Applause and Webex have announced an expansion of their partnership aimed at improving experience and accessibility for users.
“Building on our mutual vision to enhance employee experiences, Cisco and Applause are expanding our partnership to encourage equitable collaboration for all,”
Travis Isaacs, Chief Design Officer at Webex, said.
As part of the agreement, Applause will conduct ongoing conformance assessments across additional products within the Webex Suite, ensuring alignment with evolving accessibility standards.
Ensuring Webex Remains Accessible
Applause is a digital testing and feedback company that works with companies to ensure their solutions are being optimised for customer use.
Its solutions harness community-based testing and advanced technology to ensure organisations can move quickly to release apps, devices and experiences that are consistently functional, intuitive and inclusive in any market.
Working with Webex, Applause will help with insights early in product development.
“Our ability to engage experts and end users in our community who can provide highly relevant, actionable feedback drives comprehensive quality and speed, with fewer and fewer bugs to address before launch,”
Bob Farrell, Vice President of Solution Delivery and Accessibility at Applause, said.
Yet, Applause will be working to improve things beyond general usability.
The testing company will provide ongoing conformance assessments to additional products within the Webex Suite to align with evolving accessibility standards.
Applause has already worked with Webex in helping it maintain consistent conformance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines—international standards for making web content more accessible for people with disabilities and all user agents, including highly limited devices, such as mobile phones—and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) standards across eight Webex products.
Its independent testing community spans across the globe and reaches users wielding a wide range of devices, operating systems and platform configurations.
This previous work tripled the number of Cisco Accessibility Champions who ensure inclusivity is baked into the overall product development process, and is credited with increased developer velocity and over a thousand fewer bugs to remediate.
Already, Webex has released a number of integrations into its platform to help accessibility for those differently abled.
For instance, its incorporation with Voiceitt, an AI-powered speech recognition tool, learns unique speech patterns of users with speech impediments to improve understanding in meetings.
Simultaneously, Webex’s AI-driven real-time translation capabilities are breaking down language barriers, automatically translating conversations to ensure that non-native speakers can fully participate in global meetings.
With Applause’s community sourcing, Webex’s design and engineering teams will be further able to incorporate people with disabilities into the design, testing and user experience research process without the need for additional in-house staffing.
This ensures that accessibility considerations are integrated throughout development, from initial planning and design through to testing and release.
“Helping Cisco and its iconic Webex brand make good on its commitment to inclusivity has been incredibly rewarding,” Farrell said.
What This Means for Webex
Beyond an improvement in compliance and general user accessibility, does this new expanded partnership hint at Webex potentially being tipped to release new products?
Cisco Live’s event in Amsterdam from February 9-14 is one of the parent company’s main events.
Having already announced the new AI Defense just last month, and with Webex making a new PoP in South Africa, the iron seems hot for another strike.
