On July 24, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging Bob Casey (D-PA) and several other Senate colleagues introduced the Section 508 Refresh Act. The new bill, supported by BVA, proposes that federal agencies be required to take a series of steps to ensure that people with disabilities can use technology across the entire federal government spectrum, not limited to one agency or department. Co-sponsors were Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and John Fetterman (D-PA). Click the button below to read more.

The new bill builds on previous legislative initiatives originated by Chairman Casey. The VA Website Accessibility Act, passed in 2020, was also strongly supported by BVA. The 2020 legislation required VA to report on the accessibility of the Department’s websites and kiosks. VA’s report to Congress, released in 2021, found that only ten percent of VA’s websites were fully accessible.

In response, Chairman Casey led still another bipartisan effort for VA to do better, introducing the Veterans Accessibility Act supported by 15 Veterans Service Organizations and disability groups and which also became a central point of BVA’s annual Congressional testimony five months ago. The legislation would establish a Veterans Advisory Committee on Equal Access at VA that issues regular reports on VA’s compliance with federal disability laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

For more information about the recently introduced Section 508 Refresh Act via a July 24 Senator Casey news release, click the button below. The release also contains a link at the end to a Casey-authored explanation of the rationale behind the legislation. Stay tuned for updates on the bill’s progress, including bill numbers for both Senate and House once introduced in both.