Enhanced digital accessibility of Eptura software supports more inclusive user experiences in the workplace

Eptura, the global worktech leader, today announced enhanced digital accessibility within the web-based and mobile versions of its unified platform, which connects workplace and physical asset management capabilities in a single solution. As part of its ongoing proactive efforts to create inclusive user experiences, Eptura has unveiled a series of design updates in accordance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to ensure everyone has a chance to succeed in the workplace.

The World Health Organization estimates that 16% of the world’s population — 1.3 billion people — live with disabilities. The recent recognition of International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD), which per the United Nations exists to “promote an understanding of disability issues and to mobilize support for the dignity, rights, and wellbeing of persons with disabilities,” underscores that there is still significant progress to make in creating equitable workplace experiences for all.

“By designing and delivering accessible solutions, Eptura aims to help break down the barriers that can prevent people from fully engaging in the workplace,” said Annalisa Recio, VP User Experience.

To deliver on this vision, Eptura built a scalable design system based on extensive research which incorporates accessibility best practices and continual user feedback. Eptura maintains compliance with the digital requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and has completed Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPAT®) for its worktech solutions. The VPATs outline Eptura’s conformance to accessibility standards under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act — which contains stringent mandatory standards for U.S. federal agencies and private companies that do business with government entities — as well as the internationally recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1 AA).

Eptura’s usability enhancements include:

• Improved color contrast to exceed AA accessibility standards. Increased contrast, descriptive text labels, clear visual distinctions between colors, and consistency in the meaning of colors help individuals with low vision or color blindness easily understand and interpret information, such as availability of reservable workspaces.
• Accessible icons. Clear, inclusive symbols demonstrate equitable representation and improve understanding of content and navigation for people with visual or cognitive disabilities.
• Keyboard navigation. Users can opt to explore Eptura via keyboard as an alternative to mouse-based navigation, which can help those with visual or motor disabilities or people using other assistive technology.
• Alternative text descriptions. Explanatory text provides helpful descriptions of visual information for users accessing Eptura product functionality via screen readers.
• Design consistency. Updated colors, icons, and typography within Eptura mobile apps unify appearance and functionality for a consistent experience with desktop product access.
• Revamped homepage. Navigational and design changes to menus and the sub-menu display, including updated icons and a new font to improve readability, create a clear navigational route within Eptura solutions.

Through a partnership with leading accessibility solutions provider Level Access, Eptura actively benchmarks and tracks progress toward usability goals and emerging standards. During a design system audit, Eptura achieved 92% on Level Access’s accessibility health scoring criteria — a strong rank indicating they are “making a conscious effort to design and build with accessibility in mind.”

“Eptura has demonstrated a deep commitment to ensuring its workplace technology solutions are accessible to every user,” said Tim Springer, Founder and CEO of Level Access. “By taking a proactive, ongoing approach to digital product accessibility, Eptura is not only delivering exceptional user experiences for all, but ultimately empowering its customers to build more inclusive, effective workplaces. We couldn’t be prouder to be supporting them on this journey.”

Eptura was recently selected as a finalist for Best Governance in zeroheight’s 2023 Design System Awards, which recognizes excellence in design systems based on accessibility, scalability, usability, and innovation. This reflects Eptura’s commitment to build a platform that all users can truly rely on — measuring its design against high standards of inclusivity and usability — to make worktech more accessible and approachable for everyone.

AudioEye takes top spot with high scores for usability and implementation

AudioEye, Inc., the industry-leading web accessibility platform, today announced it has been recognized as a leader in 16 of G2's Winter 2024 Reports for Digital Accessibility Platforms and Digital Accessibility Tools. The Company ranked first in the categories of implementation (how quickly and easily customers can go-live) and usability (a measure of the overall ease of use). Additionally, AudioEye earned 13 leader badges, including easiest setup and highest user adoption.

"It is extremely encouraging to see that companies are prioritizing digital accessibility," said David Moradi, CEO of AudioEye. "It is an honor to be recognized for our work building best-in-class products that enable our customers to build inclusive digital experiences. As we continue an industry-high investment in our research and development, we look forward to providing the tools and expertise our customers need to ensure accessibility compliance."

