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3. 09

What is the legacy database migration?

Legacy data is historical data buried in old databases and records, which includes critical information your company needs to run its business. Legacy data is stored for long periods of time – unorganized, isolated, and segmented in various formats. Managing and processing such data becomes cumbersome and useless over time, leading organizations to seriously consider migrating legacy databases to modern environments.

Database migration is the movement of information from an old and often unsupported database environment (DB) to a new, modern environment easily supported.

What are the benefits of a data migration strategy?

Here are the benefits companies derive from migration:

• This process ensures comprehensive data integrity
• Significantly improved ROI and reduced media and storage costs
• Minimal disruption to daily operations with minimal manual intervention
• Update underlying applications and services while increasing efficiency and effectiveness
• Helps scale resources to meet the growing needs of business datasets
• Helps to build a customer base and eliminates obstacles that can hinder customer-company relationships.

What are the kinds of a legacy software migration?

Upgrading systems and moving to the cloud, as an example, presents an opportunity for organizations to increase agility, drive growth, and set business priorities. It also reduces capital expenditures and pushes your applications to an improved and innovative environment.

Here are some terms you might find useful as you think through this topic.

• Cloud Migration: It is the process of moving data, applications, and all critical business elements from an on-premises data center to the cloud or from one cloud environment to the next.
• Application Migration: Applications are the interface on how everyone leverages the technology you have made. Application migration may require a re-think or re-write of the applications you have developed or licensed. It is the process of moving applications to the cloud often termed application migration.
• This includes the migration of application programs (Mobile Apps) to cope with the need of modern environments. You can save entire application systems from your device to the cloud storage.
• Storage migration: The migration of legacy systems from legacy arrays to modern storage systems to improve performance and the ability to scale cost-effectively.

A great takeaway and value – database migration automates data synchronization with minimal disruption and disruption. It helps organizations achieve recovery point objectives while maintaining smooth and efficient operations.

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3. 09

The importance of accessibility for online content of a business.

If your business deploys digital assets such as websites, portals, apps, and promotions, you should understand why and how to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Commonly called WCAG, these tenets were developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as the industry standard for digital accessibility for those with disabilities. The group has nearly 440 members and develops standards for computer languages like CSS3 and HTML.

Most accessibility regulations worldwide use WCAG for their policies and laws. These guidelines can be applied across all current and future digital technologies. In simple terms, WCAG aims to keep the entire internet accessible for everyone now and as online communication evolves.

What does WCAG cover?

WCAG establishes web accessibility standards for various functional needs, including updates that facilitate digital access for those who face challenges in these areas:

Attention | Auditory and hearing | Executive function | Literacy, and language | Memory and focus | Mental health | Mobility and motor | Cognitive, physical, and sensory interactions | Speech| Visual

Levels of WCAG compliance and what it means for a business

WCAG establishes three levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA, each with different criteria for successful implementation. Level A, with 25 criteria, refers to the lowest level of conformance (minimum), and Level AAA is the highest (maximum) with 61 required criteria.

A represents the minimum accessibility standards digital content should meet to avoid discriminating against audience members with disabilities. Level AA sites, which must meet 35 criteria, are designed for maximum accessibility and meet legal compliance standards. Federal, state, and local government agencies and other public service sites should ideally achieve AAA compliance.

A quick history of WCAG

WCAG was introduced in 1999 to provide guidance around online accessibility for people with mental disabilities, mobility issues that make using a mouse or keyboard challenging, deafness, impaired vision, etc. The most recent major update, WCAG 2.1, came out in June 2018 with 17 new success criteria improving coverage for cognitive disabilities, low vision disabilities, and mobile accessibility.

The next update to the guidelines, WCAG 3.0, is available now as a working draft and will be finalized in 2023. This new version will address the influx of mobile and wearable tech devices and digital voice assistants like Siri and Alexa and cover over 50 functional needs that make it possible for people with disabilities to use the full extent of the internet.

WCAG 3.0 extends to rather than replaces WCAG 2.1, and your company need not change its compliance strategy if your digital content already conforms to WCAG 2.1. For compliance purposes, many government agencies in the U.S. will continue to require adherence to 2.1 or 2.0 rather than adopting 3.0 immediately.

Should your business comply with WCAG?

Certain organizations must conform to WCAG under the Americans With Disabilities Act. This portion of the federal law applies to schools, colleges, universities, health care institutions, financial institutions, and state and local government offices. Organizations in these categories can receive a $75,000 fine for a single ADA violation and $150,000 for subsequent violations.

