Assistive Technology and Microsoft CRM

In the last month Navint has begun to work more closely with an organization whose employee mix includes both visually impaired and blind people. Naturally, this organization's most critical requirement for a CRM solution is that it supports a variety of accessibility features. For example, can the application be fully navigated and/or accessed without a mouse? Does it work out of the box with third party screen reader applications like JAWS?

Despite Microsoft's massive investment in R&D which includes a substantial commitment to pre-built accessibility features and other assistive technologies that work with their products, the results in this area for the current version of Microsoft CRM are mixed.

On the one hand, through a combination of hotkeys and tabbing, Microsoft CRM 3.0 can be fully navigated and/or accessed without a mouse. On the other hand, Freedom Scientific - maker of the popular JAWS screen reader application - has confirmed that Microsoft CRM 3.0 does not contain the necessary scripts required for their screen reader to recognize on-screen Microsoft CRM content.

The good news is Microsoft's CRM product team is working diligently to further address these issues in Titan (Microsoft CRM 4.0) which is expected to be released sometime during Q4 2007. In fact, when we asked, this is what Microsoft said:

"We are making a significant investment in Accessibility
in Titan and have already addressed many of the issues [you have identified]. We
have been fortunate to have the invaluable help of a blind user who has been
testing out portions of the application using JAWS and a brail output device as
we work to improve it."

For more information about Microsoft's commitment to Accessibility and Assistive Technology visit here. And for specific information about how Microsoft CRM stacks against a general list of Accessibility and Assistive Technology requirements see this Voluntary Accessibility Template for Microsoft CRM.