Deque Systems | Software, Training, and Consulting for Web Accessibility and Section 508 Compliance

Live Seminar, National Press Club, May 18, 2011 – Section 508 Compliance in a Web 3.0 World – Accessibility of Mobile Apps, Social Media and More.

pkumar — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:01:27 +0000

What does Section 508 compliance mean to your Open Government initiative?

Unprecedented access to government services through social media and “Apps for Everyday Life” bring new challenges for your Section 508 program. Learn the best way to tackle Section 508 compliance and changes you will need to consider in order to ensure the success of your Web 3.0 Section 508 program.

To help get ahead of the game with Section 508 compliance in the brave new world of social and mobile apps, Deque invites you to join Section 508 expert, Preety Kumar, CEO of Deque Systems, Inc. and Eashwer Srinivasan, VP Delivery from Etouch Federal Systems, on May 18, 2011 for an in-depth look at Mobile Websites and Social Media accessibility.

This session will cover:

What is the state of accessibility of the major mobile platforms
How to test your Social Media content
What to do to make the maximum Section 508 impact for the lowest cost for your social media and mobile apps.

Where: National Press Club
529 14th Street NW
Washington, DC 20045

When: 8 a.m., Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Presenters: Preety Kumar, CEO, Deque Systems, Inc.
Eashwer Srinivasan, VP of Delivery, Etouch Federal System

To register, please contact Sean Campbell at s.campbell@deque.com, or by telephone at 617-696-7075.

Seats are limited. Please register early to reserve a spot today!

Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Research

gsims — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:57:54 +0000

by Glenda Sims, Senior Accessibility Consultant at Deque

I’m excited to be part of a group of experts contributing to a research project by Nirmita Narasimhan on web site accessibility evaluation methods. Contributors to this research project include:

Shadi Abou-Zahra (W3C)
Srinivasu Chakravarthula (Yahoo! India)
Glenda Sims (Deque)
Neeta Verma (National Informatics Centre)

To get the conversation started, Nirmita invited us all to participate on the “Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies” panel at www2011 in Hyderabad, India on March 30, 2011. It was fascinating to hear how my colleagues test for accessibility as well as what tools and methodologies they use. I was pleased to discover how our experiences were quite similar as we each faced the daunting challenge of testing the accessibility of huge enterprise or government web sites. We all agreed on the need for balance between manual testing, hands-on usability testing with people who have disabilities and testing using automated tools.

I really resonated with a number of Srinivasu Chakravarthula’s philosophies including his wise advice to hold manual testing until after pages pass automated testing. Shawn Lawton Henry‘s book “Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design” was mentioned multiple times by the panel as an excellent resource.

I shared my experience of creating a culture of accessibility at the University of Texas at Austin using practical testing methods over the past decade. Watch the video of my portion of the presentation and learn how you can equip yourself with free and powerful testing tools. Learn my secrets on how to turn it up a notch when you need to monitor accessibility across a vast enterprise.

Practical Accessibility Testing – a presentation by Glenda Sims of Deque at www2011 in Hyderabad, India, on March 30, 2011. Includes demo of the free accessibility testing tool, FireEyes, a plugin for Firebug in Firefox.

Deque Systems and The Paciello Group announce a working partnership to end discrimination on the web

dmusser — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 23:45:13 +0000

Deque partners with The Paciello Group (TPG) to deliver a joint services offering for the web accessibility market

San Diego, CA – March 16, 2011 – Deque (pronounced dee-cue), the leading provider of end to end web compliance software solutions and The Paciello Group (TPG), pioneers in the field of accessible interface design today announced a joint services offering. The joint service offering includes Deque’s Worldspace enterprise software Suite as well as industry leading expertise from TPG.

Many sites today have millions of pages that need to made accessible and usable to people with disabilities. Inspecting these sites by hand is manually intensive and impractical. Deque’s Worldspace Suite was built specifically to scale to the very largest multimillion page sites. This partnership gives TPG enterprise scalability by using Worldspace and for Deque, extends the reach of its services delivery teams globally.

“I have always had a great respect for the people in The Paciello Group and I am very excited to have this partnership in place.” said Preety Kumar founder and CEO Deque Systems. “Through this partnership we have the expanded capability to reach more customers using the professionals at TPG along with our Worldspace Suite. By using Worldspace our combined teams can dramatically reduce the cost of compliance for large scale web sites while delivering the highest quality work on a timely basis.”