How Title III of ADA ties into WCAG

Title III of the ADA governs website accessibility. According to the Department of Justice, this part of the act applies not just to physical locations open to the public but also to publicly available digital locations (websites and apps). Under this title, these locations must be accessible to all individuals and groups. In other words, if your company has digital content accessible online, you must comply with accessibility standards.

In addition, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1998 requires all digital information published by federal agencies to be accessible. Specifically, individuals with disabilities must be able to obtain comparable access to publicly available federal information. Section 508 and Title III have established compliance requirements based on the AA level of WCAG 2.0.

The potential for discrimination claims

Even if your company doesn’t need WCAG conformance according to ADA, you could be subject to a discrimination lawsuit if your business website lacks accessibility for individuals with disabilities. Digital accessibility lawsuits in this category (Title III claims) increased by approximately 50% from 2018 to 2020, according to data published by UsableNet.

Given this information, most organizations aim for mid-range conformance at level AA. This strategy provides meaningful and achievable accessibility goals with limited digital design and development disruption. If your company does not have specific compliance requirements under ADA, either A or AA level compliance can shield you from legal action based on digital discrimination.

What are the benefits of WCAG beyond compliance?

Legal compliance isn’t the only advantage of adding accessible features to your company’s digital content. These are some of the other benefits you can realize with this initiative.

Improved SEO ranking

Many criteria Google uses to rank websites overlap with best practices for digital accessibility. As your company addresses WCAG compliance, you’re also engaging in search engine optimization (SEO). The better your site’s SEO, the more customers you’ll attract to your business through organic searches. Common website updates that boost both SEO and WCAG compliance include:

• An organized layout that proceeds logically from one topic to the next
• Alternative suggestions provided in response to user input errors
• Header code that indicates the site’s language
• Audio and video text transcripts and alt tags (and alt tags for images)

Enhanced user experience

Even individuals without disabilities are more likely to consume your online content if they can take advantage of accessibility options. When accessibility improves to address functional needs, the user experience improves for your entire audience. A parent with unaffected hearing might use closed captions when watching a video next to a sleeping child. Audio instructions are more convenient for hands-on instructions, such as trying a new recipe or building furniture.

Bolstered brand image

Accessible online content also elevates the profile and reputation of your brand. Most people want to work with companies that share their values. Pursuing inclusive initiatives such as WCAG compliance illustrates the organization’s commitment to avoiding discrimination and promoting open access.

Expanded reach and revenue

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 61 million Americans live with a disability. This number represents more than a quarter of all U.S. adults. Preventing these individuals from accessing your business website creates a legal and moral issue and limits your potential revenue by automatically leaving out a large portion of your prospective audience.

Checking for WCAG conformance

While complete conformance with the comprehensive WCAG standards represents a challenge for many business owners, taking small initial steps can significantly impact the accessibility of your digital content.  

You can start by assessing your website or online assets for basic WCAG components by measuring them against POUR standards (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable & Robust), documenting the gaps identified, and prioritizing the steps to remediate the same. For more details, look up our blog –How can my company achieve and maintain WCAG compliance?.

Digital presence is the new storefront of a business

Don’t wait until the release of WCAG 3.0 to start work on digital accessibility compliance. Most components of the new version remain aligned with WCAG 2.1’s recommendations. These include best practices for audio, podcasts, video, image presentations, forms, digital signatures, focus state, links, navigation, frames, tables, maps, graphs, colors, fonts, layout, infographics, organization, and structure.

Connect  with our team of technical & accessibility experts to understand how we can help your business reach and keep conformance with WCAG standards.

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Reach out today to schedule a discussion with an iBridge team member to learn how we can help your business conform with WCAG standards.

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3. 09

Improve accessibility to your organization’s digital content and chart the steps to ensuring and maintaining WCAG compliance.

Web Accessibility Content Guidelines (WCAG) provide industry-standard digital accessibility benchmarks. The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) created and continues to update these guidelines so that people with disabilities can read, interpret, and navigate online content. Most global accessibility regulations, including aspects of federal anti-discrimination laws in the US, are derived from WCAG.

The most recent major update in June 2018, WCAG 2.1, introduced 17 new success criteria improving coverage for cognitive disabilities, low vision disabilities, and mobile accessibility. [i]  It also includes various levels of compliance for businesses and public organizations. And this blog will guide you on how to get there.

Start with a basic compliance check

You can get a quick idea of how well your company’s digital content adheres to WCAG by answering a few simple questions.

