How to Use Our Accessibility Controls

This article is a guide to using our Accessibility controls in FastDraft.

This guide contains the following:

• Our Compliance status
• How to access our accessibility widget and controls
• Navigating the Accessibe widget
  • Accessibility profiles
  • Screen-reader and keyboard navigation
  • Customisable adjustments
    • Content Adjustments
    • Colour Adjustments
    • Orientation Adjustments
• Assistive technology and browser compatibility
• Notes, comments, and feedback

Our Compliance status

We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a platform that is accessible to the broadest possible audience, regardless of 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 our platform is accessible to blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.

Our FastDraft platform utilises various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times.

Additionally, the platform utilises an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimises its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the platform’s HTML, adapts its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.

How to access our accessibility widget and controls

We provide an accessibility widget from the main navigation that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the platform’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs. You can also open the widget by pressing Alt + 9 on your keyboard.

Navigating the Accessibe widget

At the top of the widget, you will see the following options...

Here, you can:

• Change the interface language
• Reset any applied settings
• Read our accessibility statement
• Permanently hide the interface 

Note: if you choose to hide the interface, the only way it can be restored is to clear your cache & cookies. 

Accessibility profiles

Users can choose a disability profile which will activate multiple accessibility preferences at once, saving you time. 

The profile can be applied and then tailored after-the-fact if there are certain elements you don't like.

Disabilities that are supported by our accessibility widget are:

• Seizure Safe Profile: this profile enables people with epilepsy to safely use the platform by eliminating the risk of seizures resulting from flashing or blinking animations and risky colour combinations. (Switches on Low Saturation and Stop Animations)
• Vision Impaired Profile: this profile adjusts the platform so that it is accessible to the majority of visual impairments such as Degrading Eyesight, Tunnel Vision, Cataract, Glaucoma, and others.  (Switches on Content Scaling 100%, Readable Font, and High Saturation)
• Cognitive Disability Profile: this profile provides various assistive features to help users with cognitive disabilities such as Autism, Dyslexia, CVA, and others, to focus on the essential elements more easily. (Switches on Content Scaling 30%, Highlight Titles, Highlight Links, and Stop Animations)
• ADHD Friendly Profile: this profile significantly reduces distractions and noise to help people with ADHD, and Neurodevelopmental disorders browse, read, and focus on the essential elements more easily. (Switches on Content Scaling 30%, High Saturation, Stop Animations, and Reading Mask)
• Blind Users Profile (Screen-readers): this profile adjusts the platform to be compatible with screen-readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack. A screen-reader is installed on the blind user’s computer, and this site is compatible with it.
• Keyboard Navigation Profile (Motor-Impaired): this profile enables motor-impaired persons to operate the platform using the keyboard Tab, Shift+Tab, and the Enter keys. Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.

Note: switching on Keyboard Navigation (Motor) will automatically switch on Blind Users (Screen Reader) and vice versa - see below for more information. 

Screen-reader and keyboard navigation

Our platform implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers can read, comprehend, and enjoy the platform’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters our 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 platform covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements:

Screen-reader optimisation: we run a process that learns the platform’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the platform. 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, button 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 platform’s images. It 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 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 platform. These adjustments are compatible with popular screen readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver and TalkBack.

Keyboard navigation optimisation: The background process also adjusts the platform’s HTML and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the platform operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the platform 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 content-skip menus available at any time by clicking Alt+2, or as the first element 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, not allowing the focus to drift outside. Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.

Customisable adjustments

Users can modify their UI along with their preferences. This can include font adjustments, highlighting or magnifying specific text, and alignment. 

• Font adjustments – users can increase and decrease its size, change its family (type), adjust the spacing, alignment, line height, and more.
• Colour adjustments – users can select various colour contrast profiles such as light, dark, inverted, and monochrome. Additionally, users can swap colour schemes of titles, texts, and backgrounds with over seven different colouring options.
• Animations – epileptic users can stop all running animations with the click of a button. Animations controlled by the interface include videos, GIFs, and CSS flashing transitions.
• Content highlighting – users can choose to emphasise essential elements such as links and titles. They can also choose to highlight focused or hovered elements only.
• Audio muting – users with hearing devices may experience headaches or other issues due to automatic audio playing. This option lets users mute the entire platform instantly.
• Cognitive disorders – we utilise a search engine linked to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, allowing people with cognitive disorders to decipher meanings of phrases, initials, slang, and others.
• Additional functions – we allow users to change cursor colour and size, use a printing mode, enable a virtual keyboard, and many other functions.

Content Adjustments

Colour Adjustments

Orientation Adjustments

Assistive technology and browser compatibility

We aim to support as many 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 MAC users.

Notes, comments, and feedback

Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the platform 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, 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. If you wish to contact us, please use the following email support@builtintelligence.com