Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Fastr Frontend

Fastr aims to support our clients’ creation of inclusive content. Below, please find a summary of and link to ADA guidelines, as well as information about key features you can use to create more inclusive Fastr Frontend Experiences

ADA Guidelines

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international website standards organization, developed the Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world.*

These guidelines provide a shared standard for web content accessibility and are organized under four content principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust. When you are creating content, we recommend referencing the in-depth guidelines to ensure you are maintaining compatibility site-wide.

*Note: WCAG guidelines are not created, developed or maintained by Fastr. Please refer to the WCAG web site to track the latest updates and changes.

How Fastr Frontend Helps

Fastr Frontend features that enhance compatibility are listed below:

• Live Text– As part of the “Understandable” principle, text should be live rather than embedded in images when possible. To create live text in the Frontend Visual Designer, use the Text Widget. All text added via the Text Widget is discoverable by screen readers.
• Accessibility (ADA) and SEO Checklist - Fastr Frontend includes a checklist that lets you review the accessibility and SEO of your content before you publish it, so issues surface while you can still fix them.
• Text Headings (H1-6 Tags) – To effectively convey meaning of your Experiences to disabled customers, screen readers must know the hierarchy of text displayed. To dictate priority, use the H1-H6 tags in the Text Widget. Note: This is also an optimal SEO practice as well.
  
• Alt-Text Enabled Widgets – WCAG recommends that all non-text content has a text alternative. To this point, Fastr Frontend enables you to add alt-text to all uploaded images, as well as any other type of widget. Informative image alt-text helps the impaired user understand the image content via screen readers. This alt text can be added to groups of widgets, paths, components, and more. Just click on any widget on the canvas, and use the following field to update the Alt Text:
  
  
• Automated Alt Text - When you upload a new image, Fastr Frontend adds meaningful alt text for you. It uses OpenAI to detect the content of the image and generate a description. For full information, please review the following article:
  Automated Alt Text for Images
• Widget Tab Order – WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) stipulate that content must have a logical tab order for people using a keyboard, or other assistive technology, to navigate. Fastr Frontend lets you customize the order in which your content is navigated. The order of layers read out loud by the screen reader is bottom to top. This means that the layer at the bottom of your layer tab is read first, and so on. Please keep this in mind as you design your content for screen readers.
  
  
• Mute/Unmute Layer: Need to remove a layer from being read out loud by the screen reader? Hover over the layer in the layers tab and select the “Mute” button — the small sound icon next to the eye and lock icons. You can also do this in bulk by selecting multiple layers, right-clicking, and choosing “Exclude/Include from screen readers”.
  
  
• Accessibility Layer Filters: Your layer tab can get crowded with both muted and unmuted layers, so there is a filter for it. With a single click you can view only “Accessible Layers” — the ones that will be read out loud by the screen reader — or switch to “Non-Accessible Layers”, which screen readers skip entirely.
• Keyboard Navigation – A core focus of WCAG guidelines pertains to Operability, specifically the requirement that content is operable through a keyboard interface. Fastr Frontend Experiences are navigable via the Tab keyboard key. Additionally, users can use the Enter button to select desired links within an Experience.

Questions? Contact us at support@getfastr.com