HiSoftware has joined efforts with Microsoft to create the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint or AKS which provides reusable tools and components as well as documentation and tutorials to ensure that MOSS provides a basic solution for accessibility. The intellectual property, jointly owned by HiSoftware and Microsoft, is available as shared source code to the community through Codeplex.

The AKS significantly reduces 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.

The kit provides templates, master pages, controls and Web parts along with technical documentation to advance the accessibility of MOSS based web sites and applications for people with disabilities, especially those who are vision impaired. All of the source code will be provided via the Microsoft Permissive License this year for customers and other Microsoft partners to download, reuse, and extend.

The AKS is a set of building blocks rather than an end-to-end solution. We expect many SharePoint partners to take various pieces of the kit and integrate them into their respective product or service offerings while some customers will integrate particular components of the kit into their SharePoint deployment processes.

Microsoft partnered with leading accessibility technology vendor HiSoftware to build 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 government standards and beyond. HiSoftware delivers a suite of compliance products that provide an end-to-end solution in helping organizations meet their accessibility demands. 

Learn more about or download the AKS

HiSoftware Solutions for MOSS

HiSoftware solutions are designed to help you achieve accessibility across you enterprise...

The AKS solution along with HiSoftware’s aRTE will help get you started on the road to Web accessibility with an accessible platform/framework from which to launch your portal or intranet site. Adding HiSoftware’s end-to-end compliance solutions allows organizations to implement a fully integrated Web project life cycle approach that allows customers to start accessible and stay accessible.

HiSoftware’s compliance solutions address Web Accessibility and other Web governance issues (i.e. privacy, PII, profanity, search engine optimization) through the development process and provide ongoing compliance testing through an integrated SharePoint work flow process. This methodology provides the highest level of consistency, quality and stability in a site. HiSoftware’s extended solutions provide an approach that empowers content authors to learn for themselves, along with the “fail safe” automation, back-end trapping and auditing that allow the SharePoint system, along with subject matter experts, to keep non-compliant content from entering the live/production environment. This dramatically reduces the time, cost, and complexity associated with building, deploying, and maintaining a properly functioning Web site that supports the highest level of corporate compliance.

Plus HiSoftware solutions are scalable. Each organization is different and has individual needs, so HiSoftware offers a variety of solutions to fit your requirements from developer’s desktop products to enterprise governance solutions.

Learn more about HiSoftware's Solutions for MOSS

Start Your Accessibility Initiative Today

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