Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Creator Studio

Zmags aims to support our clients’ creation of inclusive content. Below, please find a summary of and link to ADA guidelines, as well as information about key features you can use to create more inclusive Creator Studio Experiences. 

ADA Guidelines

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international website standards organization, developed the Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world.*

These guidelines provide a shared standard for web content accessibility and are organized under four content principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust. When you are creating content, we recommend referencing the in-depth guidelines to ensure you are maintaining compatibility site-wide. 

*Note: WCAG guidelines are not created, developed or maintained by Zmags. Please refer to the WCAG web site to track the latest updates and changes.

How Creator Studio Helps

Creator Studio features that enhance compatibility are listed below: 

• Live Text– As part of the “Understandable” principle, text should be live rather than embedded in images when possible. To create live text in Creator Studio, utilize the Text Widget. All text added via the Text Widget is discoverable by screen readers.
• Text Headings (H1-6 Tags) – To effectively convey meaning of your Experiences to disabled customers, screen readers must know the hierarchy of text displayed. To dictate priority, use the H1-H6 tags in the Text Widget. Note: This is also an optimal SEO practice as well. Read more about H1-H6 tags here.
• Alt-Text Enabled Images – WCAG recommends that all non-text content has a text alternative. To this point, Creator Studio enables you add alt-text to all uploaded images. Inputting informative image alt-text helps the impaired user understand the image content via screen readers. For more on uploading images and editing their alt text, read here.
• Widget Tab Order – In our effort to continue to make the web accessible for all, we are building a new feature to support customized tab ordering.  WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) stipulate that content must have a logical tab order for people using keyboard, or other assistive technology, to navigate.  With this release, Creator Studio users can now customize the order in which content can be navigated. More information can be found here
• Keyboard Navigation – A core focus of WCAG guidelines pertains to Operability, specifically the requirement that content is operable through a keyboard interface. Creator Studio Experiences are navigable via the Tab keyboard key. Additionally, users can use the Enter button to select desired links within an Experience.
• Language Tags – As part of both the “Understandable” and “Robust” principles, the language of a webpage must be able to be programmatically determined. To select a default language, utilize the Language selection in the editor. Language tags are able to be crawled and recognized by screen readers as well as Search Engines. 

Questions? Contact us at support@zmags.com