Great, let's dive in. Welcome everyone to our DQM Product Office Hour. ۶. Today we have an amazing accessibility expert joining us for the session. ۶. Please welcome Sara Shourds. She's our accessibility engineer at Crownpeak. ۶. She holds a number of certifications. ۶. She's a certified, ۶. IAAP accessibility engineer. She has experience in public and private sector. ۶. ۶. She also used to work with US Federal Government. ۶. I'm also here, your DQM Senior Product Manager. You probably know me from the previous sessions. ۶. For today, we have quite a few exciting topics on the agenda. ۶. I will start with a few exciting topics on the agenda. ۶. A very brief intro to what product office hours are. ۶. Then I will hand over to Sara. ۶. For accessibility essentials. ۶. Followed by Q&A. Then we'll move on to product updates. ۶. I will share survey results from our previous office hour in November. ۶. Then we'll move on to the upcoming new feature AI Insights. ۶. And a brief intro to benchmarking score changes. ۶. Throughout the session, you're very welcome to submit questions to the Q&A panel. It should be available in your Zoom window. I would also encourage you to... We have enabled captions, closed captions in this webinar, so you're encouraged to turn on the captions. It's also available in your Zoom window. What are the product office hours? It's our quarterly webinar, which we run for our product lines at Crown Peak. In our webinar, you can expect updates on new features, demos of functionalities in DQM, and I always aim to bring exciting experts for Q&A and deep dive sessions. After this February session, the next one is scheduled for May, and then after that, after summer ends in September. You can scan the QR code to access the registration link. Great. Now I will hand over to Sarah for accessibility essentials and a deep dive into the upcoming European Accessibility Act. Over to you, Sarah. Thanks, Beata. I'm going to quickly go through some foundational material on accessibility, and then we'll talk about the EAA specifically. Next slide. We're going to talk about, you know, essentially the who, what, why, when, and how of accessibility high level. Next slide. What is accessibility? I found a good way to start these conversations is to talk about accessibility in the built environment. first because it provides context. Today we're all used to see step-free ramps, disabled accessible parking spots, bathrooms, etc., but they weren't always there. It took civil rights legislation demanded by people with disabilities and advocacy groups who argued that public buildings needed to be accessible to everyone. Now we're seeing a big push for equal access in the digital world because the internet is considered to be part of the public domain. The big difference between the two is that addressing accessibility in the built environment, the built environment is usually a one and done thing. You don't need to continuously build ramps because buildings don't change that much. In the digital world though, websites change all the time and accessibility is a constant consideration. Next. Who does accessibility apply to? It applies to all of us, at the very least in a situational capacity. One way to look at disability in the broader sense is as having a disadvantage. or being disadvantaged in some way. You might be disabled from completing an online learning course because you live in a remote location and your internet access won't allow you to download large files. You might be disabled from making an online doctor's appointment because all the links open new windows and you can't find your way back to the form. This points to some of the advantages of using DQM, by the way, because it contains checkpoints to mitigate those scenarios. Next. Another advantage I'd like to point out about DQM is the checkpoints that address issues for people with cognitive disorders. It's that intersection between accessibility and usability that addresses the whole person. Because it's also a digital quality tool, it provides more than just a strict application of guidelines. You don't get this with accessibility-only tools. How does accessibility affect our world? How does accessibility affect our world? In the same way that non-disabled people have benefited from solutions in the built environment, like curb cuts and larger doorways, digital solutions such as captioning and voice-to-text apps provide additional advantages. Next. Next. Why is accessibility important for business? Well, it's the law. As you can see, many countries already have disability rights laws. At the moment, some apply. You can move to the next one. At the moment, some apply only to government entities and some are industry-specific, such as telecommunications or airlines. It's important to know that the EAA will not supersede the laws of EU member states. It will coexist with them. In some cases, the EAA will add additional requirements and penalties. In other cases, the state laws will be more stringent. Next slide. Aside from being legally required in many cases, having an accessible website brings advantages that aren't always obvious. Of course, the reverse is true, too. Having an accessible website brings advantages that aren't always obvious. Of course, the reverse is true, too. Having an accessible website brings advantages that aren't always obvious. Having an inaccessible website can bring disadvantages that aren't anticipated. Typically, when a disabled person leaves a site because it's not accessible, it's not just that person who comes away with the negative opinion of the company. It spills over into the larger audience as well because people with disabilities have friends and family who are not disabled and are