Skilljar and Accessibility

  • Updated

At Skilljar, we strive to make our product accessible to all our users and provide an inclusive and easy-to-use experience. 

There are also many things you can do to make your training site content accessible. 

In this article, we’ll describe what accessibility is, how Skilljar works to meet accessibility guidelines, how you can make your training site accessible, and answer some frequently asked questions.

Resources

What is accessibility?

When content is accessible, any user can access, operate, and engage with our platform and content. Making Skilljar accessible means providing a training site and admin dashboard that can be used by anyone, regardless of any permanent or temporary disability. 

Examples of accessibility:

  • Creating consistent and simple-to-use navigation elements.
  • Navigation can be controlled via a keyboard.
  • Alt-text added for images.
  • Form fields have accurate labels.
  • Scalable text size for increased visibility.

Our Approach to Accessibility

How does Skilljar make my training site accessible for learners?

We strive to make our product as accessible as possible and to provide you with tools to create a training site that all learners can use, including:

  • Making all our new features meet WCAG 2.2 AA standards.
  • Auditing, cataloging, and addressing known accessibility issues on the platform.
  • Creating accessible navigation, such as ensuring all platform elements have a proper color contrast.
  • Ensuring all buttons have the appropriate markup/aria tags.

How can I make my training site accessible?

There are a number of steps you can take so your users have a positive and accessible experience. These include:

Frame 2734.png Our responsibility

Frame 2733.png Your responsibility

  1. Skilljar’s responsibility: Creating accessible navigation.
  2. Your responsibility: Formatting text for Accessibility (for example, headings).

    Example of an accessible header and text formatting in a lesson.

  3. Your responsibility: Adding alt text to images.

    Example of accessible images with alt-text in a lesson.

  4. Your responsibility: Adding captions to videos.
  5. Skilljar’s responsibility: Making sure buttons have accessible markup/aria tags.

    Example of accessible navigation buttons in a lesson.

How does Skilljar comply with web content accessibility standards? 

Skilljar is focused on accessibility and strives to meet AA web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. We’ve engaged with multiple auditors and accessibility auditing tools with our platform, and continue to prioritize improvements to meet evolving guidelines and accessibility requirements. 

In 2022, two external accessibility WCAG audits allowed us to identify and fix various issues. When audited through Google Chrome’s Lighthouse, our pages averaged an 85-92% WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility score. 

All newly added features are audited for accessibility, and we are always looking for opportunities to improve our processes and engineering practices. 

As guidelines and regulations are always evolving, here are some steps Skilljar has taken as we honor our commitment to making our site accessible for all users.

  • Actively worked to design new features and components to be in line with WCAG guidance at the time of definition.
  • Performed audits and identified accessibility issues, which we used to create accessibility bugs.
    • Two external audits on the learner platform. 
    • One external audit on the administrator dashboard.
    • Internal audits on the learner platform and administrator dashboard.
  • Triaged and worked on fixing bugs.

Is my Skilljar custom site accessible? 

In order to make a site built using custom code-compliant standards (either with WCAG or others), we recommend you work with an outside accessibility auditor. 

This auditor can tell you which segments of the site design need to be updated and what areas of your content you will need to update to be compliant. The Skilljar Technical Services team may be able to work with you in an engagement to address any platform issues that the auditor discovers. 

Does Skilljar have a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)?

Skilljar is in the process of creating a VPAT and we are currently working through known accessibility code fixes from our previous audits. The VPAT will cover the Skilljar platform itself and does not account for a customer’s content on the platform, nor does it affect the Skilljar administrator experience.

For Technical Services customers and customers with heavy code customizations on their sites, the Skilljar VPAT won’t cover any customizations. You will conduct an audit and publish your own VPAT to account for all code/customizations.

What is a VPAT?

A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is a blank template used to create accessibility conformance reports (ACR). These reports are documents detailing which parts of an information communication technology (ICT) product or service do or don’t comply with specific accessibility standards.

There are four editions of the VPAT, each corresponding to different accessibility guidelines:  VPAT WCAG Edition, VPAT 508 Edition, VPAT EU Edition, and VPAT INT Edition.

What do I do if I find an Accessibility Issue?

If you find anything on the Skilljar dashboard that is inaccessible or difficult to use with accessibility tools, please get in touch with us immediately.

Disclaimer

While Skilljar strives to improve our WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility score, we do not warrant that Skilljar is compliant with all WCAG 2.2 AA standards.

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