• Can users access all the functions of your website with a keyboard as well as with a mouse?
• Does all video, audio, and photo content on the site have a text alternative (e.g., transcript or closed captions)?
• Does the site have alt-text that assistive devices can interpret and read?

If you can’t answer yes to all three, it’s time to plan for a full accessibility assessment and remediation program to see where you stand and how you can get up to speed.

While complete compliance with these comprehensive standards represents a challenge for many businesses, taking small steps can significantly impact the accessibility of your digital content. So before engaging a specialized team to support you on compliance, start by assessing your digital property – website, app, and other online assets for Level A WCAG components.

Level A WCAG compliance can significantly reduce the risk that your business will face claims of discrimination against people who have disabilities. You can conform to Level A by implementing features that ensure your website meets the so-called POUR principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.

Optimize key components for accessibility

POUR is a framework for digital accessibility. But how does it translate into concrete steps for your web developers? Depending on the extent of your online content, you can prioritize the actions listed to come closer to WGAG conformance at your target level:

• Ensure that all content can be converted to text, read by assistive devices, magnified, zoomed, or otherwise altered without changing its meaning
• Add subtitles, captions, and audio descriptions to all video content
• Implement keyboard operability for all components of the site, including buttons, forms, links, and menus
• Use a programming language that supports autofill technology
• Choose a palette with a high level of color contrast
• Emphasize hyperlinks with cues such as underlining and bold instead of color
• Remove autoplay video and audio, as it can be difficult to turn off
• Add clear, descriptive content for all internal and external links
• Structure the site with clear headings, lists, and bullets
• Consider the order of content presentation

Next, rank this list of nonconforming aspects of your site by issue severity and estimated size of the impacted audience. Prioritizing the updates in order of importance results in a strong remediation strategy. Many experts recommend taking a find, fix, monitor approach to making the actual updates and keeping up with remediation.

Whether you have an in-house web team or outsource digital content development, provide the necessary tools and resources to create accessible online assets. Internal stakeholders, including developers, testers, content creators, and staff, should receive periodic accessibility training. It’s essential to stay abreast of the upcoming changes to WCAG to avoid falling out of conformance.

When you use the checklist above to prioritize corrective and point-forward actions related to your organization’s online content, you will have completed the first step in understanding conformance with WCAG guidelines.

Taking the next step

As you and your team work through the checklist toward achieving Level A compliance, you are now better placed to identify an external team you would like to work with for the next level of WCAG compliance. This  is a team with the technical depth and accessibility guidelines knowledge to conduct a thorough compliance assessment of your digital assets and support the subsequent remediation effort.

Understanding the POUR standards better

An accessible website should meet the POUR standards established by WCAG, which means all digital content and functions published by your organization should be:

• Perceivable: Users must be able to perceive content on the website by hearing, seeing, or touching it. If they cannot use one sense to take in and understand the information, they should be able to use a different one. Plain text tends to be the most flexible format, which makes it the most perceivable way to upload content. You can also improve accessibility by making digital publications available in multiple languages.

For example, adding a descriptive audio transcript to a video makes it perceivable by using either vision or hearing.

Other strategies to improve the perceive-ableness of digital assets include:

• Adding alt text to any non-text content you publish online, including audio, video, and static images
• Providing alternative content with equivalent information, which must include at a minimum:
  • Prerecorded audio and video for time-based media
  • Sign language and closed captions for both prerecorded and live audio
  • Audio descriptions for prerecorded video
• Structuring and sequencing content so assistive devices can interpret it
• Adding instructions that do not require sensory descriptions for comprehension
• Ensuring users can easily toggle content between portrait and landscape views as needed
• Providing visual cues such as graphics and bolding instead of or in addition to color
• Using a high-contrast color palette
• Offering an accessible mechanism to stop audio and video that auto-plays on your site or altogether discontinuing autoplay features
• Allowing users to zoom text size by at least 200% in their browsers without using an assistive device

If you want to work towards Level AA compliance in the Perceivable category, you can ensure each of your site’s pages has more than one access point and provide a visible keyboard focus indicator for each user interface.

• Operable: This term refers to the tools your audience uses to access, navigate, and comprehend the content on your website. All your site’s controls and menus should support operability with a keyboard as well as a mouse.

Users must be able to navigate the platform and interface with a keyboard, mouse, voice, switches, or accessible alternative input devices. People with vision impairment often use a keyboard rather than a mouse to get around online. Switches and voice commands assist those with mobility challenges. Every component of the website, from headings to menus to links, should have a clear and labeled purpose. All content should be free of blinking lights or flashing images that could trigger seizures.

