Online accessibility is a critical component of any successful online government strategy. As the amount of electronic information continues to multiply in organizations, the need for a comprehensive, cost-effective accessibility solution is becoming a sought-after priority. The Solution for Online Accessibility (SOA), jointly developed by HiSoftware Inc. and Microsoft, is an integrated business-technology solution with a single point of accountability that provides extremely high scalability.

SOA allows you to seamlessly manage the overall structural integrity and content quality of your enterprise Web presence. Accomplished through a system of “checks and balances”, the solution creates a common look and feel for the Web site through the use of approved templates and a content approval process. This type of tiered content creation system is ideal for enterprise management of Content Quality practices, enabling integrated access for verification of accessibility and content quality throughout the different layers of your managed Web sites.

SOA addresses today’s new challenges in content policy management. It provides a complete, scalable enterprise 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.

EMPOWER YOUR TEAM MEMBERS
Web developers and designers create publishing templates that provide centralized control over site usability, layout, and branding. Developers and designers also manage user rights and permissions both for creating and publishing content and for site visitors, resulting in a more secure, streamlined process.

GET TO MARKET FASTER
Launch new Web sites in a matter of weeks, not months. SOA relies on familiar tools to speed site development. Site developers and designers can use existing HTML tools to create templates. IT staff can implement user rights with user-authentication schemes already in place in your organization. Business users create content using familiar tools, such as Word or a browser-based interface. Coupled with built-in workflow and approval processes, the solution helps ensure information is always timely, accurate, and relevant.

DIGITAL DASHBOARD PROVIDES COMPREHENSIVE REPORTING
SOA empowers your entire team to create effective Web sites by providing powerful tools for business and technical staff. Your organization’s experts and/or policy managers can define organizational policies and then provide a solution to validate compliance with these policies. Comprehensive reporting details exactly why your content has passed or failed.

Seamlessly Manage Your Enterprise Web Presence
Create and Manage Agency Standards for Web Site Quality, Accessibility, Usability, Searchability and Custom Quality Factors
SOA provides an integrated digital dashboard that incorporates streamlined report viewers and preview modes, so users can test their pages for optimal performance under variable end-user scenarios. The dashboard reporting system provides easy access to executive-level summary reports, permitting IT managers to obtain quick status reports within the application interface. Detailed analysis for developers and quality assurance teams is available with an additional click through the same highly customizable interface.

TESTING FOR GLOBAL AND CUSTOM QUALITY FACTORS
SOA provides “out-of-the-box” testing and reporting for Accessibility, Privacy, Metadata and Usability [MG2] standards. It also allows users to define and conduct custom tests. The final result is a complete and concise report on the total accessibility, quality and policy compliance status of content that has been tested. The software provides unsurpassed team services, workflow capabilities and a flexible, scalable enterprise monitoring system.

THE CUSTOM CHECK AND REPORT BUILDER
The Custom Checkpoint Editor and Custom Report Editor allow users to define specific accessibility, usability, searchability, privacy and other custom content quality factors validation. This is designed to provide extensibility of the current validation system to match any specific need not covered by a publicly available standard or guideline. Test features, formats and customization can be pre-configured, so developers, quality assurance professionals and other content creators within the organization can simply run these programmatic tests and receive a result, without any requirement for software configuration.

SOLUTION COMPONENTS
SOA is composed of AccVerify®, AccMonitor® Server, MSDN Universal, Microsoft Content Management Server (CMS) and Microsoft SQL Server™. This solution reduces the time required to build and deploy accessible portals and Web sites, and provides extremely high scalability, reliability, and performance for those sites.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES
SOA offers complete feature sets for content contribution and delivery, site development, and enterprise site management to enable businesses to effectively create, deploy, and manage Internet, intranet, and extranet Web sites. Benefits of using SOA include, but are not limited to:

Empower end-users with content creation, edit, test for compliance, and approval tools that are familiar and easy to use

• Test and Repair for Accessibility and Usability: Section 508, WCAG 1.0 (Priority 1-3), WCAG 2.0, CLF, XAG
• Validate for compliance with Privacy, Searchability, Custom Quality Standards and Guidelines
• Validate all content including but not limited to: HTML, XHTML, SVG, XML and any other text or element-based content
• Manage content integrity efficiently and consistently throughout the content development and deployment life cycles
• Provide a common, familiar, developer environment based on Visual Studio.NET
• Shorten Web-publishing cycles by linking collaboration, publishing, and the content quality audit processes
• Capable of completing the entire content quality and integrity verification process for visual and programmatic verification
• Customize Accessibility and Site Quality: Checks, Output, and Reporting.

For more information on the Solution for Online Accessibility, please contact:

• Microsoft Federal Solutions: fedsol@microsoft.com
• SOA Web Site: http://www.hisoftware.com/soa.