This is becoming somewhat of recurring question for me lately with a number of customers asking about SharePoint 2007 accessibility.

Here are some resources and links that you should find helpful:

"The Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) provides templates, master pages, controls, and web parts along with technical documentation that enable designers and developers to advance the accessibility of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 based web sites and applications for people with disabilities, especially those who are vision impaired.

Microsoft has hired HiSoftware to develop the AKS. The decision was made primarily based on HiSoftware’s in-depth expertise and broad industry experience in providing tools and services for improving software accessibility to the point of compliance with key industry and goverment standards and beyond. The contractual Statement of Work calls for HiSoftware to deliver a kit that can significantly reduce the time, knowledge, and effort required to implement a SharePoint-based web site that conforms to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints, which are collectively known as WCAG 1.0 AA. The AKS can also be used to address the exceptions that have been identified in the U.S. government’s Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act’s Voluntary Product Accessibility Template or VPAT documents for MOSS 2007. While most of our customers find the improvements in accessibility (more info at Office Online) over previous versions of SharePoint to be adequate for their needs, a growing number has asked us to provide even more. The AKS is our near term response. Longer term, we plan to make significantly further improvements in accessibility in the next version of SharePoint, but we don't have any details to disclose at this time." .... codeplex.com

InfoPath 2007 however, does not meet WCAG 1.0 level of accessibility. This is primarily because WCAG 1.0 restricts the use of scripting (checkpoint 6.3) which is something that InfoPath relies on extensively. In my opinion Microsoft is definitely acting on the need for accessible Web sites (hence AKS). Now I just hope there will be some sort of accessibility kit released for InfoPath or that the next Office wave addresses this need. Until then there is always custom .NET :)

BTW: I have seen a couple of cool sites were MOSS and accessiblity (WCAG 1.0 AA compliant) have been deployed really really well ... check out:

I am sure there are plently more but these two jump to mind :)

Other important links: