A is for Accessibility

By Heather Black

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October 8, 2019
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3 min read

Introducing our new ABC’s of Salesforce…

When you first get started in the Salesforce ecosystem, it can be overwhelming. There is just so much to take in. One of the first hurdles to get over is just figuring out what the vocabulary and language means.  That is where the idea for the Supermums ABC’s of Salesforce blog series was born. We’re going to take you through a letter a week to help you explore Salesforce terminology and everything that goes with it.  Let’s Start with A … for accessibility

Consider all your users and their needs

Accessibility is a consideration that is very near and dear to our hearts at Supermums. It means that you are taking everybody into consideration when designing your Salesforce solutions, including differently-abled individuals.  We had the pleasure of working with Thomas Pocklington Trust to make our Supermums training programme accessible to the visually impaired. Thomas Pocklington Trust is a non-profit organization based out of the UK who helps the blind and visually impaired to get into the workforce. Thanks to one of their employees who trained up on the course for an entire six months and provided feedback the entire time, we have figured out a thing or two about how to change our programme to make it accessible.  

Understand screen readers

First of all, get familiar with screen readers and how they work. A screenreader is a programme on your computer that reads the screen aloud. There are a few options and each has slightly different functionality, but the main idea is that the user presses tab to move from item to item on the screen. So make sure you’re thinking about how this will look the next time you’re creating a page layout! Did you know that you can click on the section and change whether the fields are read in a zig-zag manner or up and down for each column?  

Add Alt Text

Add alt-text wherever you can! Alt-text stands for alternative text. This is text that you can write in and the screen-reader will read that text instead of the image. Many programmes will automatically create text saying that it is an image or a screenshot, but that doesn’t really help when you’re trying to understand why that image is there. Add some descriptive alt-text describing why the image is there and what it is communicating. Alt-text can go anywhere from training documentation to websites! 

Add narration

Narrate your demos. How many times have you given a demo, moved your mouse to the app launcher and said “Click here.” Now imagine that you can’t see the screen and are just listening along. You are lost from the very beginning. By narrating your demo and instead saying “Click in the upper left corner on the app launcher icon”, you have just made it that much easier to follow along for any visually impaired individual – and even for the rest of your audience! 

 Interested in learning more about accessibility? There are a few excellent Trailhead badges to get you started. Plus stay tuned for Vicki, our Head of training, presenting on How to Be an Accessibility Ally at Dreamforce!   

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Written By:

Heather Black
Heather is the founder of Supermums Recruitment and Training. With an extensive background in Salesforce Consultