Accessibility is not just a buzzword; it's a commitment to ensuring that everyone, regardless of their abilities, can participate fully and enjoy the benefits of your events. PheedLoop takes this commitment to heart. In this blog post, we're thrilled to announce PheedLoop's improved accessibility features, compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA, ADA (American Disabilities Act), and AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) standards. These enhancements are designed to make your events more inclusive, user-friendly, and accessible to a wider audience.

The PheedLoop Accessibility Journey

As you are aware, PheedLoop is a platform that takes accessibility seriously. We've been partnered with a leading accessibility provider for years, continually working to improve the accessibility experience for anyone using our platform. Our commitment to WCAG, ADA, and AODA compliance is unwavering. PheedLoop is built to meet accessibility compliance at the WCAG 2.1 AA level, which extends to regulations like ADA and AODA that are based on WCAG 2.1 compliance.

Many customers have leveraged PheedLoop to host exceptional events since the launch of our accessibility features. In this article, we will explore the enhanced functionalities of our Accessibility Widget integrated into various aspects of the PheedLoop platform, making it easier for event organizers to create inclusive and accessible events.

Registration

Your event's registration process is often the first point of contact for attendees, and it's essential to make this experience accessible to everyone. Our new Registration System has been live since the beginning of 2023, and we're proud to announce that accessibility features are now seamlessly integrated into the registration platform by default.

The PheedLoop registration system allows you to process registrations, ticket purchases, and sign-ups for your event. It also supports group registrations and offers a plethora of toggles and customizations for you to tailor the registration process to your specific needs.

Stakeholder Portals

To enhance the experience for all stakeholders, PheedLoop now offers improved accessibility features in various stakeholder portals, including the Exhibitor Portal, Speaker Portal, Sponsor Portal, and Member Portal. These portals are essential for your stakeholders to personalize and manage their events, such as editing their profiles, making ticket purchase edits, and tracking customer tasks.

Explore PheedLoop's Accessibility Features

Our journey towards accessibility excellence has been marked by a long-standing partnership with a leading web accessibility provider. The result is an integrated AccessiBe Widget that you can easily access. Click on the accessibility icon at the top right of any virtual event, registration page, or stakeholder portal to open the accessibility widget.

Screen Reader and Keyboard Optimization

PheedLoop's accessibility widget utilizes ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and other automated methods to optimize virtual event pages as soon as a screen reader is detected. It also ensures that keyboard navigation is seamless, supporting tab navigation and providing shortcuts for menus and headings, like pressing "M" for menus and "H" for headings.

Font Adjustments

Attendees can customize their experience by adjusting font sizes, typefaces, spacing, alignment, and more to cater to their unique preferences and needs.

Color Adjustments

PheedLoop's accessibility widget allows attendees to select from several color options and profiles. This feature increases context, inverts colors, fades out and dims colors, or even swaps colors to create an optimal viewing experience.

Animations

Animations, including GIFs, can be paused or stopped entirely, catering to attendees with epilepsy or those who find animated content distracting or discomforting.

Content Highlighting

Attendees can choose to highlight and give focus to specific content elements, including links, headings, titles, and elements with focus or hover attributes, ensuring that they can navigate and consume content with ease.

Audio Muting

For hard-of-hearing attendees or those who prefer to keep the event silent, the accessibility widget provides the option to mute content. This is particularly useful for events that incorporate captions or sign language (ASL) for accessibility.

Built-In Search

The built-in search function helps attendees with cognitive disabilities find explanations and definitions for specific phrases, words, and terms, ensuring a better understanding of event content.

Dedicated Profiles

The accessibility widget offers several built-in profiles with feature presets, catering to a range of accessibility needs. Profiles include options for Epilepsy Safe, Visually Impaired, Cognitive Disability, ADHD Friendly, Blind Users, and Keyboard Navigation.

Many More Options

Additional features, such as the ability to change cursor sizes, support for multiple languages (12), orientation adjustments, and the ability to launch virtual keyboards, further enhance the accessibility of your events.

Our Commitment

At PheedLoop, accessibility matters to us beyond meeting minimum standards. We understand that while the accessibility widget is a significant step forward, we may not be aware of all the challenges faced by those using our platform. Our commitment is to continue innovating, improving, and promptly addressing accessibility issues.

Accessibility challenges cannot be fully resolved with a single feature. We have ongoing plans to enhance accessibility, especially as events transition to hybrid formats, as we invest in and explore new technologies like virtual reality, and as we learn more about what our customers need.

Today, we celebrate with great excitement the official launch of PheedLoop's newest accessibility features. We hope you are just as excited as we are. Your feedback and input are invaluable in our mission to create more accessible events. If you encounter gaps or limitations in our accessibility features, please let us know as soon as possible. Addressing your concerns will always be a top priority. Together, we can make events more accessible and enjoyable for everyone.