American Foundation For The Blind Says Discover 508 Has "Superior Usability"

RESTON, Va., March 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Discover Technologies announced that AFB Tech, the American Foundation for the Blind's product evaluation, development, and consulting lab, issued preliminary findings of its review of Discover 508 for SharePoint software, a product to be demonstrated at the 29^th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference (CSUN), beginning on March 17 in San Diego, CA.

The AFB Tech product evaluation team compared OOTB SharePoint in SP 2010 and SP O-365 with Discover 508 for SharePoint, a software solution designed to make SharePoint easier to use. AFB Tech tested and compared the products based on how well they interact with various screen reader software programs used to access computers by visually impaired people.

After an extensive review of the significant differences between OOTB SharePoint and Discover 508, AFB Tech concluded in its preliminary report: "We highly recommend that organizations using SharePoint consider adding Discover 508 to their environment to enable their visually and cognitively impaired workers to utilize all of the great collaborative features of SharePoint."

"Through our testing, it became very clear to us that Discover 508 has significant usability features over the out of the box experience in both environments," said Darren Burton, Director of AFB Tech. "The superior usability comes largely from the intuitive architecture and lack of popup menus and other sighted user intended features, as well as from clear and easy to use instructions."

"Our intent with the Discover 508 solution was indeed to make it much more intuitive and streamlined, giving cognitively and visually impaired people the ability to complete each collaborative task as effectively and efficiently as his or her sighted peers," said David Truitt, President, Discover Technologies.  "This is extremely important in today's competitive job market, as it provides those workers the ability to compete on an even playing field with their sighted peers."

AFB Tech's testing team found the Discover 508 solution substantially easier to use when managing calendar events, uploading and editing documents and collaborating with team members, noting that it "clearly stands out as the more usable solution."

About Discover Technologies: Discover Technologies is an IT services and software solutions company that develops and distributes solutions that make it easier for people to find information through search. Discover 508 is the company's 508 compliance solution.  To learn more, visit www.discovertechnologies.com. For more on this report visit AFB Summary

About The American Foundation for the Blind: The American Foundation for the Blind is the organization to which Helen Keller dedicated over 40 years of her life.  It removes barriers, creates solutions, and expands possibilities so people with vision loss can achieve their full potential. One of the ways AFB accomplishes those goals is by working with the world's leading technology companies to help them make their hardware and software more accessible and usable for people with vision loss.  To learn more, visit www.afb.org

Contact: Megan Moore at [email protected] (703) 288 9696

SOURCE Discover Technologies