The Importance Of ADA Website Accessibility Compliance

The Importance Of ADA Website Accessibility Compliance

ADA website accessibility compliance falls under the use of an ADA compliance website checklist to make your website inclusive to everyone. It prevents discrimination against people with disabilities and ensures equality in every sector. It also improves the overall usability and user experience of your websites.

Many ADA compliance companies can help you ensure ADA accessibility for your website. Without ADA accessibility, a large part of the general people fails to attain the services and features of your website. This, in turn, negatively impacts your company.

Why Your Websites Need To Be ADA Accessible
If you are new to the concept of ADA accessibility, you might be wondering about the importance of ADA website accessibility compliance. To many people, it is the feature of making websites user-friendly for the disabled and the impaired people. However, the importance of ADA accessibility goes further than that. Some of them are discussed below.

Improving Your SEO Efforts
When your website meets the ADA accessibility guidelines, screen readers can easily understand, access, and interact with the website. Websites that are ADA compliant attract these screen readers across the world. It is becoming more appealing to all users due to its user-friendly features.

This allows your website to improve its SEO efforts. As a result, search engines, screen readers, and the audience of the website interact with your website and its content more. Eventually, the SEO traffic of the website improves. This outcome is highly beneficial for the company.

Better Website Usability
The websites that are ADA accessible have the feature of assisting disabled people to attain the services of the website. Not only that, it creates an overall improvement in your website’s performance and its usability.
ADA accessibility compliance allows your websites to have better navigation. It also ensures improved functioning for all people. Everyone, including the visually impaired and people with other physical constraints, can find what they are looking for. This ultimately creates better usability for your website for all of its audience.

Complying With The Law
ADA accessibility compliance is more than a tool for making your website more user-friendly. It is an obligatory feature that your websites must contain. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act states that the websites of federal agencies must be ADA accessible.

To the 2019 Supreme Court decision, ADA compliance is required for a firm’s websites. Any company, firm, or organization can face lawsuits if their websites are not ADA accessible. So, the importance of ADA website accessibility compliance is immense. It is a means of complying with the law of the country and preventing penalties against your website.

Ensuring Brand Exposure And Awareness
Your websites need to be ADA accessible to enable brand exposure. Simultaneously, ADA accessibility compliance creates inclusion and awareness for your company. It is a means of protecting the digital rights of disabled and handicapped people.

When you design your websites in a way to be ADA compliant, you allow your brand to express its concern for the rights of impaired people. So, it ensures a notion of trust and inclusion in your company. Consequently, your company can ensure brand exposure through the means of an ADA-accessible website.

Qualifying For A Tax Credit Available
One of the most important features of an ADA-compliant website is the qualification for a tax credit. If you have an ADA-accessible website, you can qualify for a tax credit. It is a feature for you or your firm to directly deduct from the taxes that you owe.

Businesses and firms that have an ADA-accessible website can qualify for this feature. As a result, it enables your company to attain the benefits of a tax credit. This is a crucial service for many organizations and firms. Without following the ADA compliance guidelines, your firm fails to qualify for a tax credit. So, ADA website accessibility is vital.

Conclusion
The importance of ADA website accessibility compliance is immense for multiple reasons. Many ADA compliance companies can help you to ensure that your website is following the ADA website checklist.
Therefore, make sure to attain the numerous benefits of an ADA-accessible website by designing your website to be ADA compliant.

How To Design Your Website To Be Accessible To Everyone

How To Design Your Website To Be Accessible To Everyone

Imagine you are designing a website to diversify your business and attract more customers. However, you are not getting the results that you have been aiming for. A major reason behind that could be website accessibility. Luckily, there are many web accessibility companies out there that design websites and conduct web accessibility audits to help people with these issues.

With the rapid digitalization across the world, websites are now an integral part of any business, firm, or organization. Thus, your websites need to be accessible to everyone. Otherwise, you might end up losing a large share of your revenue.

Important Steps To Make Your Website Accessible
Many of us may be unaware of the steps and procedures for making our websites easily accessible to everyone. It allows people with disabilities and physical restraints to have a user-friendly experience with the website.
There are multiple steps to make your website accessible to everyone. Some of the most important ones are given as follows.

