braille, ASCII text, large print, recorded audio, and accessible internet programming or coding languages, among others. ASCII refers to the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, which is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard defining how computers read and write commonly used letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and other codes.

Comment. One commenter was concerned that the term "accessible internet programming or coding languages" used in the description of acceptable alternate formats was somewhat ambiguous and recommended using the term "accessible internet formats".

Response. The Board agrees that the term "accessible internet programming or coding languages" may be vague. In addition, as noted above, the final rule will not include the term "accessible". The definition for alternate formats has been modified to refer to "electronic formats which comply with this part". This change will permit, for instance, alternate formats to include a computer file (either on the internet or saved on a computer disk) that can be viewed by a browser and which complies with the standards for web pages. No other changes have been made to the definition in the final rule.