Verint firmly believes that web and software experiences should be accessible for everyone, regardless of abilities or impairments. This guide will help ensure that your product or web experience meets or exceeds the standards for accessibility.
Components and Accessibility
Our components are committed to following and complying with best practices when it comes to accessibility. All components follow the WCAG AA, Section 508 and European standards. Our goals are to be perceivable, operable, and understandable to users, even when using a screen reader or other assistive technology. Accessible design not only helps users with disabilities; it provides better user experiences for everyone.
Main Categories of Disabilities
Blind Users
How they experience an interface
- May use a screen reader to experience interfaces
- May rely on Braille output
- Cannot be expected to use a pointer or mouse for input
What designers should think about
- Is visual information translated effectively into text? Can the image be understood through its metadata alone?
- When possible, test all designs through a screen reader.
How this applies to everyone
- As audio-only interfaces gain popularity through devices like AI assistants, users are expecting more and more from the audio representations of experiences.
Low-Vision Users
Low vision can include partial sight in one or both eyes, and range from mild to severe. It affects 246 million people, or about 4% of the world’s population.
How they experience an interface
- May use screen readers, screen magnifiers, high contrast modes, and/or monochrome displays
- May have their browser font size adjusted to a larger setting
- May not use adaptive technology at all
What designers should think about
- Maximize the readability and visual clarity of content.
- Consider how relative proximity of information changes when a page is magnified.
- Follow our keyboard guidelines and test with a screen reader to ensure the page is read to the user in a logical order.
- To get a better understanding of the various low-vision disabilities, we recommend using the NoCoffee Chrome plugin to preview websites.
How this applies to everyone
- Users without disabilities sometimes need to view screens in poor lighting conditions. For example, imagine using a screen outside on a bright day. A higher-contrast design will make the screen more usable for everyone.
- Vision worsens gradually starting around age 40 and good contrast helps this very large demographic use your interface.
Color-Blind Users
Color-blindness affects 8% of all men and 0.4% of women.
How they experience an interface
- Will not be able to differentiate between some colors on an interface
- Rely on non-color information to use an interface
What designers should think about
- Run your design through a color-blind simulator. If the design doesn't work, try another approach. If you're working in Sketch, we recommend the Stark plugin.
- Test design's with a color-blind user where possible.
Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Users
How they experience an interface
- May rely on captioning and other alternative representations of audio
What designers should think about
- Find alternatives to conveying information exclusively with sound.
- Transcribe and caption all videos and animations that have meaningful audio.
How this applies to everyone
- All users can benefit from closed captioning. Imagine using your device in a loud environment or, alternatively, in a quiet environment when it wouldn't be appropriate to turn your sound on.
Physical Disabilities
How users with physical disabilities experience an interface
- May rely on keyboards, track balls, voice recognition and other assistive technologies to interact with an interface
- May not be able to use a mouse or other pointer
What designers should think about
- Design for good keyboard interaction, making sure all actions are keyboard accessible and efficient.
- Learn how to navigate using a keyboard and spend one day navigating the web, email, and digital products using only the keyboard.
How this applies to everyone
- Many users prefer to navigate interfaces with a keyboard and no mouse for efficiency. Good keyboard navigation can help everyone be more productive.
Global Accessibility Standards
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)'s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an effort to improve the accessibility of the World Wide Web for people of all abilities.
- Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) contributors create and maintain Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) which is the global accessibility standard.