Commonwealth of Kentucky Office of Technology (COT)
 

The Business Problem

The Commonwealth Office of Technology (COT) for the Commonwealth of Kentucky offers enterprise-wide IT leadership and services to Kentucky state government agencies. Infrastructure, security, development, policies, training and project management are just some these services.

COT develops and maintains numerous web applications for state agencies. COT also is on the forefront of Accessibility in Kentucky: defining standards, raising awareness, correcting problems and training other agencies. Recently, COT in conjunction with the Web Standards Committee has created a final version of the 7025 Accessibility for Internet/World Wide Web Design and Publishing (.DOC version: http://gotsource.ky.gov/dsweb/Get/Document-37147/7025_Accessibility.doc, HTML version: http://gotsource.ky.gov/dsweb/GetRendition/Document-37147/html). Once the Enterprise Architecture and Standards Committee reconvenes, the final version will be submitted for adoption.

The 7025 Accessibility Standard requires all pages to meet Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 Conformance Level Double-A. However, the 7025 standard is nothing new. This level of Accessibility required of all Executive branch state agencies has been in place since 2002, with references to Accessibility requirements going back to 2000. This latest version is an attempt to separate and clarify the Accessibility standard from Kentucky's Design standard.

One of the first priorities of the COT was to develop a strategy for managing and monitoring the accessibility status of Kentucky Web sites, administered by hundreds of Web managers. 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 chose HiSoftware’s AccMonitor and AccVerify/AccRepair products to meet this need.

The Solution

COT purchased an unlimited license for AccMonitor Server and has begun a rollout of AccVerify/AccRepair at several of its installations. 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. 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. These applications are 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 Bottom Line

HiSoftware’s solutions provided the comprehensive testing and reporting features that COT required, through a simple to use interface. Additionally, HiSoftware’s applications provided great flexibility in user-driven and automated reporting, and also provided flexibility for Enterprise Wide deployment and mass distribution. COT uses HiSoftware solutions to monitor compliance with the 7025 Accessibility standard. Severs errors are prioritized for repair, and egregious sites do not go live. Since COT uses the software to audit numerous sites for compliance, the numbers of users that access these sites are not known. It is certainly quite a few.

“Tools like HiSoftware's AccVerify, AccMonitor and AccRepair provide Kentucky with an unambiguous, consistent process of checking for Accessibility. While there are still a number of Accessibility points that still need to be judged by a person, automated tools carry the majority of the load.” Mark Darbyshire, IT Systems Engineer, Division of Centers of Expertise, Web Development Group, Commonwealth Office of Technology.
 

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