Keeping The Website Keyboard Friendly
In simple words, keeping the website keyboard-friendly means that the website is accessible without the use of a mouse. Many assistive technologies for people with disabilities are majorly dependent on keyboard use. So, your website must allow such users to use the website’s major features without the use of a mouse.
So, accessing all pages, links, features, and contents of your website must be keyboard-friendly. Make sure to break down the long pages into multiple sections with anchor links. Allow a “Skip to main content” option on your website to keep it keyboard-friendly. These are a few of the many ways you can keep your website keyboard-friendly.

ADA Compliance For Websites
To make your website easily accessible to everyone, you must follow the ADA compliance guidelines. ADA compliance stands for Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design. It is a list of guidelines and procedures to follow while designing your websites. Making your websites ADA compliant allows disabled people to have easy access to your website.

You must follow the guidelines and checklist of ADA compliance when you are designing your websites. This should be equally followed by all public and private organizations, businesses, and service providers. Thus, you can ensure a better user experience and easy accessibility to your websites.

Making Dynamic Content Accessible
By dynamic content, we refer to the content of a page that can change or be updated without reloading that page. When a website has dynamic content, it means that there are frequent shifts or updates to that content. So, the designers need to make sure that the dynamic content is easily and smoothly accessible by everyone.

To make dynamic content accessible on your websites, you can add multiple assistive tools to the website. As a result, the user will not miss the content or face difficulties reaching it. The assistive tools may include ARIA roles and alerts. You can also make sure that videos are accessible by keyboard and do not auto-play. Thus, you can make dynamic content accessible.

Include Proper Alt Text For Images
Alt texts are an essential part of a website with images. It provides an easy explanation of the message of an image used on the website. For screen reader users, it is a vital feature. Especially when it comes to multiple images and infographics, alt texts are very important. It is one of the most important components of making your website accessible to everyone.

When you are creating an alt text, make sure that you are using basic and simple explanations. So, the users will understand the message conveyed by the image without difficulty. At the same time, if there is text included in the image, make sure to include those words in your alt text. It is a vital part of making your websites easily accessible.

What Happens If You Do Not Follow The Website Accessibility Guidelines
Website accessibility guidelines are constructed in a way to allow disabled people, people with injuries, and many other physical constraints to have easy access to your websites. Without these features, your website becomes complex and inaccessible. The target audience and customers struggle to access your content. So, the purpose of the website becomes futile.

So, it is immensely important that your website follows the accessibility guidelines. In that way, you can create a better experience for your audience. General people, irrespective of their disability or impairment, will be able to access your website and all its contents.

Here’s A Quick Way To Solve Web Accessibility Remediation

Here’s A Quick Way To Solve Web Accessibility Remediation

Website accessibility remediation is a term that can appear to be complicated and intimidating. You’ve probably encountered some video game professionals or expert Google employees who use it in their conversations but have no idea what it means.

Simply put, it defines a simple idea: the procedure for ensuring that everyone, regardless of any impairment, can visit your site without any issues. In other words, remediating difficulties with online accessibility also entails ensuring compliance with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, among others.

These laws mandate organizations to accommodate disabled individuals in a fair manner. If you wish to know more about this topic before consulting an ADA accessibility company, keep reading!

Why Does Web Accessibility Remediation Matter?

Eliminating obstacles to accessibility for those with disabilities is referred to as website accessibility remediation. If your website satisfies all WCAG requirements, you are successful in remedying it in the digital world. There are four key reasons why web accessibility remediation is so necessary. They are 0

1. Promotes Equality
One widespread misconception most have is that website accessibility guidelines are only for visually or hard of hearing people. However, around 1 billion people worldwide have some form of disability, and there are many different ways for them to access the internet.
By concentrating on four key principles, accessible websites provide a better user experience for all users: content should be operable, understandable, perceivable, and reliable. Your website or mobile app can have a much wider audience and promote if you take an accessible stance. You wouldn’t need to make any technological adjustments for every way people access your content.

