Intercon/ABVI-Goodwill Partnership
"The truly exciting aspect of this partnership is the realization of our goal that one day our product, Accessible FormNet, would be directly responsible for creating work hours and information technology related-jobs for the blind and visually impaired." -- John Paroda, President, Intercon Associates Inc.
Intercon approached The Association for the Blind and Visually Handicapped (ABVI)-Goodwill to form a partnership to provide their customers with a service to validate the accessibility and usability of electronic forms. This certification is the first of its kind in the industry and one that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) highly supports. GSA said that Intercon's "ultimate goal is to be able to disclose on a website that this form was validated by ABVI-Goodwill (by an individual who is blind or visually impaired)."
Accessible FormNet integrates existing forms by accepting images from all major form design software. ABVI-Goodwill's role is to act as an external validation facility offering electronic form testing administered by individuals who are blind or visually imapired. Each form will be reviewed three times and result in a "validation" seal and/or report with documented findings.
ABVI-Goodwill is pleased to offer such a validation service and to help make on-line forms and documents accessible to everyone. Future plans for the partnership with Intercon include offering other valuable services such as field mapping and scripting for Section 508 Legislation compliance.