Brandon Hall Group research consistently finds that one of the keys to a truly impactful learning experience is accessibility. People should be able to access learning resources when and wherever they need them. But it doesn’t end with mobile devices and digital content formats; accessibility means much more to employees with disabilities.
Docebo, a Brandon Hall Group Platinum Preferred Provider, recently announced it completed the first stage of its journey towards compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA. These guidelines were developed by the W3C to define how to make web content more accessible to people with visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning and neurological disabilities.
To summarize the initial stages of Docebo’s compliance, the company says it covered “the basics,” focusing on aligning the learner experience to the requirements outlined by WCAG.
Elements of the Docebo platform that meet the WCAG standards include:
- Login, self-registration and password-reset pages
- Login, legal documentation, such as cookie and privacy policies
- Headers and footers in the learner dashboard, including the global search and quick results features, user menu, notification and gamification panels.
Next steps will cover other learner experience components, including courses, catalogs and channels within a learner’s Docebo environment, anticipated by early 2021. It’s important to note that Docebo is focused on platform accessibility and ensuring anyone and everyone can use Docebo as a web application. This does not, however, cover content that is uploaded by a customer into their platform.
It makes sense to ensure learning content meets these standards, but many organizations must also meet these standards for compliance reasons. In fact, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes access to information and communications technologies, including the Web, as a basic human right. Accessibility supports workplace inclusion for people with disabilities as well as others, such as older people, people in rural areas and citizens of developing countries.
There is also a strong business case for learning-content accessibility. Accessibility overlaps with other best practices, such as mobile web design, device independence, multimodal interaction, usability and design for older users. To give you a sense of how complex and detailed these standards can be, consider these elements of the 2.1 AA version:
- Orientation – Content does not confine its view and operation to a single display orientation, such as portrait or landscape, unless that display orientation is essential.
- Identify Input Purpose – The purpose of each input field that collects user information can be programmatically determined.
- Reflow – Content can be presented without loss of information or functionality and without requiring horizontal or vertical scrolling.
- Non-Text Contrast – The visual presentation of interface components and graphical objects have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 against adjacent colors.
- Text Spacing – Functionality can’t be changed by changing line height, paragraph, letter or word spacing.
- Status Messages – Status messages can be programmatically determined through role or properties such that they can be presented to the user by assistive technologies without receiving focus.
Though this is a first and very important step in meeting this standard, Docebo is well on its way to making learning more accessible than ever without any development or programming from the organization side required. Docebo was already an industry leader when it came to making learning accessible and now they’ve ensured it will — in the very near future — be accessible to everyone.
–David Wentworth, Principal Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
For information on Brandon Hall Group’s research and how we can assist your organization, please visit www.brandonhall.com
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