2. Promotes User-Friendly Experience
We can improve usability and frequently produce a more enhanced user experience when we take accessibility into account when designing our online content. Online content that complies with accessibility standards is more user-friendly overall. Accessible design can also benefit people without disabilities, especially if they find themselves in constrained circumstances like:
● When watching a noisy or quiet video, read the captions.
● In a bright or dark room, adjusting the screen’s brightness
● Reading a presentation’s transcript to reaffirm the lessons learned
● When the mouse is not functioning, navigating the site using a keyboard

3. Legal And Moral Obligation
Laws and regulations in numerous nations mandate website accessibility. It would still be valuable even if those laws didn’t exist, but many companies have started prioritizing users with disabilities to stay out of trouble. Some prominent laws requiring digital accessibility include –
● The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of the United States and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (AODA).
● Web Accessibility Directive and European Accessibility Act of the European Union (EAA).

How To Design Your Website To Follow Website Accessibility Remediation?

It is critical to design your website to be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. If you want to make your website accessible to everyone regardless of their abilities, follow the simple guidelines below –

1. Check Whether Your Website Supports Keyboard Navigation.
Keyboard navigation is one of the main pillars of developing an accessible website. Users should have the option to navigate your website without using a mouse for the site to be considered accessible.
Many assistive technologies rely on keyboard-only navigation. So you must ensure that users can browse and navigate your website with a keyboard, including going to pages, clicking links, and others.

2. Incorporate High-contrast Colors

Many users have visual impairments and may have difficulty reading texts if the color contrast is low. As a result, it’s best to use highly-contrasting colors like black and red or black and white.
The color contrast on your site should ensure that everything on your website is distinguishable. For example, the text should be prominent rather than disappear into the background.

3. Provide Alt Text
If you use an image, video, or audio content on your website, you should include alternative or alt text to describe the content. Alt text can help any visiting user understand your website’s content even if they cannot see it properly using assistive technologies.
Another advantage of using alt text is that it can help your website rank higher in search engines. Additionally, it helps those who are browsing your website with a slow website.

4. Structure and Organize Content Using Heading Hierarchies.
It is possible to make your content easier to read by dividing it into smaller sections. Using lists and headlines to organize all the info on your pages can help improve web accessibility.
Clear headings can assist screen readers in comprehending and interpreting your pages. Headlines also aid in-page navigation and allow users who use assistive technologies to browse your page’s content.

What Is the Best Way To Solve Web Accessibility Remediation?
Occasionally, there are multiple ways to deal with an accessibility issue. Every possible solution might be WCAG compliant. But one might offer a better user experience for people with disabilities or lower development costs by keeping your code simple.
The simplest solution might be the best option, but you must always consider actual users’ experiences. You can assess each problem and develop the best solution with the aid of an accessibility partner with experience. Hiring an expert for this job would be your best bet to find the easiest and most reliable solution to web accessibility remediation.

Conclusion
Everything can seem too complex if you’ve been searching for a web accessibility remediation solution for your website but don’t know where to start. So we provided a simple guide for you to get started before you decide to seek help from a professional ADA accessibility company.
We hope the article gives you a clear idea about where to start. Thanks for reading till now.

Advantages To Hiring The Best Web Accessibility Company

Advantages To Hiring The Best Web Accessibility Company

Since the internet is now our primary source of support and there are increasing concerns about accessibility, online accessibility is one of the fundamental elements. So, if your website is not geared up yet, web accessibility remediation is critical. And for that, you may need the help of the best web accessibility company.

A good web accessibility company can ensure your website remains fool-proof in terms of being universally accessible. Making refinements and educated decisions, transparency in opinions, and updated knowledge make them essential to your site’s development. Using any subpar company’s help may make the site fall short and cause your loss.

So, to ensure you get the best service possible, the best company is worth the shot. Let’s explore web accessibility and why you should only go for the best service.

The Importance Of Web Accessibility
Web accessibility is the set of features that make the user experience of a website more accessible. In other words, your website becomes universally accessible due to web accessibility. Consequently, more people can use your website, helping you and the users by driving new audiences to it.

While ensuring accessibility may seem like a task to finish efficiently, it requires experience and attention. An accessible website should let any user use it without running into a problem. Whether the user is non-disabled or disabled, it should not matter since the accessible web page will provide the tools they need to utilize the website.

When the channels are open for every user to use your website effortlessly, it is easy to say the site’s appeal will increase. Current search engine system algorithms prioritize an accessible website over a less accessible one. So, suppose your website is not catering to a new demographic already. In that case, Google and other search engines will ensure it pops up more often.

