August – WCAG Updates

Dear Publisher,

Please read our latest update regarding WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) below!

GTxcel will soon be releasing Turnstyle updates that will improve digital accessibility for people with disabilities.

As you may have heard, GTxcel is updating Turnstyle Webreader to support the WCAG guidelines at the AA level. Our goal is to make the Reading View of your content accessible to all readers, including those with disabilities who may be using assistive technologies.

What is WCAG?

WCAG guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities. The guidelines are intended for all web content developers (page authors and site designers). The primary goal of these guidelines is to promote accessibility.

For a full description of the WCAG Guidelines and more, click the link below:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/Overview

FAQ

How soon can I expect these changes?
We hope to be releasing WCAG around the beginning of September. We will notify publishers when we do so.

How will WCAG affect my production process?
The production process will remain the same. Any identified areas of non-compliance can be addressed once an issue is staged using the Article Editor tools.

Can I opt out of making any changes to my publication?
The choice to have your content be compliant is yours. Though GTxcel will provide tools to assist publishers with compliance and make every effort to ensure extracted text meets WCAG guidelines, it is ultimately the publisher’s responsibility to provide content that is WCAG compliant.

Why is it important to be WCAG Certified?
Across all industries, it is considered a best practice to ensure your content is accessible to all.  Depending on your industry, there may be legal reasons to comply with WCAG.

Here are some of the changes you can expect to see.

• Our user interface will look slightly different. There is now a tab to open and close the Table of Contents, and the Search feature now has an option to clear your search terms.

• If you are currently paying for fractional ad extraction, full page print ads will now automatically be extracted as articles. You will have the ability to re-order or delete any full page ads that are created in the Article Editor. All searchable text in full page ads and fractional ads will be accessible to screen readers.  This text can be hidden from view (default) or displayed upon request. You can preview and edit the ad descriptions in the article editor. In addition, you will now have the ability to edit fractional ads in the article editor.

If you do not currently have the fractional ad extraction option with your Turnstyle package, we recommend you consider upgrading. Contact your Account Manager for more information.

Items to consider when creating PDFs
To ensure your content is WCAG AA compliant there are certain items your design team will want to consider when creating digital content:

• Ad extraction – All content should be accessible, including advertisements.
• Images – Images that include captions and alt-text can help provide context to an end user who has a sight disability. If you do not provide image captions or alt-text with your PDFs, we will be adding alt-text so that a screen reader will have a basic description of each image.
• Text size and contrast – We recently added the ability to enlarge fonts in the article view. Contrast between text and background will also be an important consideration for designers who are committed to providing a more accessible reading experience. To read more about contrast and font sizes, please visit this link: https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-contrast.html
• WCAG Accessibility Report – With every issue we will provide you with the opportunity to generate a compliance report.  This report will outline areas of non-compliance.  It should be noted that contrast issues will not be identified through this report.

Samples of the compliance tool:
If ‘Check Accessibility” action from the main articles screen detects any issues, it will return a number in the ‘Accessibility Issues’ column.

To view the issue details and resolve them, open the article and use the article editor. Running the accessibility tool on your article will detect potential accessibility issues. If there are any issues they will be highlighted in yellow. Click on the detailed list to see them in a new window.

Stay tuned for next month’s WCAG updates!