What is Section 508?
"Section 508" refers specifically to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. The law requires Federal agencies to purchase electronic and information technology that is accessible to employees with disabilities, and to the extent that those agencies provide information technology to the public, it too shall be accessible by persons with disabilities
All electronic and information technology sold to agencies of the federal government must comply with the Section 508 Accessibility Standards as required by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.
What is FERPA?
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) is a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education.
My Experience
I have created numerous websites with section 508 accessibility and FERPA standards. Some of my clients are UNM, The Communication Project, Daily Lobo, WebCT, and Albuquerque Restaurants. I follow the section guidelines and use approved testing methods.
Example Alt-txt Guide Lines
Text Alternatives for Images (alt-text).
The single most important thing you can do to do to make a web page accessible is to include alternative text for images. When you make the decision to add alternative text, you include the many people who use talking browsers, screen readers, text browsers or browsers on small devices.
Use the alt attribute on every img element in the HTML code for your page. Also use the alt attribute on every input with type="image" and on every area element.
The idea of alternative text is to provide a textual replacement for pictures (images), a replacement that conveys the same thing as is communicated to a sighted user seeing the image. Screen readers and talking browsers can't do anything with an image itself - they will announce the alternative text instead. If an image is active, i.e., if the image is inside an anchor element (<a>), then the alternative text should convey the purpose or function of the link. If the image is not active, but conveys information, then the alternative text must convey the same information. If an image conveys no information, or is redundant, specify that with null alt-text, alt="", that's quote, quote, with no space between.