[April 09, 2014]

Actuate Introduces Document Accessibility Appliance™ to Automate Remediation of High Volumes of e-Delivered Customer Communications for Access by Vision-Impaired Customers

Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ:BIRT), The BIRT Company^™ and the leader in personalized analytics and insights, today announced the availability of the Actuate (News - Alert) Document Accessibility Appliance™, a new product built on patented technology. The product is a virtual software appliance that automatically converts high volumes of electronically delivered (e-Delivered) documents into universally accessible PDF files (PDF/UA). Based on patented technology, this simple-to-deploy yet powerful Appliance helps organizations quickly format and tag (News - Alert) (remediate) high volumes of personalized customer communications, including statements, bills, invoices, explanation of benefits and policy documents, making their content accessible and useable to visually impaired individuals.

In many countries, corporations and government agencies are now legally required to make all of their online content and individualized documents accessible to people with vision loss. For a document to be considered accessible, it must be specially formatted and tagged (remediated) for screen-reader programs and other assistive technologies that enable visually impaired customers to easily navigate the documents and review their contents in the intended order, without any distortion in meaning.

WCAG 2.0 Compliant Output

Documents produced by the Actuate Accessibility Appliance have been reviewed by numerous accessibility authorities including The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), and the British Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), as well as by prominent accessibility consulting firms, in order to help assure compliance with WCAG 2.0 Conformance Level AA.

"Until now, there really was no economically viable solution on the market that would remediate in a timely manner the millions of customer communications documents produced by large organizations and government agencies. Third party accessibility organizations that manually tag documents can be too expensive and the process too time consuming to handle the massive volumes involved," said Steve Jones, Vice President and General Manager of the Content Services Group at Actuate. "We're excited to introduce today our Document Accessibility Appliance that completely automates this process - with one step deployment - for any private sector or government organization, allowing them to comply with government mandated legislation and enhance the online experience of their visually impaired customers."

The Actuate Document Accessibility Appliance can help:

• financial services, insurance, utilities, healthcare and telecommunications companies, among others, meet their legal obligations as specified in accessibility legislation such as the "Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)" the Canadian "Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) or the "Australian Disability Discrimination Act." By proactively making high volume online documents accessible, these organizations can avoid costly non-compliance penalties and lawsuits.
• government agencies and private-sector providers of government services comply with strict accessibility standards such as those defined in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in the U.S and the recently voted EU Directive on the accessibility of public sector bodies' websites. The Actuate Document Accessibility Appliance an help such organizations discharge their responsibility to provide e-Delivered documents in a universally accessible PDF format and assist others in winning contracts by meeting mandated accessibility requirements.
• any organization reduce its operational costs and improve the experience of its visually impaired customers. The Actuate Document Accessibility Appliance offers an affordable, automated alternative to manual remediation of print streams and PDF documents into accessible PDF format. By offering accessible high volume document remediation in batch or real-time, the Appliance can eliminate the need for an organization's visually impaired customers to self-identify. Organizations can now offer a better experience to many types of visually impaired customers, including aging baby boomers, many of whom have gradually failing eyesight.

• Built on patented technology
  • In January 2014, Actuate was granted U.S. patent (no. 8619272) entitled "Automated Assistive Technology for the Visually Impaired."
• Virtual Software Appliance format ensures rapid installation and productivity
  • The Actuate Document Accessibility Appliance is a turnkey solution that allows organizations to immediately begin remediating high volume e-Delivered documents. Actuate's Professional Services Team is available to provide expert support and guidance when needed.
• Out-of-the-box print stream and PDF remediation capabilities
  • Organizations can remediate AFP, Metacode, LineData, and PCL print streams, as well as existing PDFs, using an intuitive graphical design environment to define rules for how each document should be tagged for accessibility.
  • Includes alternate text management for images, graphs, and other elements
• Automatic remediation of basic PDF documents
  • The Actuate Document Accessibility Appliance automatically remediates PDF documents containing uncomplicated layouts or graphics, without the need to define document remediation rules.
• Intuitive point-and-click design interface
  • The Appliance features a user-friendly graphical design and tagging environment that enables rapid accessibility template design without the requirement for code or script development.
• Built-in document archiving and repository integration adaptors
  • The Appliance comes bundled with its own high-performance document archive.
  • Integration adaptors are provided for popular archiving systems, including IBM (News - Alert) Content Manager OnDemand, IBM FileNet P8, IBM FileNet Image Services and EMC Documentum.
• Proven performance
  • A major U.S. financial organization has harnessed Actuate's groundbreaking technology to automatically produce millions of accessible credit card statements every month.
• Flexible deployment options
  • Organizations that want to provide accessible documents to their online customers can either create accessible PDFs in batches and store them in an archive, or dynamically transform archived print streams in real-time, as required.

The Actuate Document Accessibility Appliance is available for immediate purchase. For more information visit: http://www.actuate.com/content-services/solutions/accessibility/document-accessibility-appliance

About Actuate (NASDAQ:BIRT) - The BIRT Company™

Actuate provides software to more than three million BIRT developers and OEMs who build scalable, secure solutions that save time and improve brand experience by delivering personalized analytics and insights to over 200 million of their customers, partners and employees. Actuate founded and supports BIRT - the open source IDE - and develops BIRT iHub™ - the world-class deployment platform - to significantly improve productivity of developers working on customer facing applications. Actuate's BIRT Analytics™ delivers self-service predictive analytics to enhance customer engagement using Big Data. The Actuate Customer Communications Suite™ empowers organizations to easily transform, process, personalize, archive and deliver high volume content and individualized correspondence. Actuate is headquartered in Silicon Valley with more than 5,000 enterprise customers in financial services, technology and government. Visit actuate.com and developer.actuate.com.

Copyright © 2014 Actuate Corporation. All rights reserved. Actuate, legodo, BIRT iHub, BIRT Analytics, Actuate Customer Communications Suite, The Actuate Document Accessibility Appliance, BIRT onDemand, BIRT Viewer Toolkit, and the Actuate logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Actuate Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between Actuate and any other company. All other brands, names or trademarks mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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