Why Should You Hire the Best Web Accessibility Company?

Companies that work specifically on web accessibility and accessibility remediation have the resources to optimize your site as well as possible. Now, there can be degrees to how much they can do for your website. It depends on experience and the available resources. Since you want your website to be 100% accessible, only the best web accessibility company should work on it.

Here are some advantages of consulting with a web accessibility service with the best profile.

Experience
Experience is the most crucial concern in any service – especially in ensuring accessibility. Any well-experienced web accessibility company will ensure IAAP certification, familiarity with niche user experience tools, and reliable work.

The best web accessibility service will have technically trained professionals down to a T and take their job to heart. However, you will not have to wonder whether they are prepared enough to handle your website. They will know where to fix and refine it without your extensive guidance.

Testing Tools And Resources
Every accessibility service needs equipment to test and prove that the accessibility remediation has worked. With better services, you can rely on them to have top-notch accessibility tools and a dedication to meeting their standards.

Aside from automated testing tools, they also work on functional testing. Functional testing is the first-hand experience of a disabled person using your website. Since functional testing is hard to arrange and manage, only dedicated and trustworthy web accessibility services invest their time.

Expert Opinions
When you are working on making the user’s experience better, it is critical to consider all opinions. Not only are your opinions important, but so are the consultants’ views—and most significantly, those of the disabled users.
The best web accessibility services consider all opinions and work on accessibility, layout, and a neat experience for every user. Therefore, your website does not have to be flat or generic to only make room for accessibility — it will also give a pleasant experience.

Updated Features And Packages
The best web accessibility services offer comprehensive packages that ensure you do not have to worry about any part of the project going amiss. You can choose packages with more updated features in terms of accessibility tools and extra bits according to your budget.

While subpar services may compromise on up-to-date features, the better ones will not. They understand the need for the highest accessibility possible for a website and will make it so.

Conclusion
Web accessibility remediation services offer clients some of the most critical web development services. Hence, research and choose the best web accessibility company for optimizing your website.

ADA Website Compliance Checklist 2022: Everything You Need to Know

ADA Website Compliance Checklist 2022: Everything You Need to Know

The ADA compliance website checklist is something all business owners need to follow. And although there are many good reasons for it, two of them matter most. First, you want to ensure people with disabilities can access your site the same way as their peers. And second, you won’t get sued.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been in effect for more than 30 years. Yet, it doesn’t state a strict list of elements. But the rule is simple- a blind or deaf person should find help navigating your site. To make that possible, web admins use various methods- alt tags, screen reader, voice help, and such.

Failure to follow the Americans with Disabilities Act can result in a lawsuit for the owner. Plus, it makes your business look unprofessional and insincere towards a certain group. So, read on to know how you can make your website ADA compliant.

Introduction To Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

ADA for websites became relevant in 2010. That year, the justice department passed the ADA Standards for Accessible Design. Before that, ADA compliance was mandatory for public transport and buildings only. For example, public buildings have sloping staircases compatible with wheelchairs. And elevators have braille imprints on the keys, etc.

But, after 2010, this extended to the realm of electric and information technology. According to the act, if you have a business under Title 1 and Title 3, you must create an ADA-compliant website.

Businesses under Title 1 use at least 15 full-time staff and conduct business 20 or more weeks a year. Title 3 businesses are the ‘Public Accommodations.’ Such as hotels or banks.

So, if you own either of these businesses, you must ensure they follow ADA. Otherwise, your might face legal consequences.

The ADA defines businesses under Title 1 and 3. Other than that, there isn’t a strict ADA compliance website checklist. So, web admins use common knowledge and experience. For example, you can use specific WordPress plug-ins to increase WordPress ADA compliance.

So, a law-defined ADA compliance website checklist is not available. But web admins can use a general set of requirements as a reference point. You can follow these to create an ADA-compliant website. Learn about them in the discussion below.

ADA Compliance Checklist For Websites

You must make your website operable, perceivable, and understandable to all users. Plus, you have to make sure it runs on all the different kinds of devices available. And that’s the basis of ADA for websites. Now, let’s look at the ways to establish them.

