Case Study
State of Maine
The Business Problem
The State of Maine fully supports the American with Disabilities Act regarding reasonable
accommodation in the workplace, and recognizes the commitment to meeting the needs
of its employees and citizens with disabilities. The Maine Web Accessibility Policy
(http://www.maine.gov/oit/accessibility/policy/webpolicy.htm)
is designed to meet or exceed all Federal Section 508 requirements. The Maine Standards
exceed the minimum requirements in many areas, incorporating a number of WCAG "Priority
2" and "Priority 3" Checkpoints as well as additional requirements
identified through practical experience working with Maine citizens with disabilities.
To that end, an Accessibility Standing Committee was formed to evaluate and advise
the Chief Information Officer regarding technological developments and products
relating to compliance with the ADA and other relevant laws. A critical goal for
the Committee was that each agency would have access to web testing and accessibility
tools on at least one computer.
The committee sought software that could be used to evaluate the improvement of
State Websites over time, to inform agencies about the level of compliance of their
sites, and to identify potential problem areas. The Accessibility Committee was
seeking a tool to help web coordinators to understand the current accessible status
of their site and to correct existing problems. The State was eagerly seeking efficient,
economical solutions to assist webmasters to validate and repair their sites. Like
every state, Maine has thousands of pages across hundreds of websites. Most pages
were not considered fully accessible according to 508 or WC3 standards.
To support this goal and the State's ongoing initiative to ensure that all State
web pages are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, the State
Accessibility Committee purchased a package of Web accessibility testing software
from HiSoftware in the fall of 2004. Although verification and repair software is
not necessary to develop accessible sites, most webmasters have little time to manage
their sites; learning all they need to know about accessibility and retrofitting
their sites to be accessible is more than most webmasters have time to achieve.
HiSoftware’s AccVerify facilitates understanding of accessibility requirements
as well as making testing and repair easier. Additionally, using HiSoftware’s
verification solutions is an important step in continuing to meet the accessibility
standards as new pages are added to web sites and multiple people work on sites.
The Solution
The State of Maine purchased an unlimited license for HiSoftware Compliance Sheriff
and has begun a rollout of AccVerify/AccRepair at several of its installations.
AccVerify provides for the verification of accessibility policy and standards required
for Web Sites under the Rehabilitation Act Section 508 and W3C® WCAG 1.0 Priority
1-3 guidelines. AccRepair uses the reporting and verification components of AccVerify
to launch a repair “wizard” interface, which prompts the user to correct
accessibility errors. AccRepair also uses a library that “learns” as
repairs are made. These applications are available as a stand-alone desktop solution
and as an integrated add-on for Microsoft FrontPage.
Compliance Sheriff is an automated accessibility testing solution for
Web sites or for use in conjunction with intranet servers or file servers. Using
a crawler, Compliance Sheriff tests sites for compliance with Section 508 and W3C accessibility
standards. Compliance Sheriff spiders, or crawls over, entire Web sites and reports on their
accessibility status. Compliance Sheriff particularly benefits organizations that need to
monitor multiple servers that host information via the World Wide Web. Compliance Sheriff
is a server solution that is designed to run with no user interaction once configured.
Compliance Sheriff can be scheduled to crawl Web sites daily, weekly, or monthly. It also
allows users to log-on for on demand reports on the accessibility status of their
Web pages.
The Bottom Line
HiSoftware’s solutions provided the comprehensive testing and reporting features
that State Webmasters required, through a simple to use interface. Additionally,
HiSoftware’s applications provided great flexibility in user-driven and automated
reporting, and also provided flexibility for Enterprise Wide deployment and mass
distribution. AccVerify is part of a larger State initiative for website accessibility
and design standards. Agencies are now required to use standard website templates,
which have been designed to be fully accessible. Each agency is also required to
develop a website management plan and to designate a single Web Coordinator who
is responsible for ensuring that standards are met. There is no time deadline for
full accessibility at this time, but an understanding each agency will choose a
reasonable deadline for accessibility compliance and will be working towards meeting
this goal.
"As one of the trainers for HiSoftware with our state web coordinators, I feel
HiSoftware was the tipping point in involving more web coordinators in checking
for accessibility on their agency web pages, in sharing knowledge to help solve
problems together, and opening up the discussion of how to best to offer equal access
to government web sites for all citizens of Maine." Ellen Wood, Chair of the
Web Accessibility Sub Committee, Maine State Library Web Coordinator.