University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

 

The Business Problem

The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse serves over 9,200 students and provides a tremendous amount of information to students, parents and faculty through University Web sites, which are comprised of more than 23,000 pages. Web visitors may learn about UW-La Crosse; sign up for various services; apply online; check their grades; pay their university bill; get payroll and benefit information; search library resources and get information on academic departments. More and more it is becoming “the” source of electronic information.

Katherine Lyall, President of the University of Wisconsin System, directed all UW schools to create and implement policies regarding Web accessibility to assure that Web materials are accessible to all consumers. In October of 2001, UW-La Crosse Interim Chief Information Officer, John Tillman, charged a committee called the Universal Access to Information Technology Resources Working Group. One of the first priorities of this committee was to create a University policy regarding web accessibility and identify the support resources needed for such a policy. The committee recommended adoption of the Section 508 guidelines for web accessibility and identified training and support as the primary resource needed.

The ITS Support Center on the UW-La Crosse campus was chosen as the point from which support and training would be disseminated on the topic. 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 this need.

“There were two main problems for which we purchased HiSoftware’s solutions. First of all, from an administrative standpoint, we wanted to be aware of where our web pages stood in terms of accessibility. This would allow us to concentrate training on appropriate topics and areas as well as show growth and progress in the realm of meeting the Section 508 accessibility guidelines. AccMonitor was purchased for this reason. Next, since many programs and departments on campus develop their own web sites, we also needed a solution which would allow web developers to easily test their pages and identify problem spots to fix prior to posting or when “retro-fitting” their web site. AccVerify (Standalone and FrontPage versions) were purchased for this purpose,” said Janice Ward, Manager, ITS Support Center UW-La Crosse

The Solution

University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, purchased campus wide license agreements for AccVerify, AccVerify for FrontPage and AccMonitor Server. AccVerify provides for the verification of accessibility policy and standards required for Web Sites under the Rehabilitation Act Section 508 and W3C® WCAG 1.0 Priority 1-3 guidelines. AccVerify is available as a stand-alone desktop solution and as an integrated add-on for Microsoft FrontPage.

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.

The majority of Web developers at UW-La Crosse use Microsoft FrontPage for their web development needs. AccVerify for FrontPage will be used for these developers. Developers using other tools will be asked to use the AccVerify Standalone product in their assessment of accessibility. After a marketing push to campus web developers and appropriate training mechanisms, Web developers will be expected to use AccVerify (FrontPage or Standalone) to check their own web pages prior to publishing them to the University Web server. On a periodic basis, AccMonitor will check all Web pages on the Web server for accessibility and feedback will be provided to the appropriate Web developer. Administrators will use AccMonitor to measure their progress towards 100% compliance with Section 508 standards. It will also be used as a training and support tool.

According to Ms. Ward, “Prior to AccMonitor, the Web wide assessment of accessibility issues was something that required countless man hours to complete and had only been done once. Now, we can get a complete status of our web site in a few hours.”

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. Gail Kettner-Buchner studied over a dozen different alternatives to testing and maintenance of accessible websites. 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 greatest flexibility for Enterprise Wide deployment and mass distribution.

Over the next six to twelve months, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Web teams will work to bring the top 20% of the University’s utilized pages into conformance with Section 508. The remaining pages are slated to be in compliance within the next twelve months. The final policy is currently being reviewed by administration, and training classes on Section 508 guidelines and the AccVerify software are being planned.

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