ADA Compliance is a growing requirement of many publicly-funded websites and media presentations.
Overview
In practice, ADA requirements are only partially relevant to embedded content, usually due to the complex and often visual nature of this content. The best solution for maximizing ADA compliance for embedded elements is rooted in guaranteeing that each component has customized Alternative Text (ALT-Text) entries, which provide explanatory text that can be correctly parsed and interpreted by screen-readers.
Threshold Compliance
As with any virtual tour media, Threshold Platform content and maps delivered through a webpage can’t accommodate certain ADA requirements due to both visual and interactive nature of the media. Nonetheless, Threshold has implemented several features to maximize compliancy and enable customization to ensure maximum user benefit.
Keyboard Support
The Threshold Viewer and Threshold Map are both fully keyboard compliant. All menu options available for each embedded object are available through the keyboard.
Default iFrame Name Flag
The Threshold Viewer and Map iFrame windows include an explicit object name (“Virtual Tour by Threshold 360”). A screen reader parsing this code an identify the embedded content appropriately, along with any other details addended by additional customization (below).
Button Labels
Buttons are appropriately labeled and will be automatically announced by screen readers.
Autoplay Control
Per standard recommendations, applications should not autoplay content. For enhanced compliance, Threshold Autoplay may be deactivated in JS Embedding code via parameter (autoplay: false)
Additional Customization
To further compliance, the individual or agency implementing the web page upon which a Threshold viewer or map is being embedded can take the further step of customizing the Alt Tag for a given Threshold or Map element, to allow for more advanced screen reader functionality. Fo example, customized captions for each individual Threshold could be included.
Conclusions
The combination of Keyboard Support, Alt Tag, and other options as proposed above provides a solid baseline for maximizing ADA compliance. Based on Threshold research, this level of compliance meets (and in many cases significantly exceeds) ADA Compliance levels attained by most other embedded-component vendors in the industry.
Note that lack of automatic playback is severely detrimental to general user experience and engagement, and so is only recommended in circumstances where maximum ADA compliance is considered to be of the utmost priority.