Digitalis’s Financial Services Partner Fred Duff Gordon helps clients to manage the online narrative around a given issue or event. He takes a few minutes out to discuss his work and some of the opportunities for his clients in a world of rapid digital and societal change.
Back in the noughties I started out in banking communications at a consultancy that specialised in corporate lending, treasury and commodity markets. We also spent a lot of time with clients in the market infrastructure space during a time of rapid growth for electronic trading venues and risk management platforms. A recurring theme was the deployment of new technology and systems for enhanced evaluation and risk management processes. I then moved to a communications consultancy providing branding and strategic communications support for investment management organisations, with a focus on alternative investors.
I joined Digitalis to help build our business in the financial services space. A major element of this is event-driven and special situations, including contested M&A, take-privates, shareholder activism and proxy contests. We help financial services organisations to manage, control and leverage the information available to stakeholders in the open source and social media environment, seeking to ensure it better reflects their business objectives, while diminishing any information risks across their operations.
Managing the availability, accuracy and sentiment of online information (including social media) relating to a business, its people, and its interests is business-critical. The prioritisation of narratives presented online can be extremely powerful in influencing opinion around contended or otherwise disputed high-value events. It’s vital that when stakeholders seek information about an issue online, they find an accurate and up-to-date representation of your business, its people and its objectives.
Digitalis’s online narrative management toolkit is invaluable in our work to address these needs across all categories of special situation and corporate event, enabling clients to regulate the searchable narratives and to reach new audiences, as well as providing powerful leverage in battles to win the debate around a contended issue.
Having spent many years in strategic communications for the financial services sector, my experience enables me to add value to our financial services clients and help them maximise their position in the online record. The combination of the team’s expertise and Digitalis’s specialised technology enables us to bring positive and differentiated results to our clients, which makes all the hard work worthwhile.
We’re seeing increased media scrutiny directed at teams and individuals involved in large deals within the financial services industry. The focus of this scrutiny is shifting towards those involved at a more personal level. Negative online sentiment and historical online activity, as well as associations and the activity of family members, are frequently used to oppose transactions or reduce support, having a damaging impact on the individuals concerned and the companies they represent. There has also been a recent increase in the levels of activism around major transactions and campaigning either to advance or block their progress.
With media scrutiny becoming ever-more aggressive and personal, it’s vital for individuals and companies to be aware of their digital footprint and to ensure information that exists about them online can withstand media scrutiny. Digitalis’s proprietary technology, combined with the team’s expertise, can help our clients to tackle these evolving threats in new and innovative ways, identifying and managing risks and enabling them to be proactive in protecting themselves and their interests for the future. One of the most enjoyable aspects of our work is developing and delivering new ways to apply the latest technology in support of clients’ evolving needs.
The universe of open-source information constitutes a critical go-to resource for real-time research, while the indexed web remains the enduring digital archive for any business and its stakeholders.
The way that this information is prioritised online influences all stakeholders, including counterparties, investors, investee companies, consultants, and employees, when undertaking informational research. In the years ahead I think we will see organisations increasingly working to regulate open-source information that relates to them and to those issues they care about most. In the meantime, a proactive approach to online reputation management, combining technology and expertise to identify and minimise threats, is vital for those working within financial services.
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We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email webrequests@digitalis.com
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to webrequests@digitalis.com