Consulting engagements

Making your organization more accessible to citizens, employees and other businesses is as promising as it is challenging. Whether your organization is large or small, IBM can deliver the planning, design, development and e-learning services for accessibility solutions that integrate with your business initiatives.

"Accessibility - which started out as a philanthropic effort - has now evolved to a business transformation effort for IBM and our clients." - Sam Palmisano, IBM CEO

Accessibility begins with compliance, but it extends beyond regulations and Web standards. Accessibility reflects an organization's commitment to removing the barriers that can inhibit interaction with information and services. Incorporating usability and personalization into your growth plan helps make the experience of working with - or in - your organization more positive. IBM has the creative and technical knowledge, usability expertise, research innovations and business insights essential to address enterprise-wide accessibility requirements facing businesses, educational institutions and government organizations.

With its tools and knowledge of industry-wide standards, the IBM team of accessibility engineers, instructional designers, consultants and IT specialists can:

• Assess your organization's business initiatives and components for accessibility.
• Bring decades of experience to planning a strategy that integrates accessibility with your organization's business plan and IT objectives.
• Help you efficiently manage the life cycle of accessible Web-based solutions that meet guidelines while offering a positive user experience.
• Provide development of an enterprise-wide learning management system consisting of accessible Web-based courseware.
• Evaluate architecture and business processes to help make them more efficient and accessible.
• Help design accessible IT systems that are optimized for mainstream and assistive technologies.

Whether you are considering a small, individual project or a large, complex solution, IBM accessibility services can be tailored to help your organization.

Discovery workshop - Documents your organization's accessibility "as-is" state, future goals and organizational dependencies. Conducts a high-level gap analysis and provides recommendations in an executive presentation.

Strategy and roadmap planning - Provides a strategy and roadmap deliverable including prioritized recommendations, suggested schedules and a detailed plan for how to close gaps.

Governance and policy formation - Assists your organization in developing comprehensive business and high-level policies to help support your compliance with core or enterprise-specific accessibility regulations or standards.

IT development integration - Facilitates the production of specific technical development and testing policies to support enterprise-wide compliance with applicable accessibility laws, standards and regulations.

Diagnostic assessment - Assesses a solution's existing level of compliance with applicable Web accessibility policies or other recognized standards.

Application and Web design - Offers full life-cycle, accessible Web application and portal design services.

e-Learning design and delivery - Provides a comprehensive education/training strategy and plan, as well as course materials and custom learning content.

Marketing and communications planning - Provides a communication strategy, marketing plan and set of predefined media deliverables to communicate accessibility policies and procedures.

IBM ViaScribe™ - Utilizes speech-to-text technology to provide real-time captioning of classroom lectures and real-time transcription, alignment and preparation of e-learning materials.

IBM CaptionMeNow - Makes rich media accessible to a broader audience through dynamic captioning that uses speech-recognition software originally designed for users who are deaf or hard of hearing.

IBM WebAdapt2Me - Enables people who have vision, cognitive or manual difficulties to customize the way Web pages are presented to them.

IBM Easy Web Browsing - Provides a user-friendly Web interface, including character enlargement, reading of text aloud and optimization of Web pages by changing font sizes and background colors according to user preferences.

IBM aDesigner - Simulates visual disabilities to help Web designers create pages that are accessible and usable by people who are experiencing vision loss.

IBM's technical experience and scalable technology can help you move beyond compliance with government regulations and worldwide guidelines to reach and maintain broader accessibility goals. Through its research endeavors, IBM provides a window to the future with continued innovation for accessibility. This innovation can help you provide information access and improve the overall experience for people across a wide spectrum of abilities.

"Feedback on the Arizona @ Your Service portal has been positive. We've heard from advocacy groups that the accessibility features we put in place do indeed make a difference when people access our site." - Gene Martel, digital government services, manager, Government Information Technology Agency of Arizona

IBM Accessibility Services support your business initiatives. Address your specific accessibility goals by using these planning, design, development and e-learning consulting engagements and technology implementations along with scalable IBM technology.