MuleSoft provides out-of-box policies that can be applied to APIs for enhancing the functionalities of the APIs. These policies include various categories like security, compliance, troubleshooting, transformation, QoS, custom, etc.
MuleSoft also provides the capabilities to implement custom policies and Custom Policies are policies that anyone can develop and apply to their APIs, with the intention of extending existing functionality or defining new ones.
Since there are so many CMS plugins out there, it can be overwhelming to choose the best ones for your website. We’ve done the research for you; this list contains the top new CMS plugins for November 2020. You’ll find useful plugins for WordPress, Craft, Shopify, and Joomla.
Let’s get started…
404 Page Editor is a simple WordPress plugin that helps you add custom text to the default 404 page on your website. The plugin comes with seasonal and industry-related 404 templates. One useful feature of the plugin is that it backups your current 404 page before changing it. So you can restore the backup page anytime you choose. The plugin duplicates your current 404.php page to wp-content/uploads/404-page-editor/ so you can easily find it. You can also change the text on the plugin to fit your local dialect.
Most WordPress themes and plugins load their CSS in the wrong areas of your website. This can slow down your site. A slow website will reduce user experience and lead to increased bounce rates.
UnusedCSS will help reduce the size of your website’s CSS files by up to 95%. The best part is that the plugin works automatically. It will remove any unused CSS when visitors view any page on your website. UnusedCSS will automatically reduce your website’s load times by reducing your CSS files and page size. The plugin also optimizes the performance of other WordPress plugins and extensions. UnusedCSS also works with WooCommerce themes and plugins.
Simple Redirects is a WordPress plugin that helps you to automatically redirect requests to another page on your site or any other place on the web. The plugin allows you to easily redirect users from your old web pages to new pages using 301 or 302 redirects. You don’t have to worry about losing backlinks or page rank. Any incoming links to the old web page will be automatically passed along to the new page. The page rank on the old page is also transferred to the new page. The plugin is useful when migrating a WordPress site when don’t want to retain the URL structure.
HTML Validation plugin helps you identify any HTML validation errors on your website. The plugin works automatically in the background of your website and will send you regular reports. There is a progress bar on the report screen to show you the progress of the scan. The plugin uses WordPress Cron to scan the content of your website. There is also an option for the plugin to automatically fix any HTML validation issues on your website. You can also choose to fix the issues manually.
Just Highlight is a simple WordPress plugin that helps you highlight text in your posts or pages. You can use this plugin to highlight any portion of the page you want to draw the reader’s attention to. You can highlight the background of the page and also add animation to the highlighted text. In the WordPress admin area, you can change the speed and color of the animation. The plugin is compatible with Gutenberg, and the WordPress classic editor.
DeviantArt Embed is a simple plugin that helps you embed any work from Deviant Art into a post. The plugin provides a block for the WordPress block editor so you can easily embed the image. It uses a DeviantArt oEmbed API to pull the images and their descriptions, and creates an embedded image.
Static Optimizer is a static file optimization plugin that serves and optimizes static files on your website. The plugin will help you increase your website speed by automatically compressing your static files. It is easy to set up, you just need an API key to get started. Other useful features that the plugin offers include automatic JS and CSS minification, automatic image optimization, and processing of responsive images. You don’t have to worry about losing your files if their server is down. The plugin automatically backs up your files and will load your original files when their servers are down (either because of an upgrade, maintenance, or outage). By default, only images are compressed when you activate the plugin; you can also choose to optimize fonts, CSS, and JS files.
RankBear is a keyword rank tracker plugin that helps you analyze your SEO efforts. With RankBear, you can track the keywords for each of the posts and pages on your site. While the plugin has a paid plan, you can track up to five keywords for free. On the free plan, you will receive weekly reports on each keyword you are tracking. You can search for the rank and volume of a keyword in every location supported by the Google search engine. RankBear is a lightweight software-as-a-service plugin hosted by Amazon Cloud Services. The plugin also offers the option to download the keyword reports to CSV.
Table of Contents Block is a plugin that allows you to easily create a Table of Contents for your WordPress posts. The plugin is lightweight and will automatically add a Table of Content in your website’s posts and pages. You can select the heading tags you want to add to the Table of Content. It also has a dedicated support team to assist you. The plugin works fine with all standard WordPress themes.