Navigation: Most websites focus on mouse navigation. But people with disabilities often find it hard to operate a website with a mouse. So, as a webmaster, you must focus on making your website operable through the keyboard.

Alt Tags: The content on your website contain lots of images. And a disabled person will not be able to view them like the general population. So, it would help if you created ‘Alt Tags’ for them. These tags will describe the content via text or speech for the people who cannot view them. Plus, it also helps with SEO.

Text Transcripts: A deaf person cannot hear your website’s video and audio files. So, it would help if you created text transcripts for these contents. As a result, the disabled person can still enjoy the benefit of your content.

Consistent layout: Make sure the layout of your website is well-organized. That means a clear distinction between the various elements on your web page. For example, menus, options, links, call-to-action-buttons, and others. Users should not have difficulty differentiating between these essential elements on your website.

Avoid flashing content: Some videos and GIF images flash or use sudden jolts of bright light. And these can elicit epileptic reactions in some people. So, avoid any content that flashes more than three times in one second.

WordPress ADA Compliance: You can use various plug-ins to increase WordPress ADA compliance. For instance, WP Accessibility Helper, UserWay, Accessibility Widget, and others. These plug-ins can make your WP website more usable for disabled visitors.

For an in depth analysis of the extent of ADA compliance of your website, be sure to download our ADA compliance checklist.

Conclusion

Remember, lack of compliance can land you in costly lawsuits. But that shouldn’t be the only motivation. Instead, web admins should focus on ADA compliance out of a sheer sense of responsibility towards an unfortunate group of people who require our active support

5 Tips To Make Your Website Accessible and ADA-Compliant

If you are someone who runs a business and has a website, it’s only natural for you to want more traffic on your site. To have more people interact with your content, it must be easily accessible and as inclusive as possible.

But how do you make sure that your website is ADA compliant? Read through the entire article to find out.

5 Tips For An ADA Compliant Website

To pass the accessibility test, your website must have ADA compliance, making the website accessible to everyone in a proactive way. Here are 5 tips to make your website accessible and ADA-compliant.

Audit Site Codes

Run auditing on your websites to ensure they meet all standards for ADA compliance. The audit will work as a maintenance and check for gaps that do not meet the standards set by the ADA compliance website checklist. Auditing codes will also ensure the compatibility of your website with technological activities, assistive gestures, and screen readers.

Fonts That Are Easy to Read

It is best to use fonts on your website that are easy to read and not too stylish. There aren’t any set fonts to use by ADA compliance companies; however, your fonts should not be hard for the naked eye to make out. Your fonts should also be the colors that are readable by the audience. The color of your font should contrast with the background of the interface.

Create Closed Captions and Transcripts
While posting content on your website, make use of what you offer to users who suffer from various disabilities to access information. All your transcripts must have audio so people who need visual aids can hear what’s written.
Similarly, you should also provide audio descriptions and closed captions for videos, allowing users with hearing disabilities to engage with the content on your website.

Include Alternate texting

Every image uploaded on your website should have an alternative text provided with it. This is for users to understand the images clearly and the message you are trying to deliver. If your images contain text, then that too should be included in the alternate text. This is very important for websites that use informative images.
This will help readers seeking information better understand your content, and your image searches will appear in search results when similar images are searched for.

Include Voice Recognition

When designing websites, you should always keep audiences with cognitive and neurological concerns. Your website should have the accessibility of voice recognition. There should also be options of text-to-speech functionality on your website.

Users often search up content using Google Assistance. You would wish to make information on your site reach them easily on search up.

How To Design An Accessible Website?

To design a website that is more accessible to the general public, your website needs to have a user-friendly interface. It must offer ease of accessibility to people from all parts of the world. Here are a few of the suggestions you should consider when designing a website to have user accessibility.

● Offer Different language

Give options for your audience to choose when it comes to language. You may attract audiences from different parts of the world who would find it easy to read and gather information in their native language. This will help your site be more accessible all over the world.

● Offer Different Region

Users from all over the world should be able to interact with services that are compatible with their timezone. This way, your audience will not have to sit and figure out time differences between where they are and where your business is set up, making it easy for them to access data.

Making your site ADA accessible globally will help you reach out to a wider audience, resulting in more traffic to your website.

