Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act - Frequently Asked Questions

Defining Requirements for EIT

D.1. - How does Section 508 affect the requirements development phase of an acquisition?

Section 508 requires agencies to take additional considerations into account when defining their needs for EIT – namely the Access Board’s standards. As noted above, Section 508 affects what an agency buys, not generally how the agency buys it.

D.2. - Must requiring officials consider all the Access Board’s technical provisions and functional performance criteria each time they purchase EIT?

No. Requiring officials need only consider all applicable technical provisions from the Access Board’s standards to ensure acquired products provide comparable access (see section B.2.ii, above).

D.3. - Is an agency prohibited from buying EIT that does not meet all applicable technical provisions?

No. If an exception applies preventing an agency’s acquisition of EIT that meets all of the applicable technical provisions (e.g., no such products are available in the commercial marketplace), the agency may acquire EIT that meets some of those provisions. Similarly, if an exception applies to an agency’s acquisition of EIT that meets some of the applicable provisions, the agency may acquire EIT that does not meet any of those provisions.

D.4. - Is an agency ever required to fundamentally alter its needs in order to comply with Section 508?

No. The Access Board’s standards state that an agency is not required to alter its acquisition requirements in order to comply with Section 508 if the alteration would be so fundamental that the agency would no longer be procuring EIT that met its needs.

For example, if an agency needs to meet certain security needs by acquiring secure telephone units that are all analog, the agency would not be required to buy digital phones if such phones failed to meet the agency’s security needs even if the digital phones fully meet the applicable technical provisions of the Access Board’s standards and the analog phones meet only some of the applicable technical provisions.