Markeaze is an all-in-one communication plugin that allows you to add live chat to your online stores. The plugin will help you improve your customer service by decreasing your response times. With the plugin, you can collect your visitor’s contact information via a widget. This feature is useful in building a subscriber database. You can also use the plugin to track customer behavior on your site, inform customers about new products, help customers with active orders, and collect customer feedback. You can also use the auto-reply function to answer commonly asked questions.
Image Toolbox is a Craft CMS plugin that offers image-related tools for your templates. The plugin will automatically create a WebP variant of the images you upload. It also has a fallback for browsers that do not support WebP images. Other useful features the plugin offers include automatic creation of placeholder images and generation of responsive images with multiple variants. The plugin also supports Imager-X (or old Imager).
Element Panel plugin allows you to add elements and an eager-loading panel to the debug toolbar. This feature will help you benchmark your templates in Craft CMS. For elements, the panel has a dashboard that shows how many elements are populated. It also shows how many elements are duplicates. The plugin also shows you how many eager-loading elements are detected. Duplicate elements are grouped by field name.
VStore Shoppable Videos is a Shopify plugin that allows your customers to shop directly from your videos. The plugin allows you to embed your products into any video. Since videos have a high engagement rate, this plugin will significantly improve your store’s conversion rates.
ProofMotion Video Testimonials plugin helps you to easily collect video testimonials. The plugin sends an automated email or SMS requests to customers asking for their satisfaction feedback after making a purchase. The responses are analyzed to determine whether the customer had a negative or positive experience. Customers that offer negative feedback are sent to customer care to help them with the problem they encountered. Happy customers are prompted to make video testimonials of their positive shopping experience. ProofMotion guides the customer through the interview so they can give the best testimonial. They also offer an on-site widget so you can easily share your testimonials.
Real ID is a Shopify plugin that allows you to verify customers’ real identity using a photo ID and facial biometrics. The plugin is perfect for orders that have an age restriction, verifying flagged fraud goods, and selling expensive goods. Real ID will help you identify whether a government-issued-ID is fake during fulfilment. All the customer needs to do is take a selfie on their phone. This way, even if a customer has access to a stolen physical ID, they won’t still be able to make any purchase. The plugin can verify documents such as passports, visas, national IDs, driver licenses, and more. Real ID will help you handle GDPR compliance. The plugin is available in hundreds of countries around the world.
Accessibility is a Joomla plugin that allows your website visitors to easily access your website content. The plugin will remove any barrier between the visitor and your Joomla site. There is no coding required and you can customize the plugin directly from the module manager. The plugin has a useful feature called Dyslexic Readability; this feature allows your visitors to set the entire document font to a dyslexic-friendly font. Visitors can also grayscale the page, resize the fonts, and resize the word space. From the backend module, you can add any custom CSS and JS. The plugin is also available in 12 different languages.
Reading Time is a simple plugin that will help you easily show the reading time of your Joomla articles. The plugin is easy to set up and does not require any coding. You can customize every parameter, including the text, in minutes. You can also choose to exclude categories, articles, and menu items. Reading Time also allows you to easily add custom CSS code from the plugin parameters.
Featured image via Pexels.
When it comes to compliance, website developers need to keep their eyes on more than just ADA regulations and Section 508. Privacy laws are a big consideration and decisions on how to build privacy into a website start with architects.
And that’s exactly what website developers (and designers!) are. They build up attractive, functional websites and apps for their clients. Yes, they work closely with clients, copywriters, vendors, and other professionals to get the job done, but the developers are the ones who put it all together.
That’s why it’s critical that website developers are well-versed in marketing privacy laws — these regulations directly impact the end results of their work. But how does a website architect create a digital platform that honors both user privacy and the needs of their clients?
The two biggest privacy laws that web developers need to keep tabs on are the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Each law has its own unique scope and provisions, but they both shifted the landscape in defining an individual’s rights to their personal data and set mechanisms for how these rights would be protected and enforced.
Each regulation also carries with it fines, fees, and legal measures for non-compliance. These can be substantial. And if that’s not enough, there’s an ever-increasing consumer demand for websites that prioritize privacy and security. Consider these statistics:
Under GDPR, web developers are required to adopt the Privacy by Design framework, which is a multi-point methodology intended to standardize data protection measures.
Building privacy into websites shouldn’t happen at the end stages. It should start with how the websites are conceptualized in the first place. Here are points to prioritize:
Let’s look at these a little more closely…
Data minimization is an important principle embedded in GDPR. Data minimization itself is a pretty straightforward concept: organizations should limit how much personal data they collect and only process the information necessary to accomplish their business purposes. Once the data is no longer useful, it should be deleted.
