Accessibility features

Accessibility is a design principle rather than a set of options that the user can enable or disable. Many accessibility features are included by default in the architecture of Pega Platform applications. For example:

• Keyboard and screen reader navigation – Reach and operate any UI element by keyboard alone.
• WAI-ARIA roles – Provide additional information about your application to assistive technologies.
• Labels – Labels, placeholders, and alternative text help users understand the UI and visualize the tasks that they must complete.
• Table navigation – Optimized table layouts support WAI-ARIA keyboard navigation standards.
• Skip links – Skip links provide users with tools to navigate to the most important parts of the application.
• Error alert management – Assistive technology reads error messages and moves the focus to the field containing the error.
• PDF/UA files – Content that can be generated as PDF files can optionally be generated to comply with the accessible PDF/UA ISO standard, thus improving accessibility comprehension.

For more information on the default accessibility features available in Pega Platform, see Out-of-the-box accessibility features.

Apart from Pega Platform's default accessibility features, there is also the flexibility to change default settings to support any particular business needs. This helps by providing flexibility when building UI features, but involves more maintenance.

For more information on customization of your UI, see Custom configuration options for accessibility.

If you upgrade an application from a previous version, you must remove the PegaWAI ruleset from the list of production rulesets for the application and all of its access groups.

With the Accessibility Inspector tool, you can identify and rectify some of the accessibility issues within your application. The Accessibility Inspector is available in both App Studio and Dev Studio. For example, Accessibility Inspector includes a color confusion simulator that helps you check whether the colors that you use in your application are readable to users with color blindness.

For more information on accessibility features in Pega Platform, see the following Pega Community and Pega Academy content:

• Configuring an accessible UI
• Module: Enabling accessibility features in applications
• Reach a broader audience with new accessibility features (8.6)
• WAI-ARIA roles in a screen layout