Microassist Accessibility Services: Barrier-Free Digital Development

The U.S. disabled population is growing even as technology dependence increases.
With 21 years of accessibility expertise, we make digital content perceivable and navigable by all, including those with disabilities.

2017 Update for Public-Sector Customers: Microassist has been awarded DIR Contract DIR-TSO-3813: Accessibility IT Services. To discover how we can support your local, state, federal, and higher education programs with accessible and compliant products and services, contact our team.

Microassist Accessibility Services

Inaccessible content, whether on websites, or within online training, applications, platforms, or documents creates barriers to information, prevents purchases and transactions, deters job applications, discourages other positive experiences with your brand, and is increasingly being viewed as violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

To discuss accessibility services for your organization, please Contact Our Accessibility Team. We look forward to hearing from you.

Our instructional design, web, and application development teams are well-versed in internationally recognized accessibility standards (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, or WCAG 2.0) and federal and state laws (e.g., Section 508, TAC 206 and 213).

We’ll work with you to ensure compliance and open your public-facing content to those previously prevented from enjoying it.

• Accessibility Audits — Audits reveal accessibility gaps in existing websites, web applications, native applications, documents, mobile devices, tablets, themes, training, and more.  Manual and automated tests and highly structured processes gauge accessibility compliance on new, existing, and remediated products.
• Accessible Elearning Development — We began providing accessible online training (elearning) over twenty years ago for government agencies. Accessible learning modules can include instruction, video, audio, captioning, simulation, social collaboration, webinars, virtual training, instructor-led training, and assessments.
• Accessible Website and Application Development — Our design and development teams are proficient in various computer languages, frameworks, and open source and proprietary packages, and are experts in building accessible sites, mobile apps, and software applications from the ground up.
• Accessible Document Services—Websites, online courses, and applications often host countless supporting files. However, many times, these supporting files are partially or completely inaccessible to people with visual, auditory, mobility, or cognitive disabilities. We can work with your team to remediate existing content, and establish best practices to address and maintain accessibility—from creation to publishing.
• Accessibility Remediation for Websites, Applications, and Documents — Existing content can often be remediated rather than starting anew. Evaluation, remediation, and conversion services are available for websites, applications, documents, and multimedia files, as well as themes and components for the web, desktop, mobile, tablets, or other devices. Digital file remediation services include document, presentation, and PDF remediation.
• Accessibility Documentation for Government Procurements — A VPAT (pronounced “Vee-pat”) is a document used by federal and state governments and institutions of higher education to gauge the accessibility of hardware, software, or online products and services during a procurement process. For the VPAT to be effective, it must be completed accurately and objectively by the vendor. It must also be interpreted against those same standards by the government procurement team. We can provide accessibility knowledge for either party.
• Accessibility Training — All Microassist accessibility training courses are created and taught by experienced accessibility professionals. In addition to our introductory workshop, we offer accessibility training for document creation and remediation, accessible website and application development, and accessibility testing and remediation.
• Other Accessibility Services — Our end-to-end portfolio of accessibility services includes consultancy, working with your organization’s development teams, and ongoing help desk support and ticketing. Please contact our accessibility team for additional information.

Stay up to date on accessibility developments!

Visit our Digital Accessibility Digest blog for weekly Accessibility in the News updates and commentary.

Digital Barriers Hinder Good Business

One in five people in the United States has a disability.* For many of them, much of today’s internet- and network-hosted content can be difficult or virtually impossible to understand, use, and enjoy:

• Image details are often hidden from the blind or visually impaired. This affects charts, graphs, text rendered as images (buttons, some scanned PDFs, etc.) and hard-to-detect hyperlinks.
• Navigation can be difficult for those who can’t view menus or who struggle with fine motor movement.
• Multi-media impact may be diminished for those who can enjoy only portions of the presentation.
• Motion, timeouts, and other dynamics can startle or distract those with cognitive impairments.

Digital accessibility empowers users with disabilities to independently navigate, browse, use, and otherwise interact with your digital content.

Accessibility Removes Barriers

Online accessibility is based on internationally accepted standards and federal and state laws. By making sure your websites, apps, elearning, and documents are accessible, you provide content and platforms that

• Enables those who are blind or have low vision, are deaf or hard of hearing, or have mobility or cognitive challenges to access your online or network content, including websites, online training, electronic documents, audio and video, and software or mobile applications.
• Works with assistive devices (such as alternative keyboards, screen readers, trackballs and joysticks, and sip-and-puff systems) used by many with impairments.
• Allows assistive devices, web browsers, and operating systems to interpret and describe content and page structure. It also enables any needed personalization, such as changes to color schemes, screen contrast, delivery speed, or font sizes.

Whatever your stage of digital accessibility implementation, we’ll help ensure your online and network tools are founded on barrier-free development, empowering people of all abilities to access your services with ease.

Contact us today to see how we can help make your content more accessible to those with disabilities.

*Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention press release, 7/30/15: CDC: 53 million adults in the US live with a disability