For web developers, this means several things. When it comes to building websites, forms, cookies, and other methods should only ask for essential information. For example, if you are creating a pop-up to collect email addresses, don’t ask for their location unless it’s relevant to the email list and better serving their needs.
Let’s say you take data minimization seriously. That’s great! Now you need to put those data collection practices into words and share them with your customers.
Privacy policies and notices are a big part of both GDPR and CCPA. Both the CCPA and the GDPR mandate that your privacy policy detail why you’re collecting information and how it will be used, as well as what the individual’s rights are and how they can exercise them.
CCPA takes a slightly different angle, requiring privacy policies to disclose if the business sells personal data and what third parties have access to the data. CCPA also dictates that privacy policies and notices are current, updated at least annually. (Nota bene: GDPR also asks for updated privacy documents, but doesn’t specify frequency.)
How does this translate from policy into web development?
Part of Privacy by Design is the use of individual components of your website to create transparency and support compliance. From a development and design perspective, this means you should always be looking for ways to communicate the hows and whys of data collection.
Yes, your privacy policies and notices aid in this, but going beyond these pieces is important. Customers recognize when businesses go the extra mile for them, after all.
So consider implementing just-in-time notices at points where users enter their information. These notices are a chance to share your data collection practices with your users. It’s transparent! It’s open! It aids in consumer awareness!
Want to win over your customers? Make it as easy as possible for them to manage their personal data and how it’s being used. This starts with making sure they are aware of why you’re requesting their information and how you’re planning on using it for the website. You should also:
One helpful tool for keeping users in the loop is a marketing preference center. A marketing preference center allows users easy access to their information. From there, they can manage, edit, and delete their information at their discretion.
Bonus? A marketing preference center is an excellent point at which to communicate a business’ commitment to privacy. While users will pick up this through all the discrete elements of privacy on your website, putting it all into one hub that also allows users control over their data really reinforces this message.
Remember, it’s not just on the consumer to manage their data. Web developers should commit to managing the data in their systems. This means they should:
A final point: making your websites user friendly is important regardless of privacy compliance. Users expect websites that don’t make them think deeply about, or worry about, their privacy. Make it accessible and easy. Don’t make people figure it out on their own.
Give them value for sharing their data
Your users don’t have to share their data. They’re choosing to. So in exchange for their personal information, make sure you’re using it to provide a user-friendly website. Offer them a secure, enjoyable experience.
But don’t ask for more than you need
Let’s loop back around to this point again. While consumer data can help you build a better website, don’t plan your websites around it and don’t demand data to create a good experience.
Usability, web design, and website security; all of these things benefit from consumer data. But privacy laws should always guide how any personal data is collected and used, and respect for consumers’ individual rights, and honoring their privacy should be top-of-mind for web developers.
Featured image via Pexels.
Web accessibility is important for two reasons:
In this accessiBe review, we’ll cover:
accessiBe is an automated solution that combines two applications to achieve full compliance.
Foreground application: the accessibility interface. This is the accessibility menu that allows users with disabilities to adjust the various UI and design elements on your website so it meets their unique needs.
Background application: proprietary AI technology that’s responsible for the ‘heavy lifting’, screen-reader, and keyboard navigation optimization.
The combination of these two applications is unique for accessiBe for a few reasons. While most available accessibility solutions offer just one of the two or rely on manual remediation, accessiBe checks both boxes and does it in a fully automated way.
Additionally, and most importantly, accessiBe continuously scans your website, every 24 hours, identifying and fixing new accessibility issues as they arise. Websites are dynamic – meaning, keep updating constantly with new content, pages, images and so on; being ADA and WCAG compliant is an ongoing concern, not a one-time fix.
You install accessiBe by inserting a single line of code on your website.
From your end, that’s all it takes.
The first thing that happens is that the accessibility interface appears on your website. The menu is available via the accessibility icon (that also appears automatically.)
Source: accessiBe website
Next, the AI application scans and analyzes your website for accessibility issues and compatibility with screen-readers and keyboard navigation requirements and fixes them. This automated process takes 48 hours.
Once the initial 48 hours have elapsed, your website is compliant.
From here on, accessiBe automatically scans your website every 24 hours to identify and fix new accessibility issues as they arise due to website updates.
We’ve mentioned this already, but it’s important to stress this point.
