Web 2.0 Company helps make the Internet accessible with Section 508 compliance

Web Development Company Hudson Horizons is proud to announce that in an attempt to design and develop sites according to the highest industry standards, they are delivering sites that meet Section 508 compliance for visitors with various handicaps.

Section 508 compliance encompasses a series of amendments to the Rehabilitation Act that require government agency websites to be completely accessible to persons with various disabilities; for the last ten years, these prerequisites have not extended beyond government-affiliated websites.

“Standard e-Commerce sites and online databases may be useful for most visitors,” explained Hudson Horizons founder, president and CEO Daryl H. Bryant, “but persons with motor skill deficiencies, impaired hearing, vision, or other disabilities may find it difficult, if not impossible, to have a productive browsing experience.”

Websites with Section 508 compliance feature, among other things, an assortment of complementary data for ordinary page components— such as text descriptions for images, text transcripts for audio and video files, and complete keyboard navigation.

The first website Hudson Horizons designed and developed for Section 508 compliance was FindAnyFloor.com, a comprehensive online flooring database. After seven months of intricate hand-coding and two months of successful beta testing, the Web Development Company unveiled the official Section 508 compliant version of FindAnyFloor.com.

This monumental launch back in September, 2008 put FindAnyFloor.com on the map as a pioneering online catalog for "all things flooring;” it also represented a pivotal step forward for the New Jersey-based Web Development Company in the ongoing mission towards 508 website accessibility.

While working on FindAnyFloor.com, the Hudson Horizons development team kept Section 508 compliance in the forefront of the project— integrating user-friendly aesthetics, proper table definitions, appropriate no-script alternatives, and other unique features. The end result was a fully-customized, fully-functional website as educational as it was accessible.

"In the future, everyone, even persons with disabilities, will be able to shop at online stores seamlessly, and have simple access to the same information as persons without disabilities,” added Vice President of Technologies, Matt Mayernik. “The future is based on Section 508 compliance, and that’s the direction in which we’re headed.”

Bryant commented that FindAnyFloor.com, and a second branch—a local floor store directory project, directory.findanyfloor.com, have become springboards for his company's dedicated involvement with Section 508 compliance.

“Through the course of this project,” Bryant emphasized, “our team has come to realize the importance of making websites accessible to everyone. Hudson Horizons will continue to offer and encourage Section 508 website compliance to all future clients.”

To learn more about Section 508 compliance, and other web design and development services Hudson Horizons has to offer, contact the Web Development Company today.