Watchfire Corporation, a provider of Website Management software and services, announced today that Texas A&M University has chosen to deploy Watchfire AccessibilityXM to assess and improve the website accessibility of its entire website. In accordance with Texas Administrative Code (TAC) 206, the state of Texas' website accessibility and web standards requirements, the university is undergoing a full website assessment.
Texas A&M will use AccessibilityXM, a core module of WebXM, to test for over 90 comprehensive accessibility checks, and to help assess their level of compliance with government standards, including TAC 206 and the U.S. Government's Section 508 website accessibility standards. AccessibilityXM tests for key TAC 206 and Section 508 guidelines, including the use of accessibility policy links on every page, metadata usage, and the use of other required state website links on every page. Built on the comprehensive accessibility checks of Watchfire's Bobby technology, AccessibilityXM is an enterprise testing platform that analyzes very large and complex websites for accessibility issues.
"Texas A&M's website is critical for current and prospective students, alumni and professors, and we are committed to making it accessible to all users," said David Sweeney, Program Coordinator of Adaptive Technology Services at Texas A&M University. "Compliance-enabling technologies to test and assess our entire site are necessary to achieve that commitment. As a long time Bobby customer, we were using the tool to test sections of our site but we outgrew its capabilities. We are impressed with the enterprise capabilities of AccessibilityXM; specifically, the ability to scale to handle our very large website, the variety of web technologies it can scan and the ability to customize the reports to check for compliance with all TAC 206 website guidelines. This, combined with Watchfire's educational pricing, made it an easy decision to select AccessibilityXM."
"Web accessibility" means making websites available to all individuals, including those with disabilities, such as the blind, visually impaired, deaf, motor impaired, and cognitively impaired. As a leading university, the Texas A&M website is a critical source for information, and visitors use it extensively to learn more about Texas A&M; sign up for courses and services; pay tuition and fees; search the library for resources; verify their grades and exam schedules, and even check for sports results on their favorite Aggie team. Texas A&M is one of the United States' largest universities with an enrollment of approximately 44,000 students studying for degrees in 10 academic colleges.
As a result of the TAC 206 legislation, a significant increase in online traffic, and the size of their website, Texas A&M was faced with the daunting task of testing and assessing the accessibility on over a million web pages. The accessibility project team at the university needed software to automate the testing of the content of its entire website properties to uncover and report on inaccessible content. Manually testing each page was time-consuming, inaccurate and expensive, and there was no easy way to ensure ongoing compliance with the state of Texas' accessibility legislation. Texas A&M is using AccessibilityXM to automatically test and identify these issues to help them proactively identify and prioritize website repairs and changes that need to occur.
"As a good business practice, it's important to make your website accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Accessible websites are far more usable and offer the capacity to reach a broader audience," said David Grant, director of accessibility solutions, Watchfire. "Texas A&M has been a pioneer and leader in addressing website accessibility, not just for legal reasons, but because it's the right thing to do."
Founded in 1996, Watchfire provides comprehensive Website Management software and services. Through automated testing, analysis and reporting capabilities, Watchfire helps detect and manage content quality, privacy, and accessibility issues on the largest and most complex sites. Sophisticated reports put detailed, actionable information into the hands of the people who need it, when they need it. More than 50 percent of the Fortune 500, such as HP, Dell and AT&T, rely on Watchfire to optimize their website investments and to help them gain competitive advantage. Watchfire's alliance partners include PricewaterhouseCoopers, TRUSTe, Interwoven, Documentum and Vignette. The company maintains dual North American headquarters in Ottawa, Canada and Waltham, Massachusetts.