Whether you have an e-commerce website or a company website, you keep updating and changing your website; new items go up for sale, new videos and content pieces are added. Every addition or removal from your website has the potential of creating accessibility gaps (like missing alt text for images.)
By continuously scanning and fixing your website, accessiBe ensures that you stay compliant. An accessibility audit remediates your website for the specific point in time the audit took place. Meaning, you’ll need to audit your website periodically to remain compliant, which is a costly affair. With accessiBe you don’t need to worry about this.
The accessiBe accessibility interface (the menu that is available for users) is installed automatically on your website once you insert the line of code. Let’s look at the various features that are available for people with disabilities.
First, it allows you to choose from a pre-defined set of profiles optimized for various disability needs:
When one of the profiles is selected, the required adjustments are instantly applied to your entire website.
For example, The ADHD Friendly Profile creates a reading mark that follows your mouse movements that diminish distractions and allows better focus:
The Cognitive Disability Profile frames all the elements in bounding boxes and adds an ‘reading cursor’ that acts as your mouse to allow enhanced orientation:
Each of the predefined profiles includes a suite of features that target the unique accessibility needs of the disability; the Epilepsy Safe Profile prevents videos from playing automatically, dims all the colors on your website and eliminates flashing and blinking animations; the Visually Impaired Profile enhances all your website’s visuals, enlarges all fonts to allow most visual impairments conditions (degrading eyesight, tunnel vision, cataract, glaucoma and more) to be able to browse your website with ease.
The last two profiles, Blind Users and Keyboard Navigation, work in unison. They allow blind and motor-impaired individuals to browse and use your website as they are used to, through screen-readers and keyboard functionality, respectively.
Two things need to be mentioned here:
On top of the predefined accessibility profiles, accessiBe’s interface allows for further adjustments that can be controlled specifically to allow a personalized browsing experience according to the user’s needs. Let’s look at these adjustments.
The content adjustments allow you to control every aspect of the written content on your website. The menu looks like this:
Each of these elements allows for granular control of the way content, or text, is presented. From altering the entire website’s text to a readable, sans-serif font that is easier to follow, to highlighting titles and links, to adjusting font size, the spacing between lines and letters and using a text magnifier that follows your cursor on the screen.
Here’s how it looks with Highlight Titles and Highlight Links turned on:
You can see all the links are highlighted with an orange bounding box while all titles are highlighted with a blue bounding box.
The color adjustments allows users to control every aspect of the color scheme on the website:
From adjusting contrast and saturation, to switching the entire website to a monochrome color scheme, to adjusting textual elements and background colors. Let’s look at a few examples.
Here’s a side-by-side of default appearance and the Dark Contrast adjustment turned on:
And here’s how it looks with the Monochrome adjustment turned on:
The orientation adjustments allow full control of ‘distractions’ that make it hard for individuals with epilepsy, ADHD, and cognitive disability to browse the web:
As such, the orientation adjustments allow users to mute sound, hide images, stop animations and additional ‘focus’ features such as an enlarged cursor and reading assistance that highlights the text being read.
Here’s how the Remove Images adjustment works:
Unlike ‘accessibility plugins’ (more on that later) accessiBe provides a comprehensive back end treatment to your website – automated, AI-powered analysis of compatibility with accessibility requirements and fixing of the elements that need adjustment.
It should be noted that 70% of the WCAG compliance requirements deal with screen-reader and keyboard navigation compatibility and all these requirements are not answered by installing an accessibility interface widget that merely makes UI and design adjustments.
For example, an accessibility widget will enable you to enlarge the font on your website, to adjust the saturation or to highlight links, but it won’t enable a blind individual to differentiate between a shopping cart icon and a checkout icon, nor will it enable a motor impaired individual to easily navigate a menu.
This is a crucial consideration to make when choosing a web accessibility solution. Being WCAG compliant is a YES / NO situation. Your website is either compliant or it’s not, there is no middle ground here.
accessiBe’s back end features come to solve and answer all these compatibility issues that enable full screen-reader and keyboard navigation functionalities.
Screen Reader is a software for blind individuals to use computers and browse the web. As the name suggests, the software reads aloud what is seen on the screen for blind individuals.
The screen reader software is installed on the computer. But in order for it to work with websites, the website needs to be compatible with the software. To achieve compatibility with screen reader software, WCAG requires that a website should adhere to a set of attributes called Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) that are installed within the website’s code, allowing it to ‘communicate’ with the screen reader.
