Create and Manage Corporate Standards for Web Accessibility

Benefits

• Increase your market share by making your Web site accessible to people with disabilities
• Comply with federal and international accessibility guidelines for best practices
• Avoid the risk of costly litigation, settlements and loss of business associated with inaccessibility

• Accessibility Compliance for:

  • Section 508

  • WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0

  • CLF

  • XAG

  • Any standard derived from WCAG or Section 508

Setting the Standard

If you're not monitoring your Web site for Accessibility you could be missing 20%¹ of your audience. That's the percentage of people whose business you may be losing by not making your Web site accessible to people with disabilities. In fact, in the United States alone, 60% (101.4 million) of working-age adults who range from 18 to 64 years old are likely or very likely to benefit from the use of accessible technology².
The importance of Web accessibility standards has been recognized around the world. In fact the U.S. Access Board has published a document called Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications as part of Section 508, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed a set of universal guidelines for Web development titled Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
Making sure your company is compliant with the latest standards can help you gain valuable market share and avoid the risk of costly litigation, settlements and loss of business.

What it Means

When Web developers follow the standards and guidelines for accessibility, Web-based information can be browsed by everyone -including people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers, text readers and voice-activated devices.  There are three steps to achieve accessibility for a Web site or group of Web-based documents:

1. Verify accessibility compliance with Section 508 standards or W3C accessibility guidelines
2. Repair Web content
3. Monitor Web for ongoing accessibility

Verifying Accessibility Compliance

HiSoftware Compliance Sheriff™ provides a complete suite of solutions that enable you 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).

Part of the Compliance Sheriff™ solutions suite, the Accessibility module empowers content managers to work collaboratively with developers and Web site architects to monitor and verify corporate Web standards for accessibility. The Accessibility module provides automated reporting solutions to determine whether the information on a Web site, public or private, complies with accessibility.

It offers the flexibility to verify compliance with both Section 508 and W3C standards. The Accessibility module scans your Web site for over 172 accessibility checks such as images, forms, and dynamic content interactions, plus 17 Alt text quality checks. The results are then available in a comprehensive report which includes the exact locations of Web elements so you can take corrective action, and alerts you to elements that can only be verified by looking at a Web-based document.

Test results are recorded and include a History that allows you to identify the "pass-fail" status of a project on demand for a specific point in time, or to track the progress of the project over time. You can identify "phases" of the project by author, time, date, department, and more. You can create reports based on information in the database too. Users can work collaboratively to manage their testing efforts through shared Recorder databases.

Reports

When a page is tested for accessibility, the report cites accessibility violations in each Web file. Reports include:

• Section 508 Reporting: Tests files for accessibility compliance with Section 508 standards, and can report on Section 508 compliance.
• W3C® WCAG Reporting: Tests files for accessibility compliance with W3C WCAG 1.0 Priority 1-3, and can report on W3C WCAG 1.0 Priority 1-3 compliance.
• Alt Text Quality Reporting: When a page is tested for Alt Text Quality, the report cites Alt Text violations in each Web file.
• Custom Accessibility Reporting: Create custom reports that are specific to your organization's accessibility policies. Test for compliance with custom guidelines and policies for all content including but not limited to: HTML, XHTML, SVG, XML and any other text or element based content. Custom validation is supported for CSS, XSL, SVG, JavaScript, VBScript, and other text or element based content.
  

Repairing Web Content

Once you determine why your Web site it is failing compliance, you need to know how to repair it. HiSoftware is the only solution that goes a step further than just reporting on what's wrong. We also provide you with additional modules that tell you to what you need to do to repair your content and implement the fixes for you through an automated wizard.

• AccRepair® guides you through steps to achieve accessibility for your Web content. Using a wizard format, AccRepair locates inaccessible Web elements and then prompts you to correct them. With AccRepair, you don't have to be an expert in HTML-the Wizard inserts the information you provide into the source code for you.
• AccVerify® provides a desktop test management system that enables validation of content for compliance with standards-based and organizational policies for content defects, usability testing, Search engine effectiveness, Site inventory, Web accessibility, Site maintenance and management of corporate standards.

Download the CS Accessibility Module FAQ Sheet 96K | Need Alternative Content?

1. US Census Bureau data: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/001823.html
2. Full study available at http://www.microsoft.com/enable/research