HiSoftware
Selected by Microsoft to Develop
Accessibility Kit for Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server
Shared-source software
kit will advance the accessibility
of SharePoint-based solutions for
people with disabilities
Nashua, NH — July 31, 2007 —
HiSoftware (www.hisoftware.com), a
leading provider of software,
services and managed operation
solutions that monitor and optimize
Web content governance, quality and
regulatory compliance, today
announced an agreement with
Microsoft to develop the
Accessibility Kit for Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
2007. The kit will provide
templates, master pages, controls
and Web parts along with technical
documentation to advance MOSS
accessibility for people with
disabilities. All of the source code
will be provided via the Microsoft
Permissive License and will be
available on CodePlex (www.codeplex.com)
later this year for customers and
other Microsoft partners to
download, reuse and extend. This
announcement follows the 17th
anniversary of the signing of the
Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA.)
Microsoft Corp.'s Office
SharePoint Server, a program that
lets companies set up Web sites,
search for data and organize
corporate documents, topped $800
million in sales in the year that
ended June 30. Sales of SharePoint,
introduced in 2001, have grown
faster than any other piece of
software in company history,
indicating it has sold more than 85
million licenses to 17,000
customers.
The Accessibility Kit for
SharePoint Server is the latest
project through a long history of
HiSoftware’s collaborative efforts
with Microsoft and supports
Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to
accessible technology. With
approximately one-fifth of the U.S.
population, as well as the
populations of developed nations
around the world, having one or more
forms of disability, Microsoft and
HiSoftware recognize the importance
of providing solutions that are
accessible to everyone, including
those individuals with disabilities.
This is further supported by a
Forrester Research Study,
commissioned by Microsoft that found
57 percent of working aged adult
computer users could benefit from
accessible technology
(http://www.microsoft.com/enable/research/).
According to Tom Rizzo, Director
of SharePoint at Microsoft,
“Microsoft has a long standing
commitment to enhance the
accessibility of its solutions.
Given the tremendous growth and
market expansion of Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server in both the Web
content management and collaborative
space, we are very pleased to be
working with HiSoftware, a leading
software provider in the compliance
industry, to extend the “out of the
box” accessibility for Office
SharePoint Server with the
additional functionality and
ease-of-use that will be provided in
the kit. HiSoftware shares
Microsoft’s vision of providing
technology that helps people and
businesses throughout the world
realize their full potential.”
The Accessibility Kit for Office
SharePoint Server will include site
templates, Web parts, documentation,
instruction and tutorials enabling
partners and customers to develop
Web sites that conform to the
guidelines set out in Section 508 of
the U.S. Rehabilitation Act and the
W3C’s Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG). The solution will
also provide accessibility updates
for Office SharePoint Server
templates and Web parts for Web
publishing, corporate intranet, team
and project collaboration sites and
more. This allows users to create a
site and replace “out-of-the-box”
MOSS components with accessibility
kit templates, reusable Web content
and Web parts.
As part of the testing for the
kit, HiSoftware will work with
Microsoft, key stakeholders and
early adopters to maximize value and
functionality, including
organizations in the UK and
worldwide. HiSoftware will also work
with a number of U.S. Federal
agencies and partners to ensure the
kit will address the broad and
diverse needs of the worldwide
community of MOSS users.
Accessibility Community for
Office SharePoint Server As part of
this initiative HiSoftware will
provide an extensible platform with
an open API and SDK, on which other
Microsoft partners can build,
collaborate and extend. HiSoftware
will lead a partner and customer
community to share thoughts,
solutions and strategies for
enhancing usability and
accessibility across MOSS
deployments.
HiSoftware President and CEO,
Kurt A. Mueffelmann, said, “With
more and more of the population
requiring assistive technology to
access Web sites, ensuring that
Internets and intranets are
accessible to everyone is an
important issue and a growing
concern for many organizations. We
are pleased to partner with
Microsoft for creating the MOSS
add-on kit to ensure that all users
are able to take full advantage of
Office SharePoint Server’s features
to easily create accessible Web
sites.”
Commercial Solutions for MOSS
HiSoftware has worked closely with
Microsoft as an ISV partner since
1998, providing solutions that
integrate with and operate on the
Microsoft platform, to compliment,
extend and provide a complete
trustworthy customer experience. In
May, HiSoftware introduced the first
of a series of commercially
available solutions to provide
end-to-end compliance for MOSS users
(with integrations into Microsoft
Office SharePoint Designer,
Microsoft Expression and MOSS).
HiSoftware’s compliance solutions
for MOSS will enable mutual
customers to address ongoing Web
Governance standards through a
collaborative workflow solution
between development, content
providers, compliance officers and
executive management. Office
SharePoint users will not only begin
with a Web site that meets common
accessibility requirements, but also
will continue to create and maintain
an accessible Web site through
on-going monitoring and reporting.
This will allow organizations to
adhere to the various accessibility
conformance guidelines (Section 508
/ WCAG), broaden social awareness
and most importantly expand market
opportunity through a broader
audience and more functional Web
presence.
About
HiSoftware
Founded in 1998, HiSoftware is a
leading provider of software,
services, and On-Demand solutions
that test, repair, monitor and
enforce Web content, quality, and
regulatory compliance. The company’s
solutions empower content
developers, Web site architects, and
executives to work collaboratively
to create and manage corporate Web
standards for accessibility,
privacy, security, search engine
optimization (SEO), site quality and
performance, branding, competitive
intelligence, and application
transaction testing (AppTest).
HiSoftware’s customers boast many of
the world’s largest public and
private sites including US and
international government agencies
and Global 2000 companies such as
Gateway, HP, California State
University, US Department of
Transportation and Microsoft
Government. For more information
about HiSoftware visit
www.hisoftware.com.
Media Contact
Irena Mroz
HiSoftware
+1.603.578.1870
irena@hisoftware.com