“We are excited about the prospect of incorporating Worldspace into our offering. Using Worldspace will help us to handle the large and ever growing web sites that must be made accessible,” stated Mike Paciello, founder and CEO of The Paciello Group. “By partnering with Deque Systems we can address the large scale accessibility and compliance projects ahead, providing our clients a best-in-class product service.”

About Deque Systems

Deque Systems, Inc. headquartered in Reston, VA, is a leading technology provider of end to end, integrated Web compliance solutions that deliver accessibility, quality, privacy, and security. Deque’s unmatched abilities have earned the trust of government agencies, Fortune 500 companies and small to midsized businesses seeking to optimize their Web based systems and empower employees to work collaboratively. Deque is an SBA 8(a) and SDB Certified woman owned business that values diversity. For more information, visit www.deque.com.

About The Paciello Group

The Paciello Group (TPG) is passionately dedicated to helping government agencies, technology vendors, e-commerce corporations, and educational institutions make their technology equally accessible to all people, including those with disabilities. The company, based in Nashua, NH, offers professional consulting, technology solutions, and monthly monitoring services to ensure that clients reach all audiences effectively and efficiently while meeting governmental and international standards. For more information, visit the Paciello Group web site.

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Deque @ CSUN 2011 Downloadable Guide

ccashin — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:50:09 +0000

We thought you might want to have this handy, downloadable guide to all of our activities, presentations, demos, and special events at CSUN 2011–here you go! Come see us in our Showcase Suite for all the excitement!

Download me! Deque @ CSUN 2011

Remember to RSVP for our exclusive VIP events on Wednesday (3/16) and Thursday (3/17) nights inside our Showcase Suite:

First, Deque is pleased to host a very special guest, Robert Pearson, who will be presenting “Impossible is Nothing”, on Wednesday night (March 16^th). Robert is an information technology professional who has been functioning, influencing, and engaging in the web accessibility industry since 1999. Robert says, “Impossible is a word often heard in the accessibility industry. ‘It is impossible to access this web page, it is impossible to include money for accessibility in the budget’.”

Impossible is also a word that has been used to describe how Robert Pearson overcame the challenges afforded by his physical disability, which nearly resulted in him losing his life more than two dozen times over two years. With a passion for life and an understanding that anything is achievable and nothing is to be feared, it becomes clear how “impossible” is only a word. Cocktails and small plates start at 4:00 pm, and Robert’s special presentation starts at 5:00 p.m.

RSVP: Facebook

RSVP: LinkedIn

Join us Thursday, March 17th, as we celebrate Jim Thatcher’s achievements and the significant contributions he’s made in the field of web accessibility. Jim is hailed as one of the founders of the industry for his ground-breaking efforts to make the Internet accessible to everyone. Be part of the entire accessibility community’s celebration of Jim’s contributions and success—fuel your passion to make the dream of a truly accessible web a reality. We’ll be hosting a very special Lifetime Achievement Award Ceremony & Celebration on Thursday, March 17^th, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in our Showcase Suite. Cocktails and small plates start at 4:00 pm, and the presentation ceremony starts at 5:00 p.m.

RSVP: Facebook

RSVP: LinkedIn

CSUN 2011: Special Events, Presentations, and More!

ccashin — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:31:56 +0000

We’re very excited about CSUN 2011, the web accessibility industry’s leading conference! This year, we’re presenting several top-notch papers, and have two very special evening events planned.

First, let’s talk about the presentations. We’ve got something for everyone. For starters, “Worldspace FireEyes: a Free Tool for AJAX Application Development”. Or maybe you’re interested in something like, “Managing Accessibility Compliance in the Enterprise”.

Mobile applications are a hot topic, and our own Preety Kumar will be presenting, “Challenges of Designing, Coding, and Building Accessible Mobile Apps”.

Glenda Sims will be talking about “Open Web Education: The Need for a Degree in Web Science at the University Level“.

Lastly, we know you’ll love “Current State of Accessibility Among Top Online Retails Sites” which we’re really pleased to present alongside Jim Thatcher.

Come see us in our Showcase Suite and don’t forget to reserve your spot for these educational and informative presentations.

