Deque: Helping development teams find and fix accessibility problems

"A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles." - Christopher Reeve

A number of people with disability face many obstacles in their daily lives. According to a United Nations report, people with disabilities make up the world's largest group of minorities. The UN report also states that there are over 1 billion people with some form of disability, out of which 100 million are children. In this tech-driven world, companies are eager to do something to help those with disabilities. They wish to make their websites or mobile apps accessible to those with disabilities. 

And Deque is here to help them achieve this goal. Thousands of tech pioneers have reached out to Deque, including Microsoft and Google, to solve accessibility issues. Apart from these tech giants, top US insurance companies and banks, airlines companies, governmental agencies, hotel chains, retailers, etc. have worked with Deque to make tech easy for those with disabilities.

So what does Deque do exactly? A customer’s development teams are helped to find and fix problems pertaining to accessibility problems on their platforms- either on the web or mobile apps. It doesn’t matter if the developers have done it before; Deque helps to ease accessibility problems. In order to maintain these apps to remain accessible at all times, Deque deploys its in-house tools and the famous Deque University Courses to the customer’s developer teams. 

Creating Accessibility

But what exactly do you need to know about accessibility? When it comes to accessibility, it’s a multifaceted discipline. What you need can differ in accessibility and it all depends on the role you play and your area of interest.

The contributions of Deque to the world of accessibility are immense. Take for instance, the entire accessibility community was having a hard struggle to agree on a common accessibility testing ruleset. Deque stepped into the picture and decided to make its platform open source in 2015. Since then, there have been more than four million downloads- becoming the standard in the industry!

Axe- the company’s in-house accessibility for development teams is also combined with a free browser extension. On a weekly basis, the solution is used by tens of thousands of users. The end result is a happy one with the web being better and a more accessible place for everyone. And not to forget the Deque University- the place to get courses on accessibility with scholarships for people with disabilities. All of these have placed Deque in a popular spot.

Behind all of these unique solutions is a passionate team at Deque. Together, all of them have a strong enthusiasm to provide equal access to the web, without ability being an issue. The interesting team has many subject matter experts who have worked for years together in large Fortune 500 companies building better accessibility tools before joining the Deque team. Deque has also helped develop international accessibility guidelines in W3C working groups contributing immensely to the world of accessibility.

“Tools are an essential part of building accessibility into your development process”

An efficient, scalable, and cost-effective accessibility practice is achievable when you select accessibility tools that are designed for your development teams. This is exactly what Deque delivers. The company caters you with an Accessibility Testing Suite for your entire development cycle. Built to match your team’s requirements, Deque Tools are designed to function in accordance with the entire software development life cycle. Deque gives you the option to choose the area that best suits your needs and the toolset is scaled to your future needs as well.

There are many organizations that depend upon Deque for their accessibility solutions. This extends even to some of the most secure government and enterprise organizations who utilize the company’s services and tools. Some of the key features of Deque are enterprise security, end-to-end accessibility, and maintains development velocity. With its strong passion to make the world a better place, Deque continues to grow stronger every day.

The Leading Force

Preety Kumar, CEO and Founder

Preety is the CEO of Deque Systems and founded Deque in 1999 with the vision of unifying Web access, both from the user and the technology perspective. Under Preety’s leadership, Deque has grown to be a market leader in the field of information accessibility, serving corporate and government clients with the highest standards in information technology such as Veteran Affairs, Department of Education, Humana, Intuit, HSBC, Target, and others. She collaborated with the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative and is a nominated member of the Accessibility Forum’s Strategic Management Council: a GSA sponsored group with representatives from the IT industry, academia, Government Agencies, and disabled user groups that fosters information accessibility through mutual cooperation.

“Built by developers, for developers, Deque tools are designed to minimize the impact on your development efforts and fit across the entire dev lifecycle for full accessibility coverage.”

“We’ve helped people from all skill and knowledge levels navigate their accessibility needs and would love to help you.”

“We have helped develop international accessibility guidelines in W3C working groups, and many of our Subject Matter Experts spent years working inside large Fortune 500 companies on accessibility before joining the Deque team.”