IBM Corp. announced the transfer of its software Accessibility Tools Framework (ACTF) donated Eclipse Foundation - a community of software with open source software (OpenSource), which aims at the development of the universal set up specialized tools that facilitate and improve the efficiency of the development and deployment software.

«We are very pleased the decision to entrust the further development of IBM platforms ACTF community Eclipse, - commented on the statement IBM Mike Milinkovich (Mike Milinkovich), the executive director of Eclipse Foundation. - «This initiative is another eloquent proof that many companies have successfully managed the development of its programs through open projects Eclipse».

Accessibility Tools Framework is a set of software tools and the «building blocks», which developed the IBM. Use this basic infrastructure, developers can easily and effectively create software tools that ensure accessibility for the disabled and users with disabilities, since developers no longer need to spend time on creating applications from scratch.

Using reusable components of ACTF and standardized API-interfaces of this basic infrastructure, developers can quickly create tools for ensuring the availability of technology, such as a means of testing applications for compliance with the requirements of the accessibility features of visualization, and alternative user interfaces for people with disabilities opportunities.

All these tools will be integrated into a full instrumental Wednesday support accessibility technologies built on a platform of Eclipse. In ACTF will support for HTML-content, open-format documents OpenDocument Format (ODF), technology Flash, graphical user interfaces applications Java (including Java Swing and Eclipse SWT), specialized API-interfaces (such as Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) and IAccessible2 ) - In order to ensure uniform, in terms of users, access to Web content and applications.

Thus, through the collective efforts of Open Source community to further optimize the platform, ACTF will swiftly and effectively build new products and initiatives in the «availability» software and IT services, helping developers in the era of Web 2.0 to respond quickly to changing technical requirements and emerging trends technology development in this direction.