their biggest advocates. One added benefit of having an accessible site is search engine optimization. When elements like heading structure and alternative text on images are applied, your placement in search results are applied, your placement in search results is automatically better. DQM, as most of you know, covers both and even informs you where the intersections occur. Next. How do you measure accessibility? In order to measure accessibility, there has to be a standard which defines criteria that can be evaluated. Standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, or WCAG, and the EN 301-549, which is based on WCAG, exist for this purpose. WCAG is maintained by the W3C, which is the international organization that sets standards for the World Wide Web. There are three versions of WCAG which build upon one another. The vast majority of criteria are in 2.0. We're talking 38 of 56, not including AAA. So if your website is 2.1 conformant, it's going to be pretty darn accessible. Next. Although they're used interchangeably, even by experts, there is a distinction between compliance and conformance in accessibility. Compliance applies to laws. Conformance applies to standards. Businesses and organizations must comply with the law. Technology must conform to standards that enable legal compliance. For an organization to be compliant with laws like the EAA, its software must be conformant to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. But you can be compliant without being fully conformant. We'll get into this more when we talk about the EAA, but it's important to understand at a foundational level that your company can be in compliance with laws, even though your website still has some accessibility issues. Next. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are comprised of four principles. When we talk about accessibility issues, what we're referring to is barriers at the component level to perceive the existence of the component with whatever you have, eyes, ears, or touch. Operate it with whatever method you have, mouse, keyboard, screen reader, voice recognition, switch device, eye gaze technology, etc. And understand its purpose. Does it have enough clarity, organization, structure, predictability? Robust generally refers to being coded in a logical way using established patterns and syntax so as to be compatible across multiple technologies and future proof. Next. And finally, the methods used to measure accessibility. You have your automated scanning tools, which can only fully evaluate 20, maybe 30% of the criteria, and everything else requiring at least some manual intervention, if not entirely manual. I always tell people who rely heavily on scanning tools to at least include basic keyboard testing in your regular quality assurance reviews. It's as simple as putting your mouse away and trying to operate everything on the page with just the tab, enter, spacebar, and arrow keys. Fixing those issues will make your site so much more accessible. It's really worth the effort. Thank you, Sarah. Before we continue, we wanted to check in with our audience to see how you're doing and how interesting and useful is the information for you. I'm going to start a very quick poll. You should be able to see it now. Just two questions for you to answer before we jump into the EAA. In the poll, I'm asking you about how is the pace so far and whether you would like Sarah to go deeper into any particular section. And if you have questions about a specific area, I would encourage you to submit a question in our Q&A box. You should be able to access that from your Zoom window. And we already got one very interesting question, which Sarah will answer after we finish the presentation part. It will approve. What we will notice is how the compliance and compliance must have done. The EAA specifies the requirements must be the process. administrative obligations must be met. This is really important to understand. The EAA mandates both technical and administrative requirements. There are two deadlines specified this June. New products and services that fall within the scope must comply. And it also applies to new versions of those products and services or new content that is added after that date. And in 2030, the entire product or service is expected to be compliant. It's expected that there will be fines per violation, most commonly, but some countries are looking at putting more teeth in it and applying it as a percentage of a company's annual turnover or gross revenue. This is already the case in Italy. In Ireland, prison time of up to 18 months is currently on the books for directors, managers, and secretaries. It remains to be seen how often this will be enforced, but it's being taken very seriously. So what is an e-commerce service under the EAA? It's formally defined as services provided at a distance by electronic means at the individual request of a consumer. Next slide. How do we interpret that? Well, the EAA applies to all online sales, regardless of whether the product or service is being sold independently or as part of a larger e-commerce offering. In simpler terms, if a website sells a product and also offers online services related to that product, like customer support or product information, the accessibility requirements of the directive apply to both the product and the service. In other words, the main purpose of a website is not considered. If it facilitates an online sale, no matter how small, it falls under the scope of e-commerce. And a couple possible examples. The one with the animal rescue, I did want to clarify that there is an exemption for micro businesses. If an organization has less than 10 employees and earns less than 2 million euro in