Speaking of Jim Thatcher, we’d like to invite you to join us as we celebrate his achievements and the significant contributions he’s made in the field of web accessibility. Jim is hailed as one of the founders of the industry for his ground-breaking efforts to make the Internet accessible to everyone. Be part of the entire accessibility community’s celebration of Jim’s contributions and success—fuel your passion to make the dream of a truly accessible web a reality. We’ll be hosting a very special Lifetime Achievement Award Ceremony & Celebration on Thursday, March 17^th, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in our Showcase Suite. Cocktails and small plates start at 4:00 pm, and the presentation ceremony starts at 5:00 p.m.

RSVP: Facebook

RSVP: LinkedIn

Deque is also pleased to host a very special guest, Robert Pearson, who will be presenting “Impossible is Nothing”, at our Wednesday night (March 16^th) event. Robert is an information technology professional who has been functioning, influencing, and engaging in the web accessibility industry since 1999. Robert says, “Impossible is a word often heard in the accessibility industry. ‘It is impossible to access this web page, it is impossible to include money for accessibility in the budget’.”

RSVP: Facebook

RSVP: LinkedIn

Join us for both of these superb and engaging special events you won’t be able to find anywhere else at the conference! Get there early—we expect both evenings to draw a full crowd. We look forward to seeing you soon!

P.S. We’ll be making some very special, exciting company announcements on Wednesday night, March 16th! Don’t miss it!

Mitsue-Links Offers Japanese Localized Version of Deque Systems – Worldspace

pkumar — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:27:22 +0000

Reston, VA – December 14, 2010. Deque Systems (“Deque”) today announced a partnership with Mitsue-Links Corporation (“Mitsue- Links”) in Tokyo, Japan. The two companies have worked together for many months to develop and offer a fully localized version of Worldspace to the Japanese market. The first localized version will be available in the first quarter of 2011.

Worldspace provides the first truly fully automated accessibility evaluations and repair management for any organization. No matter how large a web site is, Worldspace can follow links, collect web pages and evaluate them. The web based, cross-platform user interface is intuitive, so that anyone who needs to produce accessible websites and web applications can use it.

Worldspace fully supports WCAG 2.0 standard, and JIS Web Content Accessibility Guideline was updated to include WCAG 2.0 in 2010, thus Worldspace is usable for JIS X 8341-3:2010 conformance evaluation. Worldspace’s flexible feature settings enable use of the tool to make web content compliant with various accessibility guidelines, too.

Details of the Worldspace Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool

http://www.mitsue.co.jp/english/service/accessibility/worldspace.html

About Mitsue-Links
Mitsue-Links is one of Japan’s top information integrators, providing unique services centered on digital content and boasting countless achievements in support of IT business since the company’s founding in 1990, which some say was the dawn of the IT field. Mitsue-Links offers comprehensive services for all enterprise requirements including consulting, marketing, analysis, planning, layout/structuring, design, production, large-scale application development, planning/development of client communications, and site operation/maintenance. Mitsue-Links provides these services based on its unique and creative methodology, thereby enabling project management, project risk management, and usability management that organically integrate all services and maintain their consistency.
Mitsue-Links Corporate Website:

http://www.mitsue.co.jp/

Contact:
Taro Nonaka
Public Relations
Mitsue-Links Co.,Ltd.
Shinjuku Square Tower 15F
6-22-1 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo, 163-1115 JAPAN
Tel:+81 3 3344 7470
Fax:+81 3 3344 7402
e-mail:release@mitsue.co.jp

About Deque
Deque Systems, Inc. headquartered in Reston, VA, is a leading technology provider of end to end, integrated Web compliance solutions that deliver accessibility, quality, privacy, and security. Deque’s unmatched abilities have earned the trust of government agencies, Fortune 500 companies and small to midsized businesses seeking to optimize their Web based systems and empower employees to work collaboratively. Deque is an SBA 8(a) and SDB Certified woman owned business that values diversity. For more information, visit Deque Systems Corporate Website.
Deque Systems Corporate Website:

http://www.deque.com/

Contact:
Noura Bashshur
Media Relations
Deque Systems, Inc.
11130 Sunrise Valley Drive #140
Reston, VA 20191
Toll Free: 877-able-web (877-225-3932)
Tel:+1 703 225 0380
Fax:+1 703 225 0387

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Proper names found on the website, including corporate names and product names, are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.

