Press Release
NCAM Partners with Macromedia
August 6, 2001
MACROMEDIA AND NCAM PARTNER TO CREATE ACCESSIBLE WEB AUTHORING SOLUTIONS.
NCAM To Test Macromedia Products For Federal Guidelines Compliance
San Francisco, California — Macromedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: MACR) and the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at WGBH today announced a partnership to test Macromedia Web authoring products so they could be used effectively by people with disabilities, in compliance with recent federal guidelines and corporate initiatives.
Macromedia provides innovative solutions to enable developers to deliver Web content that meets accessibility guidelines, and this partnership with NCAM extends its commitment to make the authoring of Web content more available to people with disabilities. NCAM will provide Macromedia with technical evaluation and guidance to make its products compliant with W3C accessibility guidelines and the Federal government's Section 508 rules for product and content accessibility. NCAM will also work with Macromedia to build alliances with other industry leaders to enable a continuous dialogue about the importance of accessibility.
"Macromedia is working to ensure both our products and the content they create can be experienced by everyone," said Pat Brogan, vice president of solutions, Macromedia. "By working with a leader in this area like NCAM, we are actively addressing this crucial concern of our government, education, and corporate customers, as well as making sure the right decisions get made to provide effective accessibility solutions."
"NCAM is excited to be working with an industry leader like Macromedia to help them bring the best solutions to their customers," said NCAM/WGBH director Larry Goldberg. "WGBH has been a leading advocate and pioneer in accessible media development for 25 years; when companies like Macromedia address this issue, other companies are inspired to follow suit."
Macromedia already has various options available for developers to create accessible Web content. Macromedia and UsableNet previously announced the Section 508 Accessibility Extension for Dreamweaver 4 and Dreamweaver UltraDev 4, which checks Web pages for accessibility the same way a document can be checked for spelling. New Dreamweaver accessibility templates and Section 508 Web Development Guidelines for Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver are also available to further assist government agencies in making their Web sites accessible. For more information on these and other Macromedia accessibility solutions, visit http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/accessibility/.
ABOUT NCAM
The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) is a research and development facility that works to make media accessible to underserved populations such as people with disabilities, minority-language users, and people with low literacy skills. NCAM projects and initiatives expand the reach and refine such technologies as captioning and description, while breaking new ground in the fields of technology, media, disability, and education. NCAM is a founding member of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). NCAM works with standards bodies and industry to develop and implement open technical standards for multimedia, advanced television, and convergent media that ease implementation, foster growth and lay common groundwork for equal access to new technologies.
For more information, please contact:
Jennifer Gormley
Manager of Strategic Partnerships
125 Western Avenue
Boston, MA 02134
617.300.2454
jennifer_gormley@wgbh.org
ABOUT MACROMEDIA
Macromedia is passionate about what the Web can be. Its award-winning products empower designers and developers to efficiently create and deliver the most engaging experiences on the Web, and enable innovative Internet business applications. Headquartered in San Francisco, Macromedia (NASDAQ: MACR) has more than 1,600 employees worldwide and is available on the Internet at www.macromedia.com.
