Accessibility feedback

Question

Hi Owen,

Thank you for responding. I will definitely post the ideas individually. Thanks for your help.

Following are the answers to your questions:
1. The current focus indicator is blue and is barely visible next to or over darker colors. It would be great if it were an adjustable feature that allowed color and line thickness changes. It does not meet WCAG 2.2 standards, and keyboard and low vision users have a difficult time navigating because they can't see where the focus is.  Also, being able to adjust the color means that we have the ability to use a wider range of background colors. Here's what it looks like in our app:

2 & 3. There are times when link text is not sufficient to convey the meaning of the link. An example of this would be when the link is from a word in a paragraph, such as:

The music link shown above goes to a page describing the history of the music scene for the area but it would be unreasonable to use the title or description of that page as a link in the sentence. Also, it would be nice to be able to add "opens in new page" so that screen reader users are notified of that. It is not universally appealing to have "opens in new page" in text after every link.
WCAG 2.4.4 link purpose, level A objective is for users to understand what each link will do when clicked on it. A screen reader user would not have any idea that the music link (as announced by the screen reader) would bring them to a page describing the music scene.

I hope this helps clarify.

NancyAnzalone1 · Answer

Hi Owen,
I've experimented with the focus indicator color, however it still can't meet WCAG standards. Perhaps there are settings that can't help me solve my issues.

1. When I use image gallery, and tab to an image, the focus indicator does not appear on all sides of an image.

2. Also in image gallery, if the focus indicator that works for the page is dark blue (since the page background is white) then when a dark image is given focus with the dark blue focus indicator, it is barely visible because there is not enough padding between the image and the focus indicator.

3. It would be helpful if the focus indicator width was wider or adjustable.

oevans_storymaps · Answer

@NancyAnzalone1 -- Thank you for providing the additional feedback about your observations. This was helpful to better understand your comments.

Focus ring

The focus color is customizable. The primary accent color from the theme you use for your story is used for the focus ring color, and a white halo is also added to help provide contrast in different situations. The primary accent color is used because typically authors want it to have sufficient contrast with the story background color. If you'd like to adjust to a different shade of blue or a different color altogether, simply edit the theme used by your story.

We will take a look at the focus ring design to see if there are any adjustments we can make to improve the experience, but it's likely if you pick a different accent color it will improve the experience in your story.

Links

Could you provide a link to a resource about the additional link text and some best practices in this area? I did a quick search and I didn't find anything from any of the typical authoritative sources we consult on accessibility. Also, if you have an example of another content creation product that provides this ability or a website where this is implemented that you can share those would be useful for us to look at.

We are looking to make some improvements in how text and button links are displayed in terms of how they indicate that they open in a new tab. Those will likely be added in Q1 of 2024.

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Below is my previous response from the original thread here for reference:

Thank you for sharing this feedback. I would suggest that you post these ideas individually if you'd like others to vote on them. Be sure to review the ArcGIS Ideas Submission Guidelines and Statuses - Esri Community for additional guidance for the best way to share your feedback.

I have also have a few follow up questions for you:

* Can you tell us more about what modifications you'd like to make for the focus indicator? Is the color not working with your theme? Do you feel the focus ring is too thick or too thin? What impact would being able to adjust this have on your readers?

* Most sets of accessibility guidelines indicate that the link text should be sufficient to convey the purpose of a link. There are a few ways to provide additional text within a link that is only seen by screen readers, but these are not generally used or considered a best practice from our perspective. Are you doing this in other web content products? If so, can you share additional information or examples about this?

* Typically, screen reader instructions come from the screen reader software itself and are not something the web page or content can change or influence. Can you provide an example of what you mean here?

oevans_storymaps · Answer

This post was originally a comment on this idea: HTML and CSS code - Page 3 - Esri Community. Is has been moved to a new thread since the discussion topic has evolved.