Bill Makes Mobile Phones, Internet-based Services, and Online Videos Accessible to Persons with Disabilities

ccashin — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:29:48 +0000

In October, Congress passed a bill that will make the mobile phones and the Web more accessible to Americans with disabilities. Specifically, the 21^st Century Communications & Video Accessibility Act does a few things for persons with disabilities (PWB)—it will let them choose from a broader selection of mobile and smart phones that provide fully accessible email, web browsers, and text messaging, it will make sure Internet-enabled phones are hearing-aid compatible, it will require Internet based communication technologies (services, network and equipment) provided by Telcommunication companies and VoIP providers to be accessible, it will make new TV shows that are captioned available online with closed captioning, and TV remote controls will include a button to make it easier to obtain closed captioning services.

We say, “Rock on!” to Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who authored the bill. We love his quote:

“Whether it’s a Braille reader or a broadband connection, access to technology is not a political issue—it’s a participation issue. We’ve moved from Braille to broadcast, from broadband to the BlackBerry. We’ve moved from spelling letters in someone’s palm to the PalmPilot. And we must make all of these devices accessible.”

We also applaud Verizon’s efforts as they played a key role in leading the push for new legislation, because it is all about participation.

We’d also like to give a shout out to Steve Jacobs, the CEO of Apps4Androids, who is an outstanding example of leadership, attitude, and foresight. In his comments to this Washington Post article about the bill, he said,

“Developing innovative consumer electronics products that accommodate the wants, needs, and preferences of as many individual consumers as technically possible and economically feasible makes good business sense to me…I would encourage any decision-making manager of any consumer electronics company to…challenge their designers to create products that are more accessible, usable and useful…”

By focusing his company’s software development activities on accessibility, he was able to increase his company’s user base from 0 to 775,000 users, in 18 months. That’s over three-quarters of a million new users!

What about you? In the U.S. alone, there are 34.5 million people that have hearing trouble, and 19.4 million who have vision trouble (CDC, FastStats: Disability and Functioning). Can they use all of the online products and services you offer?

Really? You sure about that?

Deque Systems, a Microsoft Gold Certified Development Partner, Releases a First-Of-Its-Kind, Web Accessibility Solution for SharePoint

ccashin — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:36:29 +0000

Deque Systems announced a breakthrough in web accessibility solutions by releasing a first-of-its-kind suite of add-ins, ribbon extensions, and Web Parts for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 tools that ensure Section 508 compliance. This makes Deque the first company to produce a suite of tools that enable SharePoint users to avoid producing the host of compliance problems they normally create during web development activities.

Until now, SharePoint users did not have tools that would let them create Section 508 compliant web content prior to publishing, leaving them to deal with web accessibility as a post-publication issue. Deque, a Microsoft Gold certified developer, created the suite of add-ins, ribbon extensions, and Web Parts for SharePoint to solve this problem at its root cause. With the Deque solution at their fingertips, content creators can now engage in “preventive authoring”, which is the highest industry best practice for accessible web development activities and workflow management.

Non-compliant web content increases the risk of disability-related litigation before it is resolved. Deque’s SharePoint accessibility tools enable organizations to improve development processes so that non-compliant content is neither created nor published. As a result, organizations can eliminate time-consuming and costly compliance remediation activities, and development teams can focus their energies on creating additional value instead of fixing web accessibility problems.

“Enterprise computing is complicated. Adding a compliance remediation step after publishing web content only adds another layer of difficulty onto really complex workflows,” said Preety Kumar, CEO of Deque Systems, “With our new tools, SharePoint users can stop wondering if their content is accessible, they’ll just know. It’s like going from a rock and chisel to an iPad.”

The suite of Deque SharePoint accessibility tools are part of Worldspace Enterprise, Deque’s compliance validation solution for teams and organizations that produce large scale, dynamic web applications that must be universally available. For more information, please visit http://www.deque.com/products/deque-labs

Deque Systems Announces First Comprehensive Web Accessibility Management Solution For Global Brands

ccashin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:34:09 +0000

Worldspace Enterprise Fully Integrates With HP Quality Center

Deque Systems announced Worldspace Enterprise, the web accessibility solution trusted by the world’s top global brands, has been successfully evaluated by the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Quality Center against their extensive certification criteria. This makes Enterprise the first tool that enables complex organizations to stay in compliance with best practices in web development, which can decrease the risk of disability-related litigation and increase market penetration.