Let’s take social icons as an example. We are all familiar with those icons – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – they are instantly recognizable for us visually. A screen reader software doesn’t actually ‘see’ elements on the screen, rather it scans the website’s code to understand what appears on the screen. As such, a Facebook icon code simply says ‘link’ and has the URL that directs the user when clicking the link.
So with a website that isn’t compatible with a screen reader, that doesn’t have ARIA tags implemented, the screen reader will read to the blind person “link” for the Facebook icon; not very helpful, is it?
When ARIA tags are implemented, additional information is added to the Facebook icon – and any other visual link on the website – that describes what is the link. So the screen reader will read to the blind person “Facebook link”.
It’s not difficult to imagine the scope and effort of the work needed in order to implement ARIA tags on your entire website.
Keyboard navigation means that motor-impaired individuals are using their computers only through their keyboard, rather than a mouse. Scrolling, clicking links and menu buttons, opening and closing tabs – everything is done using designated keys.
There are many issues relating to keyboard navigation as today’s websites are highly complex, layered with content elements, and react dynamically to user behavior. Any element of the website must be compatible to allow full keyboard navigation.
Let’s look at a popup as an example.
Popups can be triggered for a variety of reasons. For mouse users, it is a simple occurrence; you can bring the cursor to the area of the popup, click on one of the fields to input details or click the X to close the popup.
But how do you handle the popup using only the keyboard? How do you differentiate between ‘regular’ functionalities of the website and that of the popup? How do you ‘shift the focus’ of the keystrokes to a layered element? You need to allow unique keystrokes to operate the popup, keystrokes that are activated only when a popup appears.
It’s one example of the many challenges making your website compatible with keyboard navigation. The list of WCAG requirements for compatibility with keyboard navigation is a long one, and understandably so as it needs to enable motor-impaired individuals to navigate your website with the same ease as the rest of us using a mouse.
Without getting too technical, what accessiBe does is scan the entire code of your website and adds keyboard functionalities and ARIA tags to various elements on your website directly. It won’t interfere with your site’s code, but rather add an additional ‘layer’.
accessiBe’s AI ‘learned’ all of ARIA’s tags and keyboard functionalities required by WCAG and when scanning your website’s code implements all the required adjustments to achieve full compliance.
Menus are a good example for understanding what the accessiBe background processing does and the benefits it provides.
We recognize menus on websites instantly, because we saw thousands and thousands of them. We know how they look, we know what their functionality is, and we know where to hover and click in order to reach the various pages of the website.
But if you remember, we said that screen readers don’t ‘look’ at the screen, but rather scan the site’s code to understand structure, identify links and read them aloud with all the text that appears on the page.
So menus are coded as a list structure, because in a way they are. A screen reader will announce a menu as a list, which might be confusing for a blind user. Additionally, many menus have drop-down sub-menus, accessible via a hover or by clicking a little triangle. Without proper ARIA tagging, a screen reader will miss the sub-menu.
What accessiBe does is adding readable tags for every element in the menu so a screen reader will recognize and announce each element properly. The ‘list’ code structure will get a “menu” tag, and the sub-menu will get a tag for ‘sub-menu’, thus allowing the blind individual to utilize the full functionality of the website.
Additionally, accessiBe alternates the tags on-the-fly while the site is being browsed. Once a sub-menu has been opened, a tag that says “sub-menu open” will be added to indicate to the screen reader what has happened, and will be changed with the tag “sub-menu close” once the sub-menu has been closed.
One of the key elements of accessibility compliance with screen readers is to provide accurate alternative descriptions for images, known as alt text.
accessiBe utilizes various image, object and character recognition technologies (OCR and Iris) to provide highly descriptive and accurate depictions of images displayed on the website. Without adding screen-reader compatible alt tags to images a blind individual would simply not be aware of the existence of images, and miss out on the information usually displayed on images.
Let’s look at the following banner images from an e-commerce website:
As you can see, valuable information is communicated via the images – sales and discounts – the kind of information any shopper would want to know.
This is the descriptive text that accessiBe’s AI assigned to these images, completely automated with no human intervention (from left to right):
Again, doing this kind of work for the hundreds to thousands of images that are displayed on every e-commerce website requires a lot of time and effort. accessiBe achieves this in a completely automated way, and every image added to your website instantly gets its alt text.
There are many web accessibility plugins out there. They offer a ‘quick fix’ for ADA and WCAG compliance – add an accessibility menu and you’re done.
As tempting as it may sound, the distinction between an accessibility menu and being fully compliant must be made.