AudioEye's accessibility platform helps businesses of all sizes build digitally accessible and compliant websites while leveraging both technology and human expertise. The Company's inclusion in G2's reports results from a culmination of positive reviews submitted by verified customers, taking into account customer satisfaction and market presence, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks. Customer reviewers on G2 appreciate AudioEye as an "effortless way to stay compliant" and a "great solution for web accessibility," highlighting ease of use and immediate resolutions.

"Rankings on G2 reports are based on data provided to us by real software buyers," said Sara Rossio, Chief Product Officer at G2. "Potential buyers know they can trust these insights when researching and selecting software because they're rooted in vetted, verified, and authentic reviews."

AudioEye's inclusion in G2's Winter 2024 Reports follows its recent recognition as Best Accessibility Innovation in a SaaS Product in the international SaaS Awards.

Secure, Compliant GenAI Solution Accelerates and Democratizes Access to Rich Digital Insights

Glassbox, a leading provider of digital experience intelligence for web and mobile applications, today announced the availability of its enterprise-ready AI assistant, which the company has named GIA (Glassbox Insights Assistant). Glassbox turned to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, which hosts OpenAI models fully within the secure Azure environment, to elevate the security and privacy standards of its previously announced AI assistant. In combination with Glassbox’s patented data privacy measures, users of the AI assistant can be confident that the conversational interface is protected with the level of rigor they expect from both Microsoft and Glassbox.

“We developed the AI assistant earlier based on OpenAI’s GPT model. However, our commitment to responsible AI and our exacting security, data privacy and compliance standards compelled us to turn to the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service for its additional protections for potentially sensitive data shared or accessed through the new generative AI (GenAI) interface,” said Glassbox co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Yaron Gueta. “GIA sets a new bar for what organizations should expect of GenAI solutions from their software providers.”

Glassbox captures millions or billions of digital experience data points for each of its customers every month that give them the richest possible set of data about their digital customer experience. GIA allows Glassbox users to uncover deep digital insights quickly and without technical knowledge or reliance on data and analytics teams.

“Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service is ideal for companies like Glassbox that need to deliver enterprise-grade GenAI solutions based on vast, proprietary datasets,” added John Montgomery, CVP, Azure AI at Microsoft. “By using the power of our generative AI capabilities, Glassbox’s AI assistant can deliver a better experience to customers with the security measures of Azure.”

With Gartner predicting that more than half of all successful technology solutions will be delivered to “nontraditional” buyers outside of IT by 2025, one of the pillars of Glassbox’s AI strategy is to make its unparalleled set of digital experience data more actionable, more quickly by more users for greater business impact. GIA is central to this strategy as Glassbox shifts increasingly towards natural language interfaces.

The use of GenAI to unlock digital insights is also a key step in realizing Glassbox’s Autonomous CX vision, which promises to revolutionize the customer experience domain by making digital experiences fully self-optimizing.

GIA is immediately available within the Glassbox digital experience intelligence platform when deployed in a customer’s preferred cloud environment.

Vbrick, the leading end-to-end enterprise video solutions provider, unveiled several new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities within its video platform in general availability today. Adding to its existing suite, Vbrick’s new AI transforms content management at scale, automates tasks, improves accessibility, and simplifies processes across the enterprise.

In the fast-evolving landscape of digital communication, video has become an indispensable tool for businesses. However, with the exponential rise in video content, from expertly produced training videos and company townhalls to user-created how-to videos and meeting recordings, effectively navigating through vast libraries and ensuring easy access to the right content poses a significant challenge.

Vbrick’s AI-powered enterprise video platform (EVP) transforms how organizations manage, share, and derive value from their video assets, enhancing accessibility, efficiency, and productivity for both content contributors and viewers alike. Building on Vbrick’s existing AI-powered transcription, translation, and user tagging features, new AI capabilities include:

Video Assistant: Powered by generative AI, Video Assistant extracts key insights from video content using transcripts. Users can increase productivity while posing specific questions to the assistant and receiving real-time responses about the video content.

Summarization: Utilizing generative AI, Summarization allows video owners to automatically create video descriptions based on the video transcript. This not only saves time but also enhances search functionality, simplifies content discovery, and improves video metadata.

Content Intelligence: Leveraging AI and natural language processing, Content Intelligence reviews videos to gain actionable insights instantly. This feature allows moderation of video content for high-value or sensitive material, delivery of personalized video recommendations, and tracking and analysis of video content trends.

