The Accessibility Tools Framework (ACTF) was spawned by work between the IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center (HA&AC) and the IBM Tokyo Research Lab (TRL). The HA&AC's IBM Rule-based Accessibility Validation Environment (RAVEN) was originally released as free software under a temporary evaluation license on the IBM Alphaworks site in February 2006 and TRL's ADesigner tool was originally released to the same site in July 2004. These tools used similar components and, to foster collaboration and eliminate redundant work, TRL and the HA&AC formed ACTF.
The validation engine is a repackaged version of RAVEN. Its plug-ins have been restructured to allow users to select features relevant to their application development needs. Also, much refactoring of the API has taken (and continues to take) place. Work also continues to make the engine more extensible to the Eclipse plug-in developer.
Look to this section in future releases of the ACTF Validation Components for information on enhancements and fixes to prior releases.