Accessibility / Section 508 Compliance
Statement of Compliance: LearningBuilder is tested against WCAG 2.0 level AA, which is the technical standard that HHS.gov recommends for Section 508 compliance.
Except as documented below, LearningBuilder uses industry standard techniques to make functionality available to users across a wide variety of cognitive, visual, or mobility related impairments.
We are committed to ensuring that all users, regardless of disability, can effectively use LearningBuilder to meet their needs.
- 1 Accessibility Objectives
- 2 Accessibility Audits
- 3 Statements of Partial Conformance
- 3.1 Statement of Partial Conformance: Core Features
- 3.2 Statement of Partial Conformance: User-Controlled Content
- 3.3 Statement of Partial Conformance: Dynamically Generated Content
- 3.4 Statement of Partial Conformance: Error Identification
- 3.5 Statement of Partial Conformance: Error message text
- 3.6 Other Standards
Accessibility Objectives
Accessibility is an important part of LearningBuilder's mission to promote professional and vocational excellence; we do not want an inability to use the software due to disability to stand between a qualified practitioner and their ability to practice, or between a board administrator and the daily management of their program.
Our objective is to ensure that LearningBuilder's core features and common configurations are accessible and compliant with the industry standards listed above.
For peripheral features or uncommon configurations, we commit to assigning a high priority to addressing any accessibility issues reported against those features. Or in other words, if an actual user reports an inability to use one of those features, we will treat that issue with respect and will address it quickly.
We test LearningBuilder against these standards:
Additionally, in all of our feature analysis and design, we consider:
Using text in addition to imagery, to assist individuals with sighted disabilities;
Click targets and ease-of-use for individuals with manual dexterity issues.
Accessibility Audits
The latest LearningBuilder release passes automated WAVE testing in accordance with the Statements of Partial Conformance, below.
Manual audits are performed annually.
Statements of Partial Conformance
There are some known areas where LearningBuilder does not strictly meet the WCAG requirements for various reasons.
Statement of Partial Conformance: Core Features
LearningBuilder is a large and complex application and contains many "fringe" features that are used only by a small number of clients or users. We exclude some of these optional features when assessing accessibility because they do not impact the primary application experience or mainstream / common configurations.
Examples of non-core functionality include:
The "SysAdmin" area where Heuristic Solutions employees manage a LearningBuilder installation.
Workflow Attribute types that display content from 3rd party sources. (Accessibility support in these cases is the responsibility of the 3rd party, not LearningBuilder). Examples include Rich Text Editor and Vimeo Video.
Features that are only used by a small number of legacy customers, such as the full-page Learning Plan Activity Search experience.
These features are not necessarily inaccessible, they just haven't received the same degree of accessibility testing and design as the core application elements. These exclusions will be noted when reasonable to do so, and we remain committed to addressing accessibility issues in these areas if and when we receive reports that those issues affect real-world users.
Known Limitations | ||
|---|---|---|
Feature / Use Case | Accessibility Limitations | Notes |
Admins manage Role Permissions |
| Permissions are typically managed by Heuristics employees, and are rarely modified by Operators once established. |
Reflective Practice Exercise |
| The design is partially responsive; some of the features were updated with improved accessibility by the 10.10.x release audit, but full accessibility and responsive design has not been implemented yet. |
Contrast warning | Automated WAVE testing tools report that there is insufficient contrast in the standard LearningBuilder theme, specifically around menu and button text, and that users with specific color-blindness disabilities may have a hard time reading the text. | This can be addressed by enabling high contrast modes in the user's operating system. When enabled, the user's browser will respect those settings and will increase contrast on the page. We are planning to introduce a high contrast theme in the future, but do not consider this an urgent issue because of the availability of OS-level utilities to address the problem at a system level. |
Statement of Partial Conformance: User-Controlled Content
LearningBuilder is a configurable system and contains many content management features that allow administrators, both Heuristic Solutions staff as well as customer staff, to modify portions of the HTML interface.
Since we do not know in advance what that content will be, and because it is not possible to reliably prevent users from creating inaccessible or non-conforming content, we exclude user-managed content from our statements about accessibility and conformance.
It is possible for end users to create fully accessible and compliant content using in-app tools, but it is also possible to create inaccessible interfaces.
LearningBuilder clients are ultimately responsible for ensuring that their custom content is compliant and accessible.
Statement of Partial Conformance: Dynamically Generated Content
LearningBuilder contains a large number of reports, charts, and graphs. Some of these are pre-designed as part of the product, but many are designed by end users.
Because these reports and charts are dynamically generated, and because charts and reports inherently provide a way of comparing and contrasting multiple data elements, we are unable to provide textual summaries that convey the full spectrum of information as the table or chart does.
We do ensure that tables and charts use standard HTML markup, contain proper heading elements and ARIA tags, and otherwise make the table data visible to assistive technologies. However, a user that is unable to view the report or chart visually may perceive less relevant information from it than a sighted user. We believe this is beyond our ability to control without knowing the chart data in advance and manually crafting a textual summary for it.
Statement of Partial Conformance: Error Identification
The Workflow Engine, which is the primary mechanism through which Practitioners and Operators enter data into the system, identifies fields with data validation issues by naming the offending fields in messaging at the top of the form, by repeating that messaging localized to the field itself, and by visually modifying the offending field. This interface fully conforms to WCAG 3.3.1.
Other parts of the application, specifically the administration forms used by Operators and Administrators as well as the registration form and My Account area used by Practitioners, contain only the error summary at the top of the form and do not individually identify offending fields with a localized message or any visual change.
Statement of Partial Conformance: Error message text
The Workflow Engine, which is the primary mechanism through which Practitioners and Operators enter data into the system, supports user-configurable validation rules. When a validation rule fails, the offending field(s) are identified visually and are mentioned in messaging at the top of the form. This approach confirms to WCAG 3.3.1.
However, the message itself is configurable, so the configuring administrator is responsible for ensuring that the content of the message sufficiently describes and names the related field(s) in a conforming way.
Other Standards
LearningBuilder is not currently tested against standards other than WCAG 2.0 AA, which is the most commonly used standard and is very thorough. We don't believe that testing with additional tools like WAI-ARIA and IBM Web Accessibility Checklist are likely to generate additional findings worth the cost to use them.
Supported Platforms
We have tested with multiple text-to-speech utilities. If system operators report real-world accessibility issues regarding text-to-speech utilities, those defect reports will be assigned a high priority for triage and remediation analysis.