Enterprise Applications news briefs

Watchfire last week announced a version of its Web site quality-assurance software that can check Web pages for accessibility features that computer users with disabilities require.

Watchfire's WebQA 2.0 crawls through Web sites to check for compliance with the U.S. federal government's Section 508 accessibility requirements and the accessibility guidelines the World Wide Web Consortium established.

To meet these requirements, Web developers must provide alternative text for pictures, tables and other graphic elements to make it easier for users of screen readers to navigate through Web-based information. The new features come three months after Watchfire acquired Bobby, a leading Web site accessibility tool that was available free of charge from the nonprofit Center for Applied Special Technology.

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Watchfire last week announced a version of its Web site quality-assurance software that can check Web pages for accessibility features that computer users with disabilities require.

Watchfire's WebQA 2.0 crawls through Web sites to check for compliance with the U.S. federal government's Section 508 accessibility requirements and the accessibility guidelines the World Wide Web Consortium established.

To meet these requirements, Web developers must provide alternative text for pictures, tables and other graphic elements to make it easier for users of screen readers to navigate through Web-based information. The new features come three months after Watchfire acquired Bobby, a leading Web site accessibility tool that was available free of charge from the nonprofit Center for Applied Special Technology.

Next month, Watchfire plans to offer accessibility checking with its enterprise software package, WebXM.

Available for $1,500 per seat, WebQA 2.0 is client software that runs on any version of Windows. It is designed for developers of Web sites with up to 10,500 pages. WebQA 2.0 also looks for broken links, spelling mistakes, slow-loading pages and nonfunctioning forms.

Read more about software in Network World's Software section.