annual turnover, they can file for an exemption. But you do actually have to be proactive and do that filing. Next slide. Next slide. How do service providers comply with the EAA? The EAA states that the service provider shall include the information assessing how the service meets the requirements. So not only does the e-commerce transaction itself and supporting service via the website need to be accessible, organizations are required to explain how it's accessible. Next slide. Next slide. And they are required to demonstrate the process and procedures they have in place to ensure compliance is ongoing. So what does this translate into? How do you comply? Well, you should publish accessibility statements that identify a point of contact and communicate The EAA is a request for the EAA is a request for everything your organization is doing to achieve compliance wherever you are on your journey. Train employees who design and develop websites, including content creators. Establish a regular testing schedule and promptly prioritize remediation of high priority issues. Institutionalize the knowledge gained from audits and remediation so the approach to accessibility changes from reactive to proactive. publish a document. Publish a document describing how your web-based service meets accessibility requirements to whatever degree it does. Could be a VPAT or other WCAG-based conformance report. And educate customer service to respond effectively to queries from people with disabilities, including basic knowledge of screen readers, keyboard-only access, etc., and streamline the escalation process to ensure timely responses. So that is it. I'm curious if there's any questions. Let me have a look in our Q&A list. Thanks to everyone who already submitted questions. If you haven't submitted your question yet, now is the time to do it to make sure you get the most from the session. Let's start with the first question that was added. Can you say how DQM specifically will help my company prepare for EAA? Yeah, so one thing that DQM can do for you is give you the language you need with the accessibility statements and with the documentation essentially on how your product is accessible. So, you know, you can literally take the checklist. So, you know, you can literally take the checkpoint language and say, you know, to whatever percentage or degree, you know, it applies that, you know, your links are, can be operated with the keyboard. You know, you have a heading structure. Your images have alternative text. So you'll be able to leverage information that's right in DQM and use that to inform your documentation. So, yes, it will. Amazing. Second question is related to what we just talked about. However, I will still let Sarah answer. So how does DQM help in testing my application? Okay, so how does DQM help in testing my application? Is accessibility compliant? I'm not sure if I 100% understand the question. So what is the question? Maybe whoever submitted that can clarify. I think I understand what they're getting at. So right now, DQM is incorporated in our content management platform, First Spirit. There is an integration already. I don't know. I think there are other CMSs that it can be plugged into, so to speak. It's not my area of expertise, but we can definitely get back to you on that. Yes, definitely. I can fill in on that topic. So yeah, DQM has a number of APIs that allow us to integrate with CMS platforms. Of course, the ones that we work the closest with is our Crown Peak CMS system, First Spirit, where we created amazing DQM Connect tool. So if that's something that you would be interested in, definitely reach out to us. In terms of the external CMS tools, we do have integrations with Adobe Experience Manager, AEM, and also Sitecore. And we work with a number of partners who also build their own connectors. So I would really encourage you to maybe drop us an email. I will provide my email address at the end of this presentation to ask about maybe specific CMS platforms you're interested in, and we can definitely help you make the most of DQM. Moving on to the next question. If we have sites in EU for marketing purposes only, no e-commerce, how EAA affects these sites? Well, if there isn't any e-commerce, then from what I've read, from what I understand, it doesn't apply at this time. You know, if it's not related to banking and e-commerce, you know, providing a service, you know, ordering tickets or paying for things in some way, then it's not specifically covered. You know, I think you could say that while the intent is there, and probably the EAA will be broadened to cover more, more websites. So it's definitely good to be proactive. You know, it also helps with your standing in the public. You know, it's kind of that do the right thing perspective that should be motivating people. But I don't believe that people will be able to file a complaint against you if your site only contains marketing material. Thanks for that, Sarah. The next question is probably from one of our partners. Can we get these slides to use in our client page? And definitely, yes, we're looking at releasing more information or more partner materials that can help them with guiding their clients with EAA and accessibility. So definitely keep in touch with us to get that. The next question, Sara, the next question, which I have received is whether, Sarah, you can talk more about accessibility statements and how one can get a statement like that. Yeah, well, Crown Peak has templates and you can find them online. You know, a lot of companies have them already. But one thing that I've been noticing is they're switching out from being pretty general to saying, you know, we care about accessibility. You