Overview
Phire recognizes the need for our applications, and our customers' and partners' products built with our tools, to be usable by the disabled community. The Phire Accessibility Program Office is responsible for defining the corporate standards for accessibility, and developing materials to train all employees so that they can successfully create products that meet those standards.
Phire's Accessibility Philosophy and Policies
Phire is committed to building standards-based products to help customers reduce complexity and get the most out of existing technology investments, and this commitment extends to our approach to accessibility. Phire uses industry-standard technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and Java to render most user interfaces, and we follow internationally-recognized accessibility standards allowing support for a broad range of assistive technology (AT) such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, and voice recognition.
Accessibility has presented unique challenges to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) community as a whole due to the range of laws and guidelines related to it, and the rapid pace of changes in technology, and the impact across nearly every aspect of product development from initial design through Support.
Guidelines and Standards
The Phire Accessibility Guidelines are based on the 2017 Revised Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended, and the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 guidelines at the AA level (WCAG 2.2 AA).
Phire is committed to developing new products in conformance with Revised Section 508 and the WCAG 2.2 AA standards to the extent practicable. As new products and revisions are released that conform to the Revised Section 508 and WCAG 2.2 standards, we will publish Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs) based on the Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPATs) that use the updated VPAT 2.5 template. Until then we have VPATs that include a table of all the WCAG 2.2 'A' and 'AA' standards, in addition to the Section 508 standards.
In 2017 the U.S. Access Board announced the Revised Section 508 standard that was based on the WCAG 2.0 AA standards. In 2014, the initial version of the European Union standard EN 301 549 ‘Accessibility requirements suitable for public procurement of ICT products and services in Europe,’ issued in response to Mandate 376, was based on the WCAG 2.0 AA standards. It was updated in 2019 to include WCAG 2.1.
Accessibility Status
Phire products are tested for accessibility using a variety of techniques including automated tools, expert heuristic review, visual inspection, manual operation, and testing with various AT by both disabled and non-disabled users. We report the outcome of that testing using the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) to create the Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR). The VPAT was developed by ITI and GSA to assist Federal contracting officials and other buyers in making preliminary assessments regarding the availability of commercial ICT products and services with features that support accessibility.
Product status
The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) was developed by the Information and Technology Council (ITI) and the Government Services Administration (GSA) to assist Federal contracting officials and other buyers in making preliminary assessments regarding the availability of commercial Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products and services with features that support accessibility.
Phire uses the VPAT to create our Accessibility Conformance Reports to represent the degree of conformance to various accessibility standards and guidelines, including Section 508 (as released in 2001 and revised in 2017), WCAG 1.0, WCAG 2.0, WCAG 2.1, and WCAG 2.2. Depending on when a product was developed and released, different standards may be listed.
Here is the latest Phire_Accessibility_Conformance_Report.pdf (VPAT).