Accessibility maturity across all 60 United States federal agencies, from the FY2025 governmentwide Section 508 assessment.
Headline finding
58.3% of federal agencies rated Low or Very Low on whether their technology is actually accessible. On testing and remediation, the weakest factor in the assessment, 61.7% rated that low.
Source: Governmentwide Section 508 Assessment, FY2025. Agencies self-report. Percentages computed from the published response data.
Executive summary
Section 508 has been law since 1998. Nearly three decades later, most federal agencies report having the policies, governance, and contract language in place, and most also report that their technology still is not accessible. The assessment measures both, and the distance between them is the story.
Every percentage on this page is computed from the government's own published response file, so you can reproduce it from the source CSV.
26.7% of agencies rated Low or Very Low on having a programme, but 58.3% rated that low on whether the technology is accessible.
61.7% of agencies rated Low or Very Low on testing and remediation, the weakest factor measured.
61.7% rated High or Very High on acquisition. Writing the requirement into a contract is fully within an agency's control; verifying the result is not.
Agencies answer the assessment themselves. Nobody independently audits their websites, documents, or internal software to produce these ratings. That cuts in an uncomfortable direction: if anything, self-assessment tends to flatter, so the real picture is unlikely to be better than what agencies reported about themselves.
The two index scores tell different stories. 58.3% of agencies rated Low or Very Low on the Accessibility Conformance Index, which measures whether their ICT is actually accessible, while only 26.7% rated that low on Implementation, which measures whether they have a programme in place. Having a programme is not the same as having accessible technology.
Accessibility Conformance Index
58.3% Low or Very Low
Accessibility Implementation Index
26.7% Low or Very Low
Policy Integration
26.7% Low or Very Low
Acquisition
18.3% Low or Very Low
Testing and Remediation
61.7% Low or Very Low
Bars run from Very Low on the left to Very High on the right. Open the data table for exact counts.
Interpretation
The factor scores form a clear shape. Agencies have largely succeeded at writing accessibility into policy and contracts. They have largely failed at verifying that what they bought and built actually works.
61.7% of agencies rated High or Very High on Acquisition, the best result of any factor. Putting Section 508 language into a solicitation is a paperwork exercise an agency controls completely, and it shows.
61.7% of agencies rated Low or Very Low on Testing and Remediation, the worst factor in the assessment. Testing requires trained staff, assistive technology, and time against real user journeys. That is where the effort collapses.
Strong acquisition scores alongside weak testing scores suggest agencies are accepting vendor conformance claims without verifying them. A supplier's accessibility conformance report is a starting point for evaluation, not evidence of conformance.
If you are on the buying side of this, our accessible procurement guidance covers how to evaluate a conformance report, and the audit guide covers what real verification involves. For the standard itself, see Section 508.
Open the data table to find a specific agency. Conformance measures whether the ICT is accessible; Implementation measures whether the programme to deliver it exists.
The 60 agencies break down as 17 Very Low, 18 Low, 11 Moderate, 6 High, 8 Very High on the Accessibility Conformance Index. Select View data table below for the full list.
Annual assessment of federal agency Section 508 programmes, mandated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023. Responses from 60 federal agencies, published as open data by GSA.
Sample Size
60 federal agencies
Date Range
FY2025, published 2026-03-02
Last updated: 2026-08-03
Use the research
This assessment is a United States Government work in the public domain. Cite the original alongside our analysis.
The PDF contains the factor distribution and the full agency list. The CSV contains one row per agency plus the factor breakdown.
Accessibility.build. (2026). Section 508 Assessment FY2025: How Federal Agencies Scored. https://accessibility.build/research/section-508-assessment
Questions about the data
What the assessment measures, and what it does not.
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