Encompass Accessibility Overview

Headings play a crucial role in web accessibility. Headings provide a clear and logical structure to web content. They define the hierarchy of information on a webpage, allowing users to understand how different sections relate to each other. Screen reader users often navigate through a webpage using a list of headings. Properly structured headings allow users to quickly jump to relevant sections, making it more efficient to consume content. Clear headings also reduce cognitive load for users. In addition, headings provide visual cues that help users understand the content's context and flow, which is particularly important for long or complex pages.

Our design team’s recommendations for headings include:

Our design team will recommend defined sections on each page using HTML and ARIA regions in JAWS. Regions are known as landmarks in NVDA. Regions and landmarks allow users of assistive technologies to navigate the page more efficiently. With regions and landmarks, users can quickly understand the structure of any page in the application and easily move to the appropriate section of the page.

Regions and landmarks in Encompass include:

Anthology Encompass’s product team works continuously to implement operable features using the industry standard keyboard interactions. We consider the requirements for each component, so users can perceive and operate efficiently. Keyboard navigation patterns differ between browsers (Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Safari, Chrome), but the interactions within a specific browser are common and consistent.

The platform has a skip button mechanism to bypass blocks of content that are repeated on multiple pages, such as headers and main navigation. This allows users to jump directly to the main content area. Keyboard-only and screen reader users can avoid repeated content and navigate through the page faster. Users can tab until the keyboard focuses on the Skip to main content link that goes directly to the main content of the page. A screen reader can also present a list of links.