Accessibility Consulting
Our senior consultants meet with your management and technical staff to assess how best to meet your accessibility goals. We work with your management staff to understand your business issues and prioritize your needs in terms of services to be delivered, schedule and costs.
Section 508 Guidance and Technical Assistance
We will provide your staff specific guidance in the areas associated with implementing an organizational plan. Our technical staff is capable of providing assistance in areas such as automated tool support, software code analysis, and technical standards.
Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)
The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) was created by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). GSA encourages all vendors interested in conducting business with the Federal Government to complete this form and make it available on the vendor’s web site. This form allows the government to compare compliance, to the Section 508 standards, among competing vendors.
Training and Awareness
Proper communications ensures that the organization receives the full benefit of meeting all relevant ADA and Section 508 requirements. We are experienced in working with clients to develop marketing awareness materials and press releases that positively—and accurately–reflect the advances made in your organization. We also provide comprehensive, well-documented training in all aspects of IT accessibility as well as the broader concepts of accessibility.
The road to compliance involves knowledge and understanding of the technical and legislative aspects of Section 508. IT and Procurement staff should be familiar with IT accessibility requirements and be comfortable relating your compliance successes to commercial and government partners. Technical staff training will enable your developers and maintainers to understand how to effectively implement fully accessible solutions, as well as understand the alternatives often available when implementing advanced technologies on web sites or in complex IT applications.
Accessibility Compliance Audits and Testing
These services are accessibility assessments of the client’s existing and/or future IT/Web products and services—either developed internally or procured–using state of the art diagnostic and validation testing techniques. We evaluate client IT/Web products, including Internet/Intranet/Extranet sites and complex IT applications, by employing testers that are themselves disabled and knowledgeable on ADA, Section 508 standards, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines and a variety of popular assistive technology hardware and software devices. We are convinced that this approach is superior to other methods.
Our compliance assessments and audits are comprehensive and well documented. Accessibility deficiencies are identified as Critical Deficiencies (must remediate to comply with standards) or Important Deficiencies (not a standards violation, but should be remediated to enhance accessibility to users of popular assistive technology). Additionally, we generally offer usability recommendations as a by-product of our assessments and audits.
(Note: Accessibility Assessments employ representative sampling techniques to evaluate the compliance of a web site or IT application to standards; Accessibility Audits are essentially a complete sampling of all discrete technologies and interfaces to insure compliance to standards, a common requirement of government agencies).
Program Office Consulting Support
These services provide consulting support to establish a Section 508 Program Office that manages and oversees a framework to make electronic and information systems accessible to customers and employees with disabilities. Our staff will provide detailed steps including the necessary processes, tools, and techniques that ensure success. In addition, we will serve as a technical advisor and resource during each phase of program insertion.
Our approach will include establishing a partnership with program staff and organizational entities that allows our expertise in this area to be transferred to your program staff. Our industry partnerships can be leveraged to ensure that your organization is kept up to date on changes in assistive technology and the accessibility needs of employees. Our mission is to provide the leadership, guidance, and support needed to achieve Section 508 program and organizational goals.
Assistive Technology Services
These services are accessibility assessments of the client’s existing and/or future IT/Web products and services—developed internally or procured–using state of the art diagnostic and validation testing techniques.
Workshop and Focus Groups
Understanding product and service feature requirements and their receptivity in the marketplace is critical to achieving success. It is often important to demonstrate "proof of concept" using accurate and reliable feedback mechanisms. Focus groups provide the input necessary for a successful product launch, and can serve to re-enforce the success (or failure) of marketing campaigns. Our team is skilled in organizing and executing focus groups to meet these objectives.
Engineering Consulting Support
This consulting effort focuses on the re-engineering of non-compliant ADA and Section 508 products. Determining the deficiencies in a product or service is only the first step. Product modifications or a complete redesign may be required to achieve a fully accessible solution. We can work with you and your developers to make your products fully accessible to all users.
ADA, Section 508, Section 255 and IT/Web Accessibility Legislative Monitoring
This consulting effort focuses on the re-engineering of non-compliant ADA and Section 508 products. Determining the deficiencies in a product or service is only the first step. Product modifications or a complete redesign may be required to achieve a fully accessible solution. We can work with you and your dev.
A Continuing Real-time IT/Web Accessibility Consulting & Support
Clients with geographically dispersed design and engineering teams frequently benefit by having near real-time access to our senior consulting staff to meet dynamic product development and test cycles, as well as aggressive schedules.
We offer extended accessibility consulting to support your technical teams by means of direct telephone support, as well as moderated secure, web-based bulletin boards (forums) to support your staff. Secure online forums offer the long term benefit of acting as online archives of accessibility issues and concerns, along with the expert technical advice and guidance from our consultants. Our clients may also extend access to these forums to their vendors to insure subcontracted materials are delivered in a state of compliance to IT/Web accessibility standards. These services are offered on a quarterly or yearly basis, tailored to meet the needs of the client.
Usability Consulting & Testing
We advise on designing a simpler, easier-to-use, more efficient customer experience. Experts agree and the brick-and-mortar world has demonstrated, understanding and reacting to customer behavior is the number one resource for acquiring and keeping customers. We offer a progression of services from a "quick win" expert audit through to a customer experience test, advancing to a complete, ready-to-use set of re-design blueprints leading up to the ultimate full re-build.
Accessibility Remediation Services
We are available to remediate documents, website, e-Learning, training, and software applications for Section 508 Compliance. Additionally, after remediation a report of what was done is created to support knowledge transfer.
Accessibility Testing/Assessment
We will evaluate, test, and recommend strategies to agencies and organizations for implementing accessibility standards. Similarly, our staff will evaluate the functional usability of these products for those with special needs. This test plan consists of the following components:
- Identify project information and components to be tested.
- Enumerate the recommended accessibility requirements for the test.
- Create test cases based on client scope documents. (as required)
- Recommend and describe the testing strategies to be employed.
- Identify required resources and provide an estimate for the test efforts.
- List the deliverable elements of the test project.
In addition, we provide the following set of reports as required by our clients:
Compliance Report
Our Compliance Report will provide a comprehensive assessment specifying an overall level of accessibility. The report will incorporate an evaluation with detailed comments on how your product compares with the appropriate state of the art benchmarks in use today..
Accessibility Report
The Accessibility Report is a compilation of data gleaned from the complete testing process and presented in a summary format. This deliverable provides a detailed description of the deficiencies of your product as it relates to our testing criteria and offers possible solutions.
Test Case Report(s)
Using W3C, Section 508, and IBM guidelines, our Testing Manager creates a unique test plan for each Assistive Technology to be tested. Each test case is then sent to a tester with expertise with a specific AT device. This deliverable is the actual test plan(s) completed by the testers. This report provides a page and element level listing of issues. Bear in mind that in order to make testing as economical as possible we do not test every page. Instead, we draw conclusions regarding the products construction and eliminate testing pages that would be redundant.
