“The importance of Web accessibility standards has been recognized around the world. In fact the U.S. Access Board has published a document called Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications as part of Section 508, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed a set of universal guidelines for Web development titled Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.”

This quote has been taken from Hisoftware, a company that specialises in pushing out products and services to other organisations and companies to improve on web accessibility.

Just for the heck of it, I checked the home page of Hisoftware (http://www.hisoftware.com/index.html) against W3C HTML validator and I was really surprised to see that it had failed - 44 errors!

And the disclaimer is also interesting “HiSoftware is not a federal agency, nor is the Company required by law to comply with Section 508 or WCAG 1.0. HiSoftware maintains accessibility as a courtesy to site visitors and as a way of making the general site navigation and usability easier. ”

(Source: Accessibility Statement from Hisoftware)

For a company that sells its products and services to other organisations that are compelled and bound by law to S508, I think it sends a strange message. No wonder the accessibility kit solution for the Sharepoint accessibility is full of unwieldy table information!!! I think this company has also been hired by Blackboard to deal with accessibility of Learning Management systems’ products. Think I don’t need to hold my breadth on what to expect!!!