Web content management vendor Elcom has released version 8.1 of its flagship product, the first update to the v8 system that debuted last summer.

When Elcom released version 8 last summer, it focused on its social intranet features. This time around, Elcom has focused on Web accessibility and collaboration tools. 

WCAG 2.0 Level AA Web Accessibility Compliance

International standards for Web accessibility set up by the World Wide Web Consortium include making sure content can be viewed and understood by a wide variety of ability levels. That sometimes means offering text alternatives and making everything on a website accessible by keyboard, but also making content readable and compatible with assistive technologies, for example.

Within the W3C standards are three levels of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines compliance -- A, AA and AAA. The A level is the minimum level of compliance. As an Australia based company, Elcom is obligated to be AA compliant by the end of 2014, a level it has achieved nearly two years ahead of schedule.

Task Manager, Compare Versions Updates

Elcom's W3C standards compliance is the biggest update in the v8.1 release, but there are a few other notable collaboration updates to note. The company has made enhancements to its task manager, compare versions tool and taxonomy management, and also debuted a dynamic widget library.


Elcom's task manager in v8.1 shows a centralized view for setting deadlines and maintaining progress.

As the image shows, managing tasks has been centralized in v8.1, and that means teams working on different project areas can focus on their work and not lose track of their progress. For comparing versions of a document, the process has been streamlined to just selecting the two versions and then seeing the amendments.

Like the task manager, taxonomy management in ElcomCMS has been centralized. It's been updated to give an overview that allows for reassigning or changing tags across complex categories and content structures. Finally, there is one more new piece to the v8.1 puzzle, and that is the dynamic widget library.

Dynamic widgets help pull together content on the website so it can be reused. The new widget library pulls every already created widget on the entire site into one repository. This allows for admins to modify settings and manage them as needed. ElcomCMS v 8.1 is available now and pricing is available by request.