In late July, Senator Bob Casey introduced the Section 508 Refresh Act of 2024. The text of the law has not been published online as far as I can find. The senator’s office sent me a PDF of the proposed legislation and I’m sharing it here with their permission.
I’m told the bill text should show up as S.4766 at https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4766/text?s=8&r=16 but that there can be a backlog for legislation to show up here.
In an election year I don’t know how much traction a bill like this is going to receive but some of the accountability requirements proposed are stronger than I’ve seen before.
Section 7 of the legislation outlines the procurement process requirements. They include:
- 30 days for an agency to report a violation of Section 508 from the time they are notified.
- Mandatory civil penalties for delivering technology that violates Section 508 that is not less than 3 percent of the contract value.
- A requirement that Section 508 defects be addressed within six months of being reported or the vendor faces termination of the entire contract.
There is much more in the legislation and I’m sure policy and legal experts will have more analysis in the coming months. This though is long overdue legislation in my opinion.
Any factual errors in this posting about requirements are my error. I’ve made every attempt to summarize what I’ve read correctly but please review the actual document.
If you are reading this document with a screen reader, I’ve found it reads more accurately in the full Adobe software then the PDF interpretations in Edge or Chrome.
It would be great to see this kind of enforcement behind 508