Section 508 was designed to assist persons with disabilities.

The World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org) has established a set of standards to assist with Section 508 compliancy over the Internet. It defines 3 checkpoints, each checkpoint has a priority level assigned by the Working Group based on the checkpoint's impact on accessibility.

NCATE’s website fully satisfies the Priority 1 Checkpoint which states that:
“A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.”

Unfortunately, due to graphical and technical reasons, NCATE’s website does not satisfy the Priority 2 Checkpoint, which states that, “A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint”. Nor are the requirements of Checkpoint 3 ("A Web content developer may address this checkpoint") satisfied.

Here are some of the limitations end users with disabilities might encounter:

• On any page of NCATE’s website, a top menu provides end users with shortcuts to content areas. This menu requires the use of a mouse, but the same content can be accessed using regular navigation.
  
  
• As NCATE’s website is designed to facilitate navigation, the same link phrase can be used more than once on the same page.
  
  
• Also, on the same page, several links labeled differently may point to the same content.
  
  
• Finally, due to graphical reasons, the website does not use relative size units but absolute size units to fit a 800 by 600 pixels screen.