California State University - San Bernardino
 

The Business Problem

California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) is one of 23 campuses in California and part of the largest public state university system in the country. It has a student body of more than 16,000 and 480 full-time faculty. Aside from the nearly 20,000 people that comprise their faculty, staff and students, the university serves two counties with a total population of more than 3.5 million people. Including the number of people who access their Web sites from around the world, the total world reach of the university Web sites is almost 4 million people. More and more it is becoming “the” source of electronic information.

The CSU-SB accessibility project was prompted by an accessibility audit of University Web sites by the California State University Chancellor's office. Within a few months of the initial audit, the university drafted and passed a Web Page Accessibility Policy, requiring all administrative Web pages to be made accessible. The university incorporated the Section 508 Web Accessibility Standards into its Web policy.

Prior to implementation of the Web policy, accessibility issues were handled by either the Services to Student with Disabilities office, the Assistive Computing Resource Center or by individual faculty members. Issues of inaccessible Web pages were handled on a purely voluntary basis and prior to the implementation of the policy, no person or group was identified as an expert in this area.

The Department of Academic Computing & Media was charged with taking responsibility for implementing the plan to bring all administrative Web pages into compliance with all 508 Guidelines. They created workshops to assist administrative offices, campus departments, and their respective webmasters in achieving compliance. One of the first items needed was a tool or set of tools for verifying the current compliance levels with Section 508 and a tool to allow Web developers to check their own work. They choose HiSoftware’s AccMonitor and AccVerify products to meet these needs.

“We purchased AccVerify from HiSoftware to allow our campus webmasters and managers to test their web pages. The software is made available to anyone attending our ongoing Web Page Accessibility Compliance Workshop; initially offered once a week and now offered monthly,” said Michael Casadonte, Web Page Accessibility Project Coordinator. “Beginning in March, 2004, we compiled a quarterly report on the status of each web site. This report is distributed to our vice presidents, deans and the president.”
 

The Solution

The CSUSB group purchased AccVerify and AccRepair from HiSoftware along with AccMonitor Server. AccVerify provides for the verification of accessibility policy and standards required for Web sites under the Rehabilitation Act Section 508 and W3C® Priority 1 guidelines. As information is added to a Web site, AccVerify reports on whether all elements are in compliance. 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. Corrections of the same error (for example, associating "alt-text" behind an image) need only be made once. The library then stores the corrected information and auto-corrects the images each time a page is encountered with that image. AccRepair and AccVerify are available as integrated Microsoft FrontPage applications. Both products are also available as automated server-based solutions that minimize labor required to achieve and maintain accessible Web sites as new content is created.

AccMonitor is an automated accessibility testing solution for Web sites or for use in conjunction with Intranet Servers or File Servers. Using a crawler, AccMonitor tests sites for compliance with Section 508 and W3C accessibility standards. AccMonitor spiders, or crawls over, entire Web sites and reports on their accessibility status. AccMonitor particularly benefits organizations that need to monitor multiple servers that host information via the World Wide Web. AccMonitor is a server solution that is designed to run with no user interaction once configured. AccMonitor 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.

HiSoftware’s solutions provided the comprehensive testing and reporting features that the University required through a simple to use interface. Additionally, HiSoftware’s applications provided the greatest flexibility in user-driven and automated reporting, and also provided the flexibility for Enterprise Wide deployment and mass distribution.
 

The Bottom Line

The University did a careful and comprehensive analysis of all of the leading accessibility testing tools on the market before choosing HiSoftware’s solutions. According to Casadonte, “We chose HiSoftware because their presentation was very impressive. Their technical staff was knowledgeable and clear about what the software could do. We felt that HiSoftware’s company and software solutions catered to our needs as an educational institution. They did not talk to us as if we are concerned about profits, clientele and products that we sell. Oh yes, and we were also offered a great deal that fit into our budget!”

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