FAR 39.2 and Section 508: What a Vendor Actually Has to Deliver

Section 508 does not bind you as a company. It binds federal agencies. The reason it lands on your desk anyway is that agencies are obliged to buy accessible information and communication technology, so they push the requirement into the solicitation — and you inherit it as a contract deliverable.

If you have just found an accessibility clause in an RFP you are part-way through answering, this is what it means and what you owe.

Where the obligation comes from

Three layers, and it helps to keep them distinct:

• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to ensure the ICT they procure, develop, maintain or use is accessible.
• 36 CFR Part 1194 is the Access Board standard that Section 508 points at. It incorporates WCAG 2.0 Level AA by reference for web content and electronic documents.
• FAR Subpart 39.2 is the acquisition rule that makes it happen — it requires that acquisitions of ICT supplies and services meet the applicable accessibility standards, and it directs agencies to state those requirements in the solicitation.

So the chain runs: statute obliges the agency, the Access Board sets the standard, and the FAR makes the agency write it into your contract. That is why the clause appears in procurement rather than in a regulator’s letter.

Note the standard reference. Section 508 incorporates WCAG 2.0 AA, while the ADA Title II and HHS Section 504 rules point at WCAG 2.1 AA. In practice, build to 2.1 AA: it is a superset, it satisfies both, and agencies increasingly ask for it directly. If you are unclear how the three regimes relate, Section 508 vs ADA vs WCAG separates them.

What am I actually required to hand over?

It depends on what you are selling, but for most contracts involving documents, content, software or a website, the deliverables come down to four things.

1. Conformant deliverables. The thing itself has to meet the standard. If you are delivering reports, they must be tagged and structured. If you are delivering a web application, it must meet the success criteria. “We will fix it if someone complains” is not conformance.

2. An accessibility conformance report. Usually requested as a VPAT — the ITI template — completed as an ACR. This documents, criterion by criterion, whether your product supports, partially supports, or does not support each requirement, with explanation. What is a VPAT covers the format in detail.

3. Honest explanations, not blanket claims. A VPAT that says “Supports” against every line is a red flag to any reviewer who has read more than a handful. Partial support with a clear explanation and a remediation plan is credible. Universal support is not.

4. Test evidence, if asked. Some solicitations ask how you tested. Manual testing with assistive technology, the tools you used, and the criteria you checked. An automated scan report on its own does not answer the question, because automated tools cannot evaluate whether alt text is correct or whether reading order makes sense.

What does a reviewer look for?

The things that separate a credible response from one that gets flagged:

• Specificity about version and level. “WCAG 2.1 Level AA”, not “WCAG compliant”. A claim of “508 conformant” with no standard reference tells the reviewer you have not read the requirement.
• A dated report about a named version of the product. An undated VPAT for “our platform” is not evidence about the thing being bought.
• Documents included in scope. The most common gap by far. Vendors evaluate their web interface and forget that the reports, exports, manuals and templates they deliver are also ICT under the standard.
• A remediation timeline for known gaps. Agencies are generally more comfortable with a disclosed gap and a date than with a claim they suspect is untrue.
• Nothing that reads as a guarantee of the agency’s own compliance. You can attest to your deliverable. You cannot promise that an agency will pass its own audit, and implying otherwise undermines the rest of the response.

The exports and attachments problem

This deserves its own section, because it sinks otherwise strong bids.

If your software generates a PDF, that PDF is a deliverable subject to the standard. If your service produces monthly reports, those reports are subject to it. If your platform lets an agency download data as a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet needs headers a screen reader can use.

Teams routinely remediate the interface a user clicks through and then ship generated output that is completely untagged. A reviewer who opens one export finds the gap immediately, and it casts doubt on the whole conformance claim.

Our guide to document and PDF remediation covers what a conformant document actually contains, and making Word, PowerPoint and Excel files accessible covers the templates that generate them.

If your deliverables are multilingual

Increasingly they are — agencies serving the public need materials in more than English, and that requirement often arrives in the same solicitation.

A translated deliverable has to meet the standard in that language. That means the language of each passage declared programmatically, alt text written in the target language, and reading order correct for right-to-left scripts. Delivering a Spanish PDF tagged as English is a conformance failure a reviewer using a screen reader will catch in seconds. Translated documents and WCAG language of parts explains the criteria involved.

What to do this week if a clause just landed on you

1. Read the clause and note the standard and level it names. Do not assume which one.
2. List every deliverable, including generated output, exports, and documentation.
3. Test one representative item properly — with a screen reader, not just a scanner. You need to know the truth before you write it down.
4. Complete the VPAT honestly, with explanations wherever support is partial.
5. Fix what is cheap to fix before submitting. Alt text, headings, table headers and document language often move several criteria in a single day.
6. Put a remediation plan against the rest, with dates attached.

Where Taika fits

We remediate documents and content to Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA, and we do it across languages — which matters if your deliverables ship in Spanish, Arabic, Vietnamese or anything else the contract calls for. We work as the accessibility half of a bid team, on the deliverables themselves rather than inside your codebase.

Start at Section 508 remediation, or document accessibility if the issue is a document set. If you are looking at contract vehicles, our credentials page lists what Taika holds.

Bid deadline approaching? Request a quote with the clause text and a description of your deliverables, and we will come back with what conformance takes and how fast it can be done. If you want to know where a single document stands right now, the PDF accessibility checker will tell you in a couple of minutes.