FTC Docs Accessibility Guidelines

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are part of a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the Internet. They are a set of recommendations for making Web content more accessible, primarily for people with disabilities—but also for all user agents, including highly limited devices, such as mobile phones.

As of December 2024, FTC Docs meets some of the WCAG success criteria, but fails at others. We have good page titles and make use of section headers to organize our content. We fail at accessible site navigation: we don’t have a skip to main content link among other problems.

Attention

I think This will be a long page. It’s a rough draft. The idea is to document from the WCAG perspective what is important and relate that to FTC Docs. The following sections are just outlines that will get filled in.

See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_-seP4lzyWeXwlTSd1wlaon35Zm-YqKZUro3rni0Ap4/edit?usp=sharing for an ADA Compliance review (which is primarily a WCAG review).

See https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z_i5QImEdU5CA1j-hBAnpV2jqXNBhC-Rx-bLb0uJnAM/edit?usp=sharing for a more detailed WCAG analysis of the 30 level A success criteria.

See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b4BjhLhSdbSScADhpJgLYIyqK69RHIxxOdXWzczOBUw/edit?usp=sharing for a proposed plan to address FTC Docs accessibility.

Principle 1 – Perceivable

Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.

FTC Docs mostly consists of web pages with text and images. It should be feasible to make most FTC Docs content perceivable to most users.

Guideline 1.1 – Text Alternatives

Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.

For FTC Docs this should be all content images, plus any user interface images (such as the dark-light theme switcher icon).

FTC Docs To Do

• All content images require Alt text. Some pages do not have alt text for images. For those page switch alt text the text should be reviewed as the alt text for many is not appropriate. For Example, a single word is not a description.

• FTC Docs needs to provide text alternatives to the theme switch icon.

• We need to fix the alt text link to the FTC Logo which says “logo”. It should read “FTC Docs Home” or just “Home” as it is a functional link to take users back to the home page.

Guideline 1.2 – Time-based Media

Provide alternatives for time-based media.

FTC Docs (and the FIRST Inspires site) make use of videos hosted on YouTube. Those videos have Closed Captioning which is good for those persons who cannot hear the persons speaking in the videos.

FTC Docs To Do

• We do not have a a Described Video narrator which would would describe the action in our videos for the visually impaired. This is more of a main FIRST Inspires website issue.

• The one video linked is the About FTC video. We’ve added a ARIA note that indicates how to start the video and offers a brief description of the video content. e.g. that students and mentors are talking about FTC (not exactly Described Video, but it does give some indication of the relevant visual content).

Guideline 1.3 – Adaptable

Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout) without losing information or structure.

FTC Docs mostly does this already. An example of this is that we have a desktop and mobile version of the web site. We also publish a PDF version of FTC Docs.

FTC Docs To Do

• We have some icons (like the theme switcher) that probably should have a visible text description. Icons alone are not good accessible user interface.

Guideline 1.4 – Distinguishable

Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background.

FTC Docs To Do

• FTC Docs uses color alone to mark links, it really needs to underline links, and provide for all the link features like Hover and Visited.

• For FTC Docs we need to review our use of color for both the light and dark themes. Grey text on dark or light backgrounds may not be of sufficient contrast for those person with vision problems. RST “Admonitions” like Notes also have contrast issues due to the colors of the background and text.

• The footer (as of Dec. 2024) also has a problem with contrast.

Principle 2 – Operable

User interface components and navigation must be operable.

This may be hard to fix in FTC Docs without changing the Sphinx or Read the Docs templates, perhaps even requiring changes to how they work. Sphinx and Read the Docs are not designed for accessibility.

Some things like link spacing and how we link to things are under our control.

FTC Docs To Do

• Do not make use of Access Keys, or make them adjustable. FTC Docs sets Next and Previous keys. We have N=next and P=prev accesskey shortcuts that can’t be modified and are active when the next previous buttons DO NOT have focus.

• The footer links are too close together, making them a touch target problem (making it more likely a person would press the wrong link by accident).

• We do not have a skip-to-main-content link. Or a way to skip or bypass the sidebar nav links.

• We link to some PDF’s without warning the user. We might need to warn/indicate links external to ftc-docs. I have been surprised a few times when links I thought would be an ftcdocs page actually took me to a PDF or to the FIRST Inspires main site.

• FTC Docs has chosen to open links to external sites in new tabs. This is done with Javascript.

  This does preserve your current location in FTC Docs and may be convenient for sighted users. This is an accessibility issue related to unexpected context switching, and creates a new browser tab that some users might have trouble noticing or closing and the back browser command doesn’t work. We mitigate this somewhat by adding an icon that indicates the link is to an external site. That can be styled with CSS and a span is added with has text that is only for screen readers to say “external”. For FTC Docs we also add “link opens in a new tab” to warn screen reader users that the link will open a new tab.

  The Persona Pages are bad for this. There are grid button links that sometimes take you to a ftc-docs page but often take you to another site with no warning. Ideally all Persona pages should link to ftc-docs pages, some of which might be Gateway Pages to the main FIRST site.

Principle 3 – Understandable

Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable.

Make text content readable and understandable.

• Insert something about plain language. See https://evolvingweb.com/blog/plain-language-guide-how-write-inclusive-digital-content-2024.

Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.

FTC Docs To Do

• Some pages (like the old Field Coordinate System page) had acronyms and excess punctuation that screen readers had trouble with. Revising the text to make it more accessible would make it more readable and understandable for all users. See the Plain Language guide.

• The sidebar is not predicable to an inexperienced user or a visually impaired person. When a link is clicked the sidebar redraws itself and grabs focus. I think the focus should be on the content of the link destination.

• We also have a weird CAPTCHA that pops up unexpectedly and with a complete context switch. I’ve noticed it in the search box. There is also a CAPTCHA related to the submit feedback form. There may not be much we can do about that except verify it works with screen readers and keyboard only users.

Principle 4 – Robust

Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. Help users avoid and correct mistakes.

This success criterion is primarily for Web authors who develop or script their own user interface components. For example, standard HTML controls already meet this success criterion when used according to specification.

FTC Docs To Do

• We probably need to change the fake buttons used in the primary grid pages to real buttons.