Other Level A compliance guidelines  for this category include:

• Allowing users to adjust the length of timed content
• Ensuring that blinking items have no more than three flashes per second
• Offering the ability to bypass blocks of content
• Including descriptive titles for all the pages on your website
• Ensuring that alt text for links relates to the destination URL
• Requiring only a single click for all pointer-based gestures on the site
• Providing mechanisms to turn off or remap keyboard shortcuts
• Understandable: Both the controls used to operate the system and the information presented should be readable, predictable, and consistent. Content development should consider the needs of individuals who have cognitive impairments, speak English as a second language, or have learning or other disabilities.

Most importantly in this category, your site must use a programming language that supports assistive devices. Adding HTML language attribution in the metadata of online content can facilitate this type of access.

When a user receives an input error, the site must identify and detail the error in writing. Components of the site that require content input from users must have clear, understandable labels.

WCAG also requires your site to respond to input in a predictable manner. For example, if a user focuses on a specific component of the interface, its context should not change. Changing a setting should not alter the context unless the user receives notice of the expected change.

• Robust: Most users and types of assistive technologies can successfully interpret digital content, even as standards and devices evolve in the future. Best practices require a standard programming language such as HTML and/or a standard alternative when the site uses non-standard technology. Robust websites and apps are also free of coding errors that can hamper accessibility.

WCAG describes online content as robust when most individuals and assistive devices can access and interpret it successfully.

In Level A, WCAG requires markup languages to avoid parsing, with correctly nested elements, unique I.D.s, no duplicate attributes within elements, and complete start and end tags for elements as needed. In addition, all interface components have a name, role, and value that assistive devices can determine programmatically.

Moving to an advanced level of compliance

Level AA and AAA conformance require more complex implementations. Level AA content maximizes accessibility and meets the mandated standards of federal compliance. At the same time, AAA-conforming sites typically include public service organizations a6a.nd federal, state, and local government agencies.

Partnering with an expert in this space can help your company achieve WCAG compliance at the appropriate level without disrupting your digital operations.

Reach out today to schedule a discussion with an iBridge team member to learn how we can help your business reach and keep conformance with WCAG standards.

 

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Reach out today to schedule a discussion with an iBridge team member to learn how we can help your business conform with WCAG standards. 

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3. 09

Contending with International Requirements for Digital Content Accessibility

Digital content accessibility standards ensure everyone can access public online content. These standards address features that provide and enhance accessibility, experience, and comprehension for people with cognitive, intellectual, hearing, dexterity, mobility, or visual impairments.

To avoid inadvertent discrimination as the business landscape becomes ever more global, companies must comply with domestic and global standards for content accessibility. Begin with the basics about some of the most common worldwide systems to bring your business closer to conformance.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide a framework for Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust online content (POUR). An international coalition, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), created and continues to update WCAG to keep up with the technological evolution. The current standards establish three levels of conformance – A, AA, or AAA, depending on the company and various other factors.

Conforming to WCAG helps your company avoid violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act and other anti-discrimination laws. 

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The United Nations developed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to detail the human rights of people with disabilities and eventually serve as a basis for legislation to protect these rights. Two articles of the CRPD apply to digital content accessibility:

• Article 9, Accessibility, emphasizes the importance of understanding the issues that may prevent people with disabilities from using and comprehending your online content. Under this article, businesses should address accessibility as early as possible when developing digital offerings such as websites and apps. It also requires providing teams in your organization with training and support on these issues while adapting your digital publications to meet accessibility guidelines
• Article 21 addresses freedom of expression and opinion, and access to information. This article mandates that businesses and organizations offer various formats of accessible content at no additional charge, defaulting to open formats whenever possible. The accessible version of publications should be available immediately to prevent inequalities in knowledge and information for people with disabilities.

Country-Level Regulations

Besides broad compliance with CRPD and WCAG for your organization, a business should familiarize itself with the detailed digital accessibility guidelines in its five largest international markets.

While WCAG aligns with compliance laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act in the United States, other countries may impose requirements not covered under these global standards. Besides checking the websites for the applicable local governments, you can contact the ministry or department of technology in those nations.

Global compliance with digital content accessibility regulations becomes more complex as your organization expands to new markets. Partnering with an experienced team can efficiently align your company’s online assets with the needs of individuals with disabilities.

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Reach out today to schedule a discussion with an iBridge team member to learn how we can help your business conform with WCAG standards.