Accessibility

Widgets added support for accessibility, following W3C specs for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA. We followed WCAG specification, as this is an international standard adopted and recognized by our customers worldwide.

What is WCAG?

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities. Following these guidelines will also often make Web content more usable to users in general. WCAG relies on 4 guiding principles for building accessible UIs:

1. Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
2. Operable: User interface components and navigation must be operable.
3. Understandable: Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
4. Robust: Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Support

To ensure Widgets are accessible, we comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines. How ever, not all the Widgets meet these guidelines. The table below clearly lists the Widgets that addresses and meets the standard accessibility requirements to help assist users with vision, hearing or mobility impairments in gaining greater access to the customer support.

Plugins	WCAG Compliant
WebChat	✓
SendMessage	✓
Callback	✓
Calendar	✓
CallUs	✓
ChannelSelector	✓
ClickToCall	✓
Engage	✓
Search	✓
SideBar	✓
CoBrowse	✗
ChatDeflection	✗

Widgets meet all the WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility requirements for both Mobiles and Desktops. Some of the high level features include:

Screen reader support

Widgets are accessible via screen readers. They announce all the textual and non-textual content on the Widgets window elements, announce new chat messages sent by the Agent to the visitor and as well as the outgoing messages sent by the visitor to the Agent, reading error messages, live Estimated Wait Times automatically, etc. In order to achieve a consistent reading behavior of live data across all the screen readers and the browsers, recommended ARIA live regions have been implemented in the following:

• WebChat for reading new messages

• Callback, ClickToCall and ChannelSelector to read live Estimated Wait Time.

Widgets has been tested and verified in the following desktop environments:

Windows 10: JAWS Professional Edition Version 2020.1912.11 with Chrome and Internet Explorer 10.

Mac OS: Voice Over in macOS Sierra with Chrome and Safari.

Important

Not all the screen readers may read all the textual and non textual window functionality, there are known issues around Firefox and Internet Explorer with some screen readers. The content is read as long as the screen reader model is supported on that particular browser.