As we’ve mentioned earlier, there are two parallel tasks that need to handle in order to achieve ADA and WCAG compliance:
Reminder: 70% of accessibility compliance requirements deal with back end adjustments, meaning, screen-readers, and keyboard navigation compatibility.
Accessibility plugins, whether free or paid, only answer the front-end requirements. Meaning, after installing an accessibility plugin, you are just 30% compliant. Since accessibility compliance is not a scale (you don’t ‘get points’ for making it halfway through) you’ll need to turn to an additional provider to do the back end work.
accessiBe, on the other hand, provides a full accessibility compliance solution, covering both UI and design requirements through the accessibility interface AND screen-reader and keyboard navigation compatibility requirements through it’s automated AI technology that analyzes and makes adjustments in the code-level of the website.
Manual accessibility services can help you achieve full accessibility compliance, but it comes with two major disclaimers:
Companies that offer a manual accessibility service assign a team of accessibility experts to do an audit of your website. The result of this audit is a lengthy document detailing all the accessibility faults that your website has. It is a valuable document as it gives you a precise depiction of what needs to be fixed in order to achieve compliance.
From here there are two possible paths:
You can either take the audit results to your development team and have them remediate your website accordingly.
Or, some of the service companies offer a remediation service, meaning, they’ll assign their own engineers to manually make the necessary changes in your website. Needless to say this extra service isn’t given for free.
In both cases, you are looking at a process that takes weeks if not months (depending on the number of pages your website has.)
Additionally, since it is a manual process done by experts, it comes with a hefty price tag.
But most importantly, the audit and remediation hold for the time they were done. Unless you have a 100% static website, meaning, you do not make any changes to your website – never add or remove products, never update content – the ‘effect’ of the audit and remediation fades away with time.
Since the process was manual, any changes you make to your website must be handled manually accessibility-wise. You added a new banner with a link to items on sale, you’ll need to go into the code and add ARIA tags. You added a new image, you’ll need to go into the code and add alt text compatible with screen-readers. And so on.
Some of the manual accessibility service companies offer maintenance services as well. They will periodically audit your website (manually) and provide a remediation document that will need to be implemented (manually) either by your development team or by theirs for an additional cost.
These costs add up. Having your website audited and remediated for compliance on an ongoing basis takes time, effort, and money. But you don’t have a choice. Being ADA and WCAG compliant is an ongoing task, since websites are dynamic and being updated regularly.
accessiBe, on the other hand, offers a 100% automated and ongoing compliance solution. The initial audit and remediation process is carried out – with no human intervention – in 48 hours (compared to weeks or months by a manual provider). Then, your website is scanned every 24 hours to identify and fix accessibility issues using accessiBe AI technology. Meaning, compliance maintenance is constantly carried out ‘in the background’ keeping you ADA & WCAG compliant at all times.
Which brings us to another crucial point regarding manual accessibility services. They make it extremely hard for you to scale up. Every business has a constant aim to grow, but with a manual accessibility service, scalability becomes a pain point. The more you grow the more time, effort and money you need to put in to remain compliant. You want to add another section to your website, you want to launch an additional website? Using a manual accessibility service will hold you back. You’ll need to account for additional time before going live to manually enable accessibility and additional funds. For fast-moving companies, time becomes a serious burden.
Since accessiBe offers an automated and ongoing accessibility solution, scalability is not an issue.
Before you get started on your path to being ADA & WCAG compliant it’s important to understand the current state of accessibility your website provides.
Obviously, if you’ve never taken any steps to make your website accessible to individuals with disabilities, there’s no need for this – your website isn’t accessible in any way.
This is actually highly important if you have taken steps to make your website accessible, like for example, installing one of the accessibility plugins. You might be under the impression that by doing so your website is both compliant and accessible to individuals with disabilities.
There’s a simple and quick way to face the accessibility reality.
accessiBe offers a free, automated compliance audit tool available online named aCe. It uses accessiBe AI technology to scan your site, detect accessibility issues and provide quite a detailed report on the various elements that impact your website’s accessibility, and those include:
Each of these elements is given a score and some explanations to the specific issues that need attention within the context of these elements.
In addition to gaining a compliance audit with the remediation steps needed to be taken in order to fix these issues, aCe gives you a very clear idea of where you stand and what needs your attention in order to achieve compliance.
We gave it a try. We ran a website that has installed one of the accessibility plugins (which was recognized, by name, by the aCe audit tool) and the results cement the point that these plugins aren’t comprehensive enough of a solution for true ADA & WCAG compliance.
