[Qgis-community-team] Section 508 compliance for QGIS

[David Saeger]

After recently getting QGIS approved for use at the federal agency that I
work for, a couple things came to light that could make it easier for users
in the federal IT environment to utilize QGIS. Namely the fact that QGIS
has not made efforts/publicized efforts to prove that it is Section
508<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_Rehabilitation_Act_of_1973>compliant.

Section 508 is an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which deals
with electronic and information management technologies. It contains
technical standards against which products can be evaluated to determine if
they would unduly disadvantage disabled peoples through their use. While
not meeting these standards is not necessarily a dead end for using getting
software approved in the USG IT environment, meeting it can certainly
smooth the process.

I know that there are a lot of users in various government agencies who
would love to use QGIS if it was generally approved by there CIO's,
especially in these times of budget austerity. It strikes me that it would
not be too difficult to try and meet this standard and make it easier to
make the case for approval.

Here is a general guidelines for Section 508 compliance:
http://www.uspto.gov/about/offices/cio/section508/14e.jsp

Am still researching but I think that all that would need to be done is
check to see if QGIS meets the criteria in the standard, note the specific
instances where it does not, and post these findings on the QGIS website
using a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template  (VPAT). The form can be
found here:
http://www.state.gov/m/irm/impact/126343.htm
Here is an example of what other proprietary GIS software has done to
express its Section 508 compliance:
http://www.esri.com/~/media/Files/Pdfs/legal/section508/vpats/vpat-arcgis-for-desktop-and-extensions-v101-(2).pdf

I am willing to do a bit more research into this subject and start the
process of evaluating QGIS against the criteria listed in Section 508 if I
can get some buy-in from this community.

I would need:
-A couple QGIS developers who would be willing to let me bounce questions
off of them as they come up.
-An assurance that my results would be reviewed by someone with authority
within the community (somebody who knows a lot about QGIS)
-Some indication that the results will actually be posted on the QGIS
website once green-lighted by somebody who knows more about the software
than I (Or else it would have been a waste of my time).

I think that this could be a good opportunity to set an example for the
rest of the FOSS community on efforts that can be done to expand the user
base, beyond developing stellar products that is.

Let me know what you all think



-- 
David Saeger
305.984.5539
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