Microsoft Corporation today announced a strategic relationship with HiSoftware Inc., a leading supplier of Web site accessibility software, to provide HiSoftware's AccVerify SE Web accessibility tool for all users of the Microsoft FrontPage Web site creation and management tool, effective immediately. This special edition of AccVerify allows users of FrontPage to pinpoint Web page accessibility obstacles and make changes to ensure their site's conformance with the federal government's Section 508 standards. Section 508 mandates that federal agencies make certain that all Web sites are accessible to people with disabilities.
"AccVerify SE for FrontPage is a value-added solution that will promote the creation of accessible Web sites and enable government and businesses to easily address the Section 508 standards for Web accessibility," said Mike Paciello, CTO and founder of WebABLE Inc. and a Microsoft Accessibility Advisor. "Better yet, because it is available at no cost to all users of FrontPage, it will help bring accessibility to webmasters who might not otherwise focus on it as an initial priority in their development efforts."
"Microsoft shares our focus of making technology broadly accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities," said Robert B. Yonaitis, CEO and president of HiSoftware. "By using AccVerify SE in conjunction with FrontPage, Web developers have the best tool set to ensure their Web site is fully accessible."
Maximum Accessibility: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone - Making Web sites accessible to people with disabilities is now a legal requirement for all government Web sites in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the European Union. Throughout the world, many other organizations -- governments and universities, school districts, and private companies -- are recognizing that accessibility is a moral and business imperative, and are adopting policies aimed at making Web resources accessible to the more than six hundred million people with disabilities worldwide, including fifty-four million Americans and thirty-seven million European citizens. Maximum Accessibility is a comprehensive resource for creating Web sites that comply with the new U.S. accessibility standards or conform to the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. It offers an overview of the issues, discusses the standards in depth, and presents practical design techniques, up-to-date technologies, and testing methods to implement these standards for maximum accessibility. Maximum Accessibility shows you why good design is accessible design.You will learn how to: Write effective text equivalents for images and audio files Caption soundtracks and describe the action of videos and animation Set up data and layout tables that make sense to the ear and eye Design Web forms that people can interact with via the keyboard and other input devices Label forms so that people who use talking browsers can give the right information at the right time Make scripts accessible to people who don't use a mouse Create simple PDF files that are accessible to people with disabilities Use Cascading Style Sheets to make pages look great and be thoroughly accessibleThroughout the book, case studies illustrate how inadvertent accessibility barriers on major Web sites affect the ability of people with disabilities to locate information, participate in e-commerce, and explore the richness of the Web. These case studies show you in detail specifically how certain design features can make access much harder--and how other features can greatly ease the process.Most of all, this leading-edge guide reveals that with a little extra design effort and consideration up front, you can create a site that is not only a pleasure for people with disabilities, but attractive and pleasing for all interested users.