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Ocawa extras

Ocawa is a powerful auditing tool indispensable for those who want to boost the quality and/or accessibility of their websites or web applications. That said, Ocawa, like all automated testing tools, can not look for everything that is suggested by the many recommendation systems: WAI; ADAE; AccessiWeb; Section508.

For example, it takes a live inspection by hand to verify that certain information is pertinent or not on a page (pertinence is something that is referred to again and again by accessibility rule sets).

Therefore, the team behind Ocawa offers a wide range of complementary services to help guarantee that your web project will conform to any countries particular standards or even international standards. At your service for a collection of technical, ergonomic and usability expertise.

Accessibility training

The Ocawa team can offer you accessibility courses, both in technical training as well as in outreach and sensibilisation (appropriate for non-technical staff, for example), all adapted to your company's needs:

Technical training for developers
Accessibility: Graphics and Ergonomics
Accessibility awareness seminars aimed at all levels
Ocawa training: tricks, shortcuts, general fluency (scenarios, rules, etc.)

Don't hesitate to contact us for more information.

Audit of web information systems

The expert accessibilty team behind Ocawa are available to conduct far reaching, personalised site audits. In automatic testing, Ocawa is way ahead, but not all of a site's accessibility can be verified by an automatic tester. Using Ocawa as a starting point, these human audits (including real time testing by visually impaired users) offer the big picture of where your site is with respect to accessibility. The following are provided at the audit's completion:

Detailed report (Ocawa)
A log book of expert notes on the site
Game-plan: what are the priorities for you? what is the best use of your budget given your site's situation? Past experience means we have very good answers. Includes overall accessibilty measures

Each audit is conducted over a set of representative pages of your site or web app. The time this takes varies, but tends to be around 15 days from submission of materials. Audits of this sort have been successfully conducted for France Telecom, La Poste, among others, both looking at internet resources as well as their local network apps and intranet.

Remember, for large structures or any business whose turnover is significantly affected by government contracts, accessibility on-site for your employees can be a very important, perhaps even a critical issue.

Consulting, quality control expertise

The Ocawa team can advise on questions of quality control for work done by third parties, as regards Web Accessibilty. This is especially important for large projects that your company has sub-contracted out or that are being done for your own web presence. The contract says fully accessible, but who is checking that standards are being met while the work is still underway and (most importantly) before you have paid the outstanding balance?

We can conduct spot checks on work-in-progress, avoiding messy and costly post-delivery-date wrangles with your service providers. Catching accessibility problems early means correcting problems before they are reproduced over thousands of pages, and before fixing them means a total site overhaul. Many easy solutions are readily available, not just for HTML and all the technologies that generate it (php, JSP, etc) but also for pages using Flash, JavaScript, audio, video... and others. Think ahead!

Accessiblity consultants are available at competitive daily rates:

Junior accessibility consultant: 650€
Senior accessibility consultant: 750€
Senior accessibility expert: 1000€

Prices are prior to VAT but include all travel costs (within France).

Ocawa specific development

Ocawa is a very flexible piece of software, adaptable to the lion's share of working environments in which it is likely to be useful. In addition, special capabilities can be added to Ocawa:

Special needs rule-sets (for in-house publishing rules and styles, for example)
- HTML
- JSP
Special arrangements for specific security and access needs (unique protocols)
Custom-look audit reports
Other options for the adminstration of server Ocawa (cron, backup, etc)

Creation accessible templates

Before beginning the coding of an interface for a new project (website or webapplication), you can ensure the good accessibilty of the final result by working from templates especially made to suit your requirements, but which are accessible. Integration of accessibilty into your interface can be aided by these templates, designed by the Ocawa team and in compliance with global accessibility standards.

HTML layout for pages or page regions, using DIVs in stead of TABLEs
Stylesheet optimisation for maximum effect of power versus size (CSS)
Ergonomic analyses of pages and graphical elements with respect to accessibility criteria: colour contrast, fonts, data structuring and presentation

Development time for such templates varies depending on the complexity and size of task.

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