User's Manual

Smart Survey Design
Page 27
V: SECTION 508 & ACCESSIBILITY
1. Making your Surveys Accessible and 508 Compliant
SurveyMonkey is a Section 508 compliant online survey application. We ensure that, by
using our standard survey designs, your survey will meet all current US Federal Section 508
certification guidelines.
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is a federal law that outlines requirements for
making online information services accessible to users with disabilities. You can access the
government web site that outlines the requirements and helpful links regarding section 508
here (http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=3). All Federal
agencies are required to use 508 certified software and technologies when available.
We believe that it is important for our customers to be able to reach the broadest range of
potential respondents possible to provide you with the most accurate results. It is estimated
that there are 54 million people in America living with a disability. Being able to access
feedback from this demographic will allow you to more effectively address the concerns and
views of a more representative population.
Our developers have updated our survey design system across the board so all standard
survey designs are accessible for respondents with disabilities without changing the
appealing look or function of your survey.
A. RampWEB Web Accessibility Consulting:
To achieve compliancy we worked closely with the RampWEB Web Accessibility Consulting
(http://www.RampWEB.com) group who certified us as Section 508 compliant on June
5, 2008. RampWEB is the industry leader in web accessibility and is one of the most
trusted names in accessibility certification. For more information on RampWEB Web
Accessibility Consulting, please click here.
The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, or VPAT‟s purpose, is to assist Federal
contracting officials and other buyers in making preliminary assessments regarding the
availability of commercial "Electronic and Information Technology" products and services
with features that support accessibility. The VPAT was developed by the Information
Technology Industry Council (ITI) in partnership with the U.S. General Services
Administration (GSA).
To view SurveyMonkey‟s VPAT, please click the following link:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/SurveyMonkeyFiles/VPAT_SurveyMonkey.pdf
We were fortunate enough to be able to collaborate with one of RampWEB‟s top
accessibility consultants, Jim Thatcher (http://www.jimthatcher.com/index.htm), a pioneer