Smart Search: Revolutionizing search capabilities with intelligent algorithms that identify concepts, not just keywords, Smart Search leverages vectorized metadata and machine learning to ensure more precise search results, quickly surfacing the most relevant content, interpreting context and intent behind searches, and accommodating diverse search behaviors.

“The totality of an organization’s video content is a treasure trove of unused value,” said Paul Sparta, Vbrick Chairman and CEO. “Vbrick’s EVP first federates video content, then, our video AI distills the value from the video and makes it consumable and available to the appropriate business process, providing enterprises with the capability to address the rapidly accelerating growth of video in the modern day.”

Vbrick caters specifically to enterprise organizations, some of which have amassed video libraries exceeding 500 terabytes, stored securely in Vbrick’s intelligent cloud platform. With additional native video creation, eCDN distribution, live streaming, integrations, and analytic capabilities, Vbrick’s platform serves as the centralized, secure hub for all video activity within the enterprise.

“With video content aggregated in the Vbrick platform, organizations can truly begin to unlock the value of video by streamlining content discovery, automating tasks, and promoting global accessibility, all while providing an engaging experience for the entire enterprise,” said Sparta.

Confirms Technology Can Work Around Google’s Latest Privacy Changes

In the wake of Google's phase out of third-party cookies starting in January 2024, Inuvo, Inc., a leading provider of marketing technology, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that serves brands and agencies, has announced its continued commitment to a cookieless future with its IntentKey AI, outlining the ways its technology can already work around Google’s changes.

IntentKey, powered by a large language model, creates cookieless audience models by leveraging over 25 million AI-identified concepts that represent consumer intent signals across the web. These concepts are used to understand why an audience is interested in a product and why URLs are visited. IntentKey models help marketers reach their audiences in today’s post-cookie landscape.

"Google’s fast timeline, closing cookies by the end of 2024, has caught some marketers off guard, but Inuvo has been preparing for a while. IntentKey can align, predict, and activate audiences across platforms without relying on cookies or other trackers,” said Inuvo CEO Richard Howe. “As the industry moves rapidly toward a cookieless reality, IntentKey stands ready to power more relevant digital experiences through ethical data practices and intended audiences - not identity-based audiences."

Featuring Non-Personal Identifying Information (NPII) that maintains consumer privacy and prevents personal data exposure, IntentKey enables brands to securely connect with high-intent audiences in the moment audiences signal readiness to engage. This approach eliminates the need for cookies to create audience models. IntentKey has delivered performance that beats incumbent media by up to 67%.

With the demise of the third-party cookie in 2024, led by Google and Apple, IntentKey stands ready to power the next generation of digital marketing through privacy-forward, cookieless audience models that provide both faster and more accurate audience targeting capabilities to drive results.

Accenture has entered into an agreement to acquire Navisite, a digital transformation and managed services provider. The addition of Navisite will bolster and scale Accenture’s application and infrastructure managed services capabilities to help clients across North America modernize their IT for the AI era. The terms of the acquisition from private equity investment firm Madison Dearborn Partners were not disclosed.

Based in Andover, MA, Navisite’s team of approximately 1,500 people will join Accenture’s Infrastructure Engineering practice dedicated to helping clients accelerate their cloud transformations and build a strong digital core. With more than 400 cloud engineers, who hold more than 2,000 certifications, Navisite has deep experience across multiple cloud providers, enterprise applications and digital technologies, serving clients in sectors like technology, business services, healthcare, life sciences and manufacturing.

“Our clients feel a sense of urgency to modernize their enterprise and they continue to call on Accenture for help in critical areas where we excel,” said Manish Sharma, CEO of Accenture North America. “With skills steeped in cloud, infrastructure and application services, Navisite’s talented team expands our ability to help clients embrace new technologies and ways of working, to unlock the next-level of business reinvention.”

“Most enterprise IT environments are not ready for the demands of the AI era,” said Karthik Narain, group chief executive, Accenture Technology. “Adding Navisite means we can more quickly help clients ‘run to the new’ modernizing at speed while they operate efficiently, through Accenture’s innovation-focused managed services.”

