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Some US-based organisations must comply with US federal legislation Section 508 for their software.

Since JIRA delivers content via a web interface that is largely accessible to existing screen readers, makes use of keyboard shortcuts and provide the opportunity to embed alternative text for images, it attempts to provide comparable levels of access to disabled users where possible. While Atlassian has never tested JIRA for Section 508 compliance, JIRA has been approved by a large range of US government and commercial organisations. The list of JIRA customers includes the US Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, Department of Transport, Environmental Protection Agency, Navy and Supreme Court.

Users requiring official 508 accreditation may be able to build a case for relaxing this requirement, based on our web interface, existing customer base and highly competitive pricing. Section 508 has several exceptions (see 1194.3) but cost is one of them (unless an undue burden, see 1194.2(a)).

We are still tracking and working on section 508-related issues via JRA-5574, so feel free to vote towards this issue if these aspects of compliance are an issue for your organisation. You may need to sign up for a free JIRA account first.

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Page: Confluence Section 508 Accessibility Compliance
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1 Comment

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  1. Jul 19, 2010

    Sean Blaes

    Some of the information above is incorrect.  Section 508 is a federal acquisition regulation, and applies pretty much anytime the federal government spends money to acquire something.  It is unlikely that undue burden applies in this case.  Most agencies' interpretation of undue burden is only going to apply where there is essentially no other choice and there is no section 508 compliant alternative.  I wish your highly competitive pricing made a difference, but it doesn't.  I would love to use Jira, as it would significant cost, and provides a user interface far beyond most of the other vendors in the space.

    The primary option in my mind to justify section 508 compliance would be using the eclipse plugins for Jira, which I believe are probably 508 compliant (but I'm not sure).  Any existing federal agencies that have purchased Jira are likely just skating by under the radar, and as such cannot be considered to have conducted a section 508 audit.