Until now, the lack of integration between accessibility testing tools and complex development environments commonly present at mature organizations, has allowed defects to slip by, leaving global brands at risk of litigation from people with disabilities for being out of compliance with web accessibility standards. For HP Quality Center customers, the integration of Worldspace Enterprise means that achieving the highest industry benchmarks of web accessibility testing is as easy as installing Enterprise alongside HP QC.

The coupling of Enterprise and HP QC allows customers to:

Use HP Quality Center to initiate accessibility testing and automatically collect results
Leverage Enterprise’s specialized, automated tests for web accessibility
Track accessibility defects, assign them to developers and re-test just like all other defects without changing processes in place
Use HP Quality Center to define priorities for test groups or individual tests against web accessibility standards such as Section 508 or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

As a result, the ongoing expense of adding accessibility testing to the web development process is dramatically reduced while ensuring compliance with internal or statutory standards for accessibility. Worldspace Enterprise lets organizations automatically test Web 2.0 applications, complex dynamic websites, e-commerce sites and portals for accessibility compliance with the different global laws and standards such as the U.S. Section 508, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), U.K. Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), and the Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS).

“Our mission is to ensure that no one gets left out of life on the web,” said Preety Kumar, CEO of Deque Systems, “The widespread adoption of automated web accessibility testing is a critically important step in reaching this goal. The open architecture of Worldspace Enterprise easily integrates with the other leading tools used by web developers. We’re thrilled to add HP Quality Center to our growing set of validated integrations.”

Kumar added, ““Worldspace Enterprise integrates right into the Quality Center test views, making it easy to manage web accessibility all the way from requirements to defect resolution without having to switch to other tools. Deque built these additional capabilities into the Enterprise API so that web developers can easily make accessibility a mainstream testing activity rather than treating it like an afterthought.”

For more information, please visit www.deque.com/products/worldspace-enterprise

Deque Releases Worldspace FireEyes, a NextGen Web Accessibility Tool Free to Developer Community

ccashin — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:08:29 +0000

Deque Systems announced the global launch of Worldspace™ FireEyes™, an unprecedented, next generation Web accessibility tool that ensures both static and dynamic content within a web portfolio are compliant with accessibility standards such as Section 508, WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0.

Developers face real problems trying to make dynamic websites and applications, like Facebook, accessible to everyone. The current generation of tools on the market don’t work with JavaScript or dynamic, event-based page content. FireEyes enables developers of rich, interactive sites and applications ensure their creations are accessible to everyone.

FireEyes is an easy-to-use plug-in that is fully integrated with one of the most popular and powerful Web development tools, FireBug, a Firefox extension. FireEyes works well with static sites plus includes features specifically designed to address the needs of dynamically updating content. It is the only tool on the market that is fully JavaScript aware that enables developers to instantly re-test static content, dynamic content and dynamic page updates, within seconds, while they are working, eliminating the long delays inherent in testing with legacy tools.

FireEyes solves the problem of error reproducibility by allowing developers to record scripts that show the exact sequence of steps required to trigger a problem and share it with others so they can see exactly how the problem happened.

It is also the only tool that automatically builds a single report that covers multiple pages or entire use cases. This automatic analysis feature provides developers a comprehensive list of issues to fix by providing a transcript of the entire session viewed in a single, drillable report. FireEyes can be used for general debugging, as well. It does all of this, in real time, during development activities, functional testing and even active deployment.

Other key features include:

The ability to choose which parts of which Web standards to include in tests. Specific tests can be turned on or off.
Interleaving of events, changes, and violations for easy debugging of accessibility issues in static or dynamic content.
Dynamic report filtering, and comprehensive reports and transcripts of all pages visited in a session, current document events and violations.

“FireEyes is amazing because it allows developers to do what they couldn’t do before. Feedback from the development community has been really strong,” said Preety Kumar, CEO of Deque Systems, “They’ve told me FireEyes reduces testing time from days to seconds, it makes manual testing much easier, and it supports the way they work, either individually or as part of a development team.”

Kumar added, “When sites are designed to be universally accessible, the end result improves for everyone. At Deque, we believe that everyone should be given the same opportunities on the Web, so that’s why we made FireEyes a free download.”

For more information, or to download Worldspace FireEyes, please visit http://www.deque.com/products/worldspace-fireeyes/download-worldspace-fireeyes