“Through the hard work and dedication of our teams, we have been a trusted digital transformation partner for growing and established global brands. Accenture is the ideal partner for Navisite’s next chapter as we expand and enhance our client service offering to drive our growth, while creating exciting new opportunities for our people,” said Mark Clayman, Chief Executive Officer of Navisite. “Together with Accenture, we will be well-positioned to scale our services and deliver practical guidance for clients seeking to modernize and build more agile, resilient, and expanding businesses.”

UiPath, a leading enterprise automation software company, today announced the appointment of Rob Enslin, UiPath Co-Chief Executive Officer, and June Yang to its Board of Directors effective February 1, 2024. Enslin joined UiPath as Co-CEO in April 2022 following leadership roles at Google Cloud and SAP; he will assume the role of UiPath CEO on Feb. 1, 2024. Yang is a proven strategic and transformational executive who brings decades of experience in corporate management and fostering emerging technologies.

Yang has served in executive roles at multiple Fortune 500 companies. Most recently, she was Vice President, Cloud AI and Industry Solutions at Google Cloud. Previously, she worked as Vice President and General Manager, Compute and Machine Learning Infrastructure at Google Cloud and held senior leadership roles at VMware and Oracle. Yang serves on the Board of Directors at SRS Distribution, one of the largest and fastest growing building products distributors in the United States, and Cradles to Crayons, a nonprofit for children in need. She earned a Master of Science in Management from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Caltech.

“We are pleased to welcome Rob and June to our Board of Directors,” said Daniel Dines, Chairman of the Board and Co-Chief Executive Officer at UiPath. “I believe that Rob’s strong track record of driving long-term value creation at UiPath and June’s expertise in AI, cloud, and related technologies will be invaluable to the UiPath Board of Directors as we continue to grow our market leadership. Our mission is to accelerate our customers’ ability to achieve business outcomes through our AI-powered business automation platform.”

“I believe UiPath is uniquely positioned to transform businesses worldwide by operationalizing AI with the intelligence of a holistic automation platform,” said June Yang, UiPath Board appointee. “I look forward to collaborating with the Board to help the company deliver tangible results for customers and sustain long-term shareholder value.”

“I am delighted to join the UiPath Board of Directors alongside June, whose extensive experience aligns well with our mission to revolutionize industries with AI-powered automation,” said Rob Enslin, Co-CEO at UiPath.

Adaptiva, a global leader in autonomous endpoint management, today announced that Anne Baker has returned to the company, where she previously served as vice president of product management and marketing, to now head marketing initiatives worldwide. As chief marketing officer, Baker will lead growth programs and drive market awareness for how Adaptiva’s autonomous endpoint management products will significantly accelerate IT efficiency and reduce risk by speeding the continuous delivery of software, patches, and vulnerability remediations.

“We are thrilled to have Anne back at Adaptiva. She is a brilliant marketer who brings a deep understanding of the endpoint management and security landscape. Anne’s uniquely authentic voice is perfect for us to communicate the capabilities of our OneSite platform and products and showcase why they are essential to enterprises who want to automate and simplify their IT environments,” said Adaptiva CEO and founder Dr. Deepak Kumar.

Baker has more than 25 years of technology marketing experience at high-growth companies. Prior to Adaptiva, she was head of worldwide partner programs at multibillion-dollar analytics and AI company Teradata where she drove go-to-market activities with AWS, Google, and Microsoft as well as the hundreds of partners in the Teradata ecosystem. Baker also served as general manager of partner marketing at the AI-powered contract intelligence company Icertis where she led the global partner marketing team that spearheaded co-marketing campaigns with companies including Accenture, Adobe, Deloitte, Microsoft, and SAP.

“The time was right for me to return to Adaptiva as the company leads its hundreds of enterprise customers into the new era of autonomous endpoint management,” said Baker. “With security threats emerging daily and zero-day attacks increasingly taking advantage of unfixed vulnerabilities, IT and security leaders need endpoint management platforms that can continuously adapt to changing conditions. Adaptiva’s rapid product innovation and unparalleled commitment to customer service sets the company apart in the industry and is something I look forward to showcasing in 2024 and beyond.”

Baker holds a mechanical engineering degree from Cornell University and an MBA from Seattle University. She is also an investor in MXW Ventures, a movie production fund dedicated to driving influential impact and promoting diverse representation and inclusivity in Hollywood. Her work has earned her numerous campaign and partner of the year awards and recognition as one of the “100 Top Women in Seattle Technology” by the Puget Sound Business Journal.