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Google Apps Beats Office 365 For US Dept. of the Interior Contract
angry tapir writes "The U.S. Department of the Interior has picked Google Apps to provide cloud-based email and collaboration applications to about 90,000 staffers, choosing Google's services over Microsoft's Office 365. Google had sued the U.S. agency in 2010, claiming its requirements for the contract tilted the scales unfairly toward Microsoft. Google eventually dropped its lawsuit last September."
The lesson here is that modern software should be accessible. Google invested a lot of resources over the past few years to revamp their collaboration suite. The Docs/Drive interface which we all see is just one example. Take a look at the source code beneath. They've coded up ARIA, they've done appropriate testing for keyboard and focus management. Essentially, they followed WCAG2. Funny thing is that it took some embarrassing incidents years ago to get them on this path.
You want another example of how important making usability a focus of software is? Take a look at Apple -- their iPad's accessibility features are far better than those packed into Android tablets. Look at the mobile space: Blackberry thinks a11y is important but not important enough to make it a focus; Google thinks a11y is important but not enough to catch up with Apple. Guess who gets the perks there?
Microsoft certainly thinks a11y is important and as a result they've been the only choice for agencies for a long time. Anyway... that's the lesson.