Accessibility at Sessionboard

Sessionboard builds and tests the product to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, level AA. That covers what your audience uses: your Sites and portals, submission and registration forms, the review portal, content galleries, embedded widgets, and the emails and PDFs Sessionboard sends. It also covers the admin your team works in. This page covers what the product does for you, what to check in the content you add, and how to reach us about accessibility.

Why use it

Many associations, universities, medical societies and public bodies have to show that their call for proposals, registration and on-demand content work for people with disabilities. Sessionboard does most of that work for you. Forms, portals and players work with a keyboard and a screen reader, your brand colours stay readable, and the emails and PDFs are structured for assistive technology. What’s left is the content only you can describe, such as image descriptions and captions. Sessionboard prompts you for those too.

What your audience gets

These apply to speakers, submitters, reviewers, registrants, attendees and visitors to your Sites.

Keyboard use. Every form, portal page, dialog and widget works with Tab, Shift+Tab, the arrow keys, Space, Enter and Escape. A skip link jumps to the main content. When a dialog closes, focus goes back to the button that opened it.
Screen readers. Each question reads its label, help text, error and whether it is required. On a form with errors, focus moves to a summary that links to each question. Page changes, search results and saved states are announced.
Your colours, kept readable. Text drawn over your brand colours (buttons, the top menu, track chips, badges) switches to white or black, whichever reads better. Your colour itself never changes.
Phones and zoom. Pages fit a 320-pixel-wide screen and 400% browser zoom without scrolling sideways.
Languages. Pages set their language, so screen readers pronounce them correctly. Translated text is marked with its own language.
Captions and transcripts. Video and audio players show the captions you add or generate, with a link to the transcript and, when you upload one, a Described transcript. See Captions and transcripts.
Emails. System emails set their language and fit a phone screen. Button text stays readable on your brand colour, and links are underlined. Every logo names its sender.
PDFs. Receipts, invoices, statements, certificates, badges, ePosters and report PDFs are tagged. Each has a title, a language, headings and table headers, so screen readers can navigate them.

What your team gets in the admin

No drag required. Anything you can drag also has a control that does the same thing:
- Form builder questions have Move up and Move down in each question’s menu.
- Each session in the agenda’s sessions panel has Schedule…, where you pick the day, start time, length and room. See Agenda.
- In lists, each column-header menu has Wider column, Narrower column and Reset width.
Charts. Every chart has a text summary and View data as table, which shows the values behind it.
Single-key shortcuts. Some pages use letter and number keys as shortcuts. If you use speech input or press keys by accident, turn them off under Account Settings > Accessibility > Single-key shortcuts. The setting is saved in your browser.
Messages that wait. A message with an action in it, such as Undo, stays on screen until you use it or close it.

What to check in your content

Sessionboard can’t write descriptions of your images or captions for your recordings, but it asks for them where you add them:

Images on your Site. Give every image Alt text, or tick Decorative image when it only decorates. The Site builder flags images that have neither, and lists them when you publish. See Site builder.
Emails. Campaign, email theme and system email editors list accessibility suggestions: images without alt text, links with unclear text, low-contrast text and skipped heading levels. See Email campaigns.
Videos. Add or generate captions for every recording you publish. When you publish a content gallery that holds a video with no captions, Sessionboard lists the video so you can add them first. See Captions and transcripts.
Colours. Colour pickers for Sites, embeds, galleries, forms and emails show a contrast hint, for example “Button text on this colour: 5.2:1 — readable.” When a colour is too light for small text, the hint says so.
Submitters’ images. When a speaker or applicant puts an image in a rich-text answer without a description, the form shows Describe images. In that dialog they describe each image or mark it decorative. It never stops them from saving.

Accessibility Conformance Report (VPAT)

Our Accessibility Conformance Report, based on the VPAT template for WCAG 2.2, is available on request for procurement and accessibility reviews. Email support@sessionboard.com and ask for the Accessibility Conformance Report.

Report an accessibility problem

If you, a speaker or an attendee runs into something that doesn’t work with a keyboard, screen reader or other assistive technology, email support@sessionboard.com. It helps to include:

The page address, or the form, portal or email it happened in.
What you were trying to do, and what happened instead.
The assistive technology and browser in use, for example NVDA with Firefox or VoiceOver with Safari.
A screenshot or recording, if you have one.

We treat accessibility problems as bugs.