Actuate Announces General Availability of Xenos Axess

Patent-pending PDF Accessibility Solution Completes Technical Evaluations and Usability Testing by the American Foundation for the Blind, CNIB and the Royal National Institute for the Blind

San Mateo, Calif., – June 28, 2010 – Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTU), the people behind BIRT®, today announced the general availability of Xenos Axess™. Following the completion of usability testing and technical evaluation by the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), CNIB, and the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), Xenos Axess is the first enterprise-class solution to produce high volumes of accessible PDF documents for the visually impaired.

Xenos Axess is ideal for organizations that consistently produce and present high-volume documents such as monthly banking, credit card or investment statements. It integrates with an organization’s existing enterprise content management (ECM) infrastructure to capture and transform high-volume print streams and standard PDF document streams into tagged, accessible PDF documents for customers with limited or no vision using assistive technologies. Xenos Axess is delivered via the Xenos Enterprise Server™ platform.

The development and readiness of Xenos Axess involved expert testing and guidance on accessibility and usability in conjunction with three of the largest advocacy agencies for people who are blind or visually impaired – the AFB, CNIB and RNIB. Feedback received from independent testers includes:
  • “This was much more accessible than anything else I’ve encountered.”
  • “Online statements are frustrating. But this statement with the tables made it easy for me.”
  • “This is the first bank statement I’ve ever been able to access by myself on my PC, without help from a sighted person.”
“Xenos Axess fills a much needed gap in addressing the accessibility of financial statements and other business documents that are delivered in PDF format,” stated Paul W. Schroeder, Vice President, Programs and Policy, American Foundation for the Blind. "We are pleased to be helping Actuate ensure that their solution meets the accessibility and usability needs of people with vision loss. We also appreciate their participation in AFB Consulting's Accessibility Assurance® Program which, when fully implemented, will provide accessibility-specific Help and Feedback opportunities that will ensure the inclusion of people with disabilities in Actuate’s ongoing development process."

According to Vicki Mains, Director, IS Systems Operations with CNIB, “The release of this product is well anticipated, as it has been made clear that this will not only increase the independence of the user, but provide safe-keeping of private information.”

Using best practices, four key technical criteria are required to make a document accessible:
  • Read Order - used to put order and context to navigation;
  • Alternate Text - for images, graphs and pictures;
  • Language Specification - defines an overall language for the document and specifies individual words that may be in a different language;
  • Tables - need to be defined with appropriate rows and tables.
With Xenos Axess, organizations can adhere to standards such as WCAG 2.0 and comply with legislation such as ADA Standards and Section 508.

“It's quite incredible how far you've got toward making the financial statement accessible”, stated Bim Egan, Senior Web Access Consultant, RNIB. “The sample sent for evaluation is exponentially more accessible than the PDF financial statements currently available.”

Giving Back to the Community
Actuate will continue to work extensively with the AFB, CNIB, and RNIB; organizations clearly dedicated to helping those who are visually impaired to ensure that Xenos Axess addresses the needs of this vital community. A percentage of Xenos Axess license sales will be donated to these advocacy organizations for the visually impaired. Additionally, Actuate customers who require web or document accessibility assistance can leverage the working relationship that Actuate has with the AFB to help ensure that all of the information made available to the general public meets the appropriate technical and usability needs of the growing population of people with vision loss.

For More Information
View the presentation: www.xenos.com/presentation
Download the whitepaper: www.xenos.com/accessibility-whitepaper
Read the Bloor Research report: www.xenos.com/bloor-research/
Email: accessibility@actuate.com

Xenos – An Actuate Company
Xenos provides high-performance solutions that optimize enterprise content management (ECM) implementations by streamlining the movement of information across the enterprise and slashing document storage costs. Xenos solutions, delivered by the scalable Xenos Enterprise Server™, process, extract, transform, repurpose and personalize high volumes of data and documents for storage, real-time access, ePresentment, printing and delivery in numerous formats across multiple channels.
Effective Feb. 1, 2010, Xenos became an Actuate company. For more information, visit www.xenos.com.

Actuate - the people behind BIRT

Actuate founded and co-leads the Eclipse BIRT open source project. ActuateOne™ is a unified suite of products for rapidly developing and deploying BIRT-based custom Business Intelligence applications and information applications. Applications built with ActuateOne provide one user experience regardless of task or skill level; are supported by one server for any deployment including cloud and are built with one BIRT design that can access and integrate any data source - including high volume print streams. ActuateOne adds rich data visualizations, including interactivity, dashboards, analytics, and deployment options to web and mobile BIRT applications, helping organizations drive revenue through higher customer satisfaction and improved operational performance.

Actuate has over 5,000 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services and the public sector. Founded in 1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol BIRT. For more information, visit the company's web site at www.actuate.com or visit the BIRT community at www.birt-exchange.com.

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