imergo - Development of automated tools that support standards compliance and quality assurance methods for the production and maintenance of web portals

The design, management and maintenance of Web portals is becoming a challenge for the industry, that is confronted with an increasing amount of devices and user agents, due to the growing number of mobile platforms to be compatible with. On top of this, accessibility for people with special needs (enforced by legal frameworks in many European countries, the USA and Canada, among others) is generating additional complexity to the aforementioned processes, in times of critical budget constraints. This paper will describe how the combination of quality assurance methods with automated tools that support the implementation of standards and accessibility recommendations, can help companies to monitor and manage their compliance efforts in complex Web applications. We will also describe the limitations of existing tools, and present a new software suite developed by the Fraunhofer Institute FIT, successfully used and tested in several consultancy projects led by the authors.