Blue Ocean Brain prioritizes best accessibility practices by regularly testing the site’s compliance with WCAG.
Blue Ocean Brain (BOB) is WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. This means the site is compatible with screen readers and other assistive technology that Learners with disabilities may use. In addition, if asked, the Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) is the completed report that uses the VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) that conforms with Section 508 compliance. 508 compliance is a governmental accessibility standard, so you might hear about it on calls. The current VPAT is available in different editions, including our WCAG 2.1 AA.
To maintain this compliance, BOB is partnered with the accessibility vendor UsableNet. The following measures are taken to ensure the accessibility of BOB’s site.
Audit
UsableNet conducts an annual audit of the Blue Ocean Brain platform. This tests all WCAG 2.1 AA criteria and indicates which criteria are met and which fail. When the audit is completed, UsableNet provides a score of passed and failed criteria along with suggested fixes to the site coding to fix anything that failed in the audit.
BOB’s IT team receives the audit feedback and implements the suggested fixes to the code.
Content
BOB’s Content Team creates every Lesson in the Library and Catalog with accessibility in mind.
- Every icon and image has alternative text
- UsableNet offers a tool that allows every new Lesson to be tested for compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA
- Most videos in BOB Lessons have closed captioning
- Every Client is offered accessible color palettes to choose from to customize the BOB platform
User Testing
On an annual basis, UsableNet also offers user testing. Members of the disabled community attempt to perform various tasks on our platform and then provide a score for the experience and suggestions for how to make the areas of the platform that were tested more accessible for Learners with disabilities.
Future Improvements
Currently, Blue Ocean Brain is only compatible with WCAG 2.1 AA. A ruleset (WCAG 2.1 AAA) includes accessibility functionalities such as audio descriptions and sign language for videos. But, since BOB doesn’t own the rights to our videos, this is not currently an option.
When the WCAG 2.2 ruleset is released to the public, UsableNet will be available for BOB to test the site’s compliance with the updated guidelines. This article will be updated once that is possible.
For more information, please see BOB’s Web Accessibility Statement.