● Offer Suggestions

If your audience has a disability and is encountering input errors, your website should offer alternatives and suggestions to aid them while they are on your site looking for information and be automatically redirected to the content they are trying to navigate.

● Accessibility Using Keyboard Shortcuts

A wide audience trying to access data from your website may have mobility disabilities. They might be unable to use a trackpad or a mouse when browsing through the website. You should design a website that ensures that users with disabilities can access all information with a keyboard in a logical way.

They may scroll up and down using the directional keys on their keyboard and select items using enter. Navigation on your website should be easily accessible for all, even via a keyboard.

Conclusion

Your website should be easily accessible for people who are not only looking for information on your site but also have visual or hearing disabilities. With ADA compliance you will reach a wider set of audiences, improving your search engine results. etc.

3 ADA Web Design Tactics That Will Help You Win In 2022

According to The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), all websites must be accessible to people with disabilities. There are some accessible website development standards that almost all websites try to follow. But, adhering to the most recent ADA web design guidelines can help set your website apart,

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) set website standards that comply with the ADA. As new versions of the WCAG come in, new tactics are available for site owners to use. In the most recent WCAG update, new standards for support appear. Alternatives to media, visual ease, and language support are three new tactics to follow.

For businesses and website owners, it is important to keep your site up-to-date with ADA web design. So, let’s look at the new updates for 2022 and three ways you can upgrade your site.

ADA Web Design Tactics In 2022
Beyond the standards of ADA web design, new and innovative features are coming to help those with disabilities. Accessible websites are taking notes from the 2021 version of the WCAG. While the guidine has many new features to add to your website, some standout.

In 2022, improvements in perception and comprehension aids were seen as well. Now, your website’s users should be able to get alternative media for videos, slides, and anything with a run-time. Additionally, color contrasts and support for users to understand visual information should improve.

Language accommodations are also an essential point. Those with cognitive disabilities or issues should be able to access things on the site despite any language barrier.

These only scratch the surface of new guidelines from the WCAG, but they are essential tactics to use in your website’s design.

1. Adding Alternatives For Time-Based Media

Time-based media is any form of audio-visual media that runs for a period. For example, a 4-minute video or a 2-minute PowerPoint presentation are both time-based media. Since these items are usually pre-recorded, the WCAG suggests adding pre-recorded alternatives.

Therefore, any pre-recorded time-based media should have alternative text, alt audio, or other ways to use it. Regardless of how able your user is, they should be able to find alternative ways to access the time-based content on your website.

Here are some things to consider when adding media alternatives to your website.

● In audio, video, or mixed content – pre-recorded captions are a must
● In video or visual content, adding extended audio descriptions
● Pre-recorded sign language interpretation along with audio content

2. Adding Customizable Colors and Fonts on Essential Information
One thing that makes a huge difference in accessibility is for people to be able to adjust things for their ease. We are only familiar with high-contrast fonts and sizing changes in fonts for the disabled. But, a feature letting people adjust font contrast, colors, and sizes can make a difference in how accessible your site is.

Minimum contrasts and sizing requirements must be built into the websites for accessibility from the start. Here are some of the updated formatting guidelines from the WCAG. Following these guidelines will give you an upper hand in web accessibility.

● Maintaining a proper contrast ratio of 4:5:1 in most visual media
● Having the option of resizing any text without using any assistive tech up to 200% percent
● The essence of the information should be clearly visible, and the user can customize it according to their needs
● Background sounds can be adjusted in volume, and the user can turn it off

3. Making Language Accommodations
Language accommodation for an accessible website is not just about international languages. In fact, making the language easy to understand and customizable is also essential. There are a handful of things to consider when making language accommodations on your website.
Here are some features that you can add to your website to make it more readable for any user.

● The user can identify what language they are reading without any assistive tech and be able to translate it quickly.
● Abbreviations and unusual words should have descriptions available for those who need them.
● The user can change the reading level of the text in case of any cognitive issue or hard-to-read material.
● The website has features available to help the user identify the pronunciation of words that can mean differently depending on the context.

Conclusion
Accessible website development is getting more and more comprehensive every day. Since following ADA web design rules helps more users access your content, investing in improving its accessibility will work in your favor.

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