know, we're trying to apply these guidelines, blah, blah, blah, blah, to being a lot more specific where they're actually starting to follow the EAA by saying, this is how we're compliant. You know, we make sure that our site is keyboard accessible. We make sure that we have alt checks on our images. We make sure that our interactive components, you know, announced name, role, and state, you know, they get more into the specifics. So, you know, we can definitely follow up and give you like some examples. And, you know, you're welcome to go and look at Crown Peak has one on our website. I will be updating it to be one of the more specific kind. But yeah, we can definitely help you out with that. Yes, exactly. And I will just add that definitely please reach out to your customer success manager who can speed up the process and get some templates to you. So definitely we are, we have lots of resource to help you with the accessibility statements. We've just received another question. If we have a question. If we have sites in Latin America, for example, but EU users land on these sites, what should we do with these Latin American sites in a sense of EAA? Oh, that's a good question. I guess if the e-commerce transaction involves, you know, because they're talking about two distant entities, you know, it's their, they're, it's over electronic means. If that product is shipped to the EU or if that service is consumed in the EU, my understanding is it would be covered by the EAA. Understood. Thank you. Another question we've just received. Do you provide any webinars that focus on manual testing for accessibility? Well, Crown Peak doesn't have that right now. But, you know, it's something that we could probably do in a, in a future office hours, just like talk about, hey, you can do all this with GQM. And then here's three quick things you can do manually, you know, that that's really going to cover a lot of, of what you need to be accessible. We could definitely put something like that together. Yeah, I really like the suggestion. I think that would really help with getting your sites more, more accessible. Another question on the EAA deadlines. So can you talk more about the deadlines? And do I have to rebuild my whole site by 2030? Oh, well, that's, that's, that's what it says. You know, it remains to be seen how stringently it will be enforced. You know, I, a lot of it will be determined by how active advocacy groups are. You know, if, if you get complaints. Otherwise, you know, you can probably operate under the radar for a while. But the best thing to do is just to make an effort. I personally believe that even if your website isn't 100% accessible, and you get a complaint filed, if you can at least say, yeah, we're not perfect, but this is what we're doing. We're using DQM. You know, we publish an accessibility statement. We've gotten our employees trained. You know, we've had an audit. We're remediating based on that audit. I mean, the EAA and other laws do all say, we know this is hard. Like we don't want to completely interrupt your business. We don't want to put you out of business. So I do think there's going to be some leniency. And I have to believe and I don't know this, but it would certainly seem like you should be able to file it. Or well, if somebody files a complaint, you should get like a warning, you know, you should be able to file it. And I don't know this, but it's a warning. You know, like where they say, hey, somebody is complaining about your website, you have 90 days to fix what's not accessible to them. You know, I am hoping there's going to be cooperation and collaboration with, with businesses to do this. That's, that's very helpful, Sarah. Thank you. So that concludes our portion, our part of the product office hour focused on the Q&A. However, if some other questions come to your mind, Sarah will still stay with us till the end of the session. So I will revisit the Q&A box before we conclude. So it will be still not too late to submit your questions. Now moving on to the product updates that I'm sure everyone has been waiting for. In the last product office hour, I asked you about what, what product features that are on the roadmap you are most looking forward to getting live this year. So our audience have voted. And you can see that definitely the AI related features, AI powered features are getting most attention. So we'll be releasing soon AI executive summary, which I will talk a bit more in a second. In the second half of the year, we are looking at AI fixed suggestions. So I'm, I'm really glad to see that. So I'm, I'm glad to see that this is something that will add value to your businesses. New exports. So getting more ways of exporting a GQM data is also something that you guys are looking forward to. And this is something that the team, the GQM team will be working on towards the end of the year. So definitely please keep the feedback coming. The more you share with us, the more you share with us or our customer service, our support team about what you want to see, the more likely that you will get exactly what, what you want. And I will also mention in a second about how you can submit your feedback. Another feature that you are looking for is JavaScript scanning behind login. So this is something that is scheduled to be launched in the first half of 2025. So definitely, stay tuned. And if you have examples of websites, which you want to be sure that you will be able to scan very soon, but these are hidden behind logins, or require cookie banner dismissal or age gates, definitely share these sites with your customer success manager, so that they can be shared with our engineering team so that we can test that this the solution suits your