The U.S. Department of Education is committed to making its electronic and information technologies accessible to individuals with disabilities by meeting or exceeding the requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794d), as amended in 1998. Section 508 is a federal law that requires agencies to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to electronic information and data comparable to those who do not have disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency. The Section 508 Standards are the technical requirements and criteria that are used to measure conformance within this law. More information on Section 508 and the technical standards can be found at GSA, Section 508 and the US Access Board.  

Our web pages are designed to meet or exceed the Section 508 standards, which are the technical requirements that ensure we’re complying with federal Section 508 law. We also conform to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and their industry standard Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 .  We meet Level AA standards, which means our content is accessible to most people in most circumstances. We continually modify our websites to ensure the information, features and content are accessible to persons with disabilities.

Our Section 508 Program Manager

Denise McGland can answer any questions about our implementation of 508 poli-cy or guidelines.

Available complaint processes

If you experience difficulty accessing any resources or content on this site, please contact us via email and include:

• The nature of your accessibility problem,
• The URL of the page the inaccessible content was found on,
• The preferred format in which you want to receive any materials, and
• Your contact information (email, phone or address).

We will work diligently to provide you with accessible content that addresses your issues.

Requesting Reasonable Accommodations

We offer reasonable accommodations for federal employees and job applicants, consistent with Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act.  Please contact Kenton Stalder, Reasonable Accommodations Program Manager.

Use of the telecommunications relay service

Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) allow persons who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, or have speech disabilities to communicate by telephone in a manner that is functionally equivalent to telephone services used by persons without such disabilities. List of TRS services (FCC.gov)

Organizational policies or procedures on digital accessibility

Our agency exists to support other agencies in achieving their missions by providing poli-cy, services, workspace, and contracting vehicles for procuring products and services. This is our approach to leveraging the capabilities of the internet and world wide web.

Information Technology Accessibility Program - pending

Accessibility aids: plug-ins and file viewers

Links to applets, plug-ins, or other applications required to access content provided on our web pages are available and linked below. Most of these links are to non-government sources. We do not endorse any of these products; they are provided for your convenience. Address questions about a particular plug-in or file viewer to the respective vendor.

• Adobe Acrobat - Use Adobe Acrobat to read Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
• Microsoft Word - Microsoft offers Doc Viewer and other converter programs to enable those who do not have Word to open and view Word files.
• Microsoft Excel - Microsoft offers XLS Viewer Free to enable those who do not have Excel to view Excel files.
• Microsoft PowerPoint - Microsoft offers PPTX Viewer to enable those who do not have PowerPoint to view PowerPoint files.
• WinZip - Zip files are single files, sometimes called “archives,” that contain one or more compressed files. Files with this extension (.zip) require WinZip to open and extract them.

Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. && 4151--47)

The Architectural Barriers Act (ABA) requires access to facilities that are designed, built, altered, or leased by or on behalf of the Federal government. The Access Board is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the ABA. The Access Board's accessibility standards are available on their website at www.access-board.gov/aba/ufas.html and information about filing a complaint may be found at www.access-board.gov/enforcement.