Here are the results:
As can be expected, the UI and design side got relatively high scores, due to the accessibility plugin installed on the website, but anything that has to do with back end compatibility with screen readers and keyboard navigation got a failing score.
accessiBe is an automated and comprehensive web accessibility solution that achieves ongoing compliance with ADA and WCAG regulations for your website.
It offers a unique combination of front end and back end compatibility, meaning, it provides an end-to-end solution for both user-facing accessibility interface, and compatibility with screen readers and keyboard navigation.
The solution offered by accessiBe is a no-touch, no-code, continuous compliance utilizing proprietary AI technology that audits and remediates your website.
It is by far one of the most affordable web accessibility solutions, starting at $490 for websites with up to 1,000 unique pages.
When compared to accessibility plugins, accessiBe’s offering is robust and comprehensive, delivering full compliance that plugins aren’t able to.
When compared to accessibility manual services, accessiBe offers a speedy and automated audit and remediation process compared to the lengthy, manual and highly expensive offering of the service companies. Additionally, accessiBe, unlike accessibility manual services, delivers ongoing compliance and the ability to scale with ease and speed.
The combination of AI-based audit and remediation, the most comprehensive accessibility interface on the market, ongoing compliance, scalability, and a highly affordable plan makes accessiBe stand out from the competition by offering a unique end-to-end solution for achieving ADA and WCAG compliance in a fast and simple way.
Featured image via Unsplash.
Privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA are changing the way data is collected and used. Data-driven organizations use data collaboration to understand their customers and research organizations that rely on data collaboration to advance research are being restricted. As more privacy regulations come online, what can organizations do to future-proof their use of data, whilst still adhering to privacy regulations?
Technology is now available that will allow organizations to continue to collaborate without ever exposing or moving the underlying data.
It feels like we don’t have a strong understanding of open source itself. Some scars have come from working with open source in an environment filled with proprietary software. When the words “open” and “source” were brought together, there was a visceral reaction. People were skeptical of it. Some even despised it.
There’s no one-size-fits-all way to bring open source into your ecosystem. But it does require a strong champion. That’s why Lee Calcote (@lcalcote) advocates for creating a specific office.
Vous pourriez supposer que, lorsqu’il s’agit de faire son choix de garder leurs organisations en cours d’exécution en douceur et sur le budget, les financiers, les décideurs sont de faire ces choix sur la base de données claires et leur confiance dans les données. Comme il s’avère, ce n’est pas toujours exacte hypothèse.
Une récente enquête menée par SAP d’Accord et Kelton Mondiale a montré que 59 pour cent des financiers décideurs de travail dans l’etat, la ville et le gouvernement local et de l’enseignement supérieur croire les outils financiers et les systèmes utilisés dans leurs organisations sont sujettes à l’erreur, et 68% d’avoir à prendre des décisions sans une visibilité complète sur les informations nécessaires. Beaucoup de ces dirigeants admettre que la fraude, le gaspillage et les abus sont les défis à relever leurs organisations face et que leur vulnérabilité à ces types de risques est à la hausse:
La vérité est, il est arrivé aux meilleurs d’entre nous. Nous pouvons tous susceptibles souviens d’une fois où nous avons pris une décision sans avoir les informations de base nécessaires pour le faire, et que la décision peut ne pas avoir produit le plus de résultats favorables.
Pourquoi? Afin de prendre de bonnes décisions d’affaires et d’éviter de regrettables erreurs, nous avons besoin d’accéder à toutes les informations optimal de sorte que nous n’avons pas à l’aveuglette.
Les dommages à la réputation de mauvais de prise de décision peut être catastrophique pour un secteur public de l’organisation potentiellement conduisant à une diminution du financement et de la confiance.
Une récente étude de l’Association of Certified fraud Examiners (ACFE) a identifié le haut de la fraude dépenses que les entreprises et les organismes gouvernementaux à engager. Elles comprennent:
En dépit de ces menaces, de l’etat, la ville et le gouvernement local et de l’enseignement supérieur les décideurs sont confrontés à ces défis chaque jour. Environ un quart des répondants affirment que leur organisation a involontairement signalé incorrecte des données de budget, en raison d’inexactitudes dans les rapports de dépenses ou des factures. Et, 26% disent que leur organisation involontairement ressources allouées là où il ne devrait pas avoir à cause de l’prévoyant plus de budget qu’il a eu réellement.