needs. And benchmarking core updates is also a highly anticipated feature. And I will share with you updates on that very shortly. And we've also got questions about Jira integration enhancements. So as you probably know, Jira integration is Jira integration between DQM and your Jira instance is live as of end of last year. However, there are additional use cases which you submitted for example, being able to create a Jira ticket for a Jira ticket for an issue that is appearing on multiple pages. So we heard you and I will do my best to schedule that in for this year. We've also got questions about ability to report queries or to challenge issues in DQM. So this is also on the roadmap for this year. And I've also got a question about DevOps integration. So it definitely seems like that would be a valuable feature. And I will put it on the roadmap. And this will be possible through AI powered executive summaries. In terms of the rollout, how you can get your hands on this feature. Your administrative user will be prompted to accept terms and conditions. Once this is accepted for your organization, all DQM users from your company will be able to access the AI insights widget. And the launch of the launch of the launch of the feature is scheduled for March and April this year, and will launch it as a trial phase. Next feature that is scheduled to be rolled out in the first half of the year are updated benchmarking scores. We want to make the scores more transparent and more actionable so that we know how the score will increase if you fix selected issues. We will make it possible through introducing equal weighting of checkpoints. In the past, the checkpoints had various different weightings, which was making it more challenging for our users to understand the impact of fixing the issues. So we are simplifying that. We also want to make sure that only the checkpoints are related to the WCAG success criteria will contribute to accessibility score, so that you can treat your accessibility score as an indication of how well you're progressing in getting closer to the conformance. And we'll also add updates to the user interface so that the scores look more and seem more actionable. There will be no specific action required from your organization. The new scores will become available on the launch day. Once we confirm the exact date of the launch, we'll give you plenty of heads up via email so that you can adjust your workflows and processes. I know that many of our customers have specific gates in place to ensure that no web are that they are not available on the website, no web sites with a score below a certain number go live. So if this number needs to be adjusted, we'll definitely let you know. And the final feature, the final key feature which we're planning to release very soon are the additional languages in DQM. We want you to be able to view DQM interface in obviously English, German or French. So we'll roll out a language change option that will appear next to your name in DQM once this has been released. The first release, the first version of that, the first iteration will be available next month, which is very soon. However, there are some limitations which I wanted you to be aware of. The first version, the first iteration will include only translations of the options in DQM. the buttons and the buttons and the menus. So we are we haven't we're still translating checkpoint names and descriptions. So just to be sure that we are targeting the right languages, I have prepared a very quick poll for you to help us understand the languages you are interested in. So you should be able to see the poll now. So I'm asking you whether which languages you are interested in which languages you would like to view DQM checkpoints in. So the options are German, French, Spanish or Portuguese. I'm also curious to hear if there are any other languages that would be relevant to you. Thank you for the answers that will definitely help us spend time where it's more most valuable for our users. And as always, I really encourage you to stay up to date with our DQM roadmap. You can access the link using the QR code on the screen. However, the URL is simple as well. It's dqm-portal.crownpeak.com. You can find the DQM roadmap, which has four sections under consideration, planned, beta and launched. So under considerations are the features which we are still considering. And if you if you'd like them, if you'd like to see them delivered, definitely submit your vote on the cards. Under the plan. Under the plan tab, you see something that the team has already started working on, or is committed to work on. So they are likely to be released very soon. Beta holds any features which are still being tested. However, you can also help us with testing or access them earlier than the rest of the DQM users. And launched, you can see there the features that have already made it to the DQM. Next slide. This is just example of Jira use cases, which our users have been working on. And I'm very curious to see which ones of the use cases your organization would find most helpful. So you can find the cards in the DQM roadmap. And this concludes our product office hour. Thank you for your active participation and attention. And to conclude, I have one final poll where we're asking you about feedback. What would you like to hear more about? Whether you enjoyed the EAA updates and you want to hear more? And anything else that you would like to see more of? As always, if you have any questions, requests or queries, or just want to check in with the DQM team, you're very welcome to drop in me an email. And I'm happy to schedule a quick call to talk to you through the DQM roadmap. Have a lovely rest of your day. Thank you.