Pour l’enseignement supérieur, des organisations, ces types d’erreurs peuvent avoir des effets négatifs directs sur les élèves. L’Université du Texas (UT) à Tyler récemment trouvé ses calculs pour l’ensemble de trajet de quatre ans de recherche. D’autres ont été accordées que ne l’étaient réellement prévu, et l’université a répondu par la révocation entre 50 et 60 ces bourses – longtemps après que les élèves avaient accepté à l’UT Tyler et les autres collèges, les délais ont expiré. De nombreuses admissions dirigeants estiment que ces actions contraires à l’éthique et des étudiants ont pris aux médias sociaux pour partager leurs malheureuses histoires.
Les risques liés à la réputation éprouvée par l’UT Tyler sont juste un exemple de pourquoi la précision, la visibilité et la conformité sont de la plus haute importance pour toute organisation.
Pour ceux qui travaillent dans le secteur public, en ne respectant pas les règles et règlements gouvernementaux n’est pas une option. La bonne nouvelle est qu’il existe de nombreuses façons dont ces petites organisations peuvent commencer à s’éloigner de cette question – y compris par une meilleure formation des employés, une réglementation plus stricte des processus internes, et une étroite collaboration avec les chefs de l’information. En fait, le gouvernement et l’enseignement supérieur, les organisations mettent en œuvre diverses initiatives pour rester au courant.
Selon les Kelton Mondial de l’enquête, près des deux tiers (69%) ont demandé à leurs employés pour en savoir plus sur cette information ou procéder régulièrement à des vérifications (65 pour cent) pour recueillir le plus actuel de la réglementation de l’information. Plus de la moitié aussi regarder au-delà des murs de leur organisation – en particulier les pairs dans le secteur public – pour trouver les meilleures pratiques pour le respect de la conformité à la réglementation.
Dans le même temps, de mettre les technologies qui permettent simultanément d’automatiser les tâches fastidieuses et sujettes à erreur de processus comme l’audit des charges et de la facture de données, mais l’apprentissage et deviennent de plus en plus efficace au fil du temps — est la plus efficace à long-terme de la stratégie.
J’ai vanté les avantages de l’automatisation avant, mais ceux sur les lignes de front: La majorité (55%) des répondants au sondage qui ont entièrement automatisé, outils pour les notes de frais, factures, ou la gestion des déplacements à différents stades de mise en œuvre affirment que leur organisation est d’une meilleure gestion de la fraude, le gaspillage et les abus au sein de leurs organisations.
Plus loin encore, ceux qui ont complètement automatisé le processus de facturation sont environ deux fois plus susceptibles que ceux qui n’ont pas 39 pour cent contre 21 pour cent — à-dire qu’il y a eu moins d’erreurs dans ces rapports. Pima Community College à Tucson, en Arizona, est un excellent exemple d’un établissement d’enseignement supérieur qui a récolté les avantages de l’automatisation. Son processus de gestion de voyage, les dépenses et les factures utilisé pour être très manuel – avec du papier à base de demandes et remboursements étant la norme. On peut imaginer le potentiel de la marge d’erreur avec cette approche. En introduisant de nouvelles technologies et de l’automatisation de la vérification des règles, Pima pour réduire les erreurs et les violations de conformité, et à son tour augmenté l’adhésion à la politique.
Le Kelton Mondiale étude a recueilli les réponses de 313 financiers décideurs de travail dans l’etat, la ville et le gouvernement local et de l’enseignement supérieur pour en savoir plus sur la façon dont ces organisations sont la réduction des risques, le maintien de la conformité, et d’optimiser l’efficacité de ce qui fonctionne bien, ce que d’autres pourraient apprendre de ce que certaines organisations sont en train de faire, et où l’application de nouveaux systèmes et processus pourrait régler le temps et la précision des questions.
David Ballard est vice-président senior du Secteur Public chez SAP, d’Accord.
Cette histoire est initialement paru sur le SAP Accord des salles de rédaction.
[Recently Elon Musk (Tesla CEO) talked about taking his company private. Read how a Zone Leader recalls a situation where a publicly traded company considered going private in an effort to avoid SOx compliance.]
In early August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk indicated he had secured the financial means to take his company from a public traded company to a private corporation. This was around the stock price had plummeted from just under $371 a share down to right above $290 a share a week earlier. Certainly, the memories of the yearly low price of $252.48 were still on his mind as well — not to mention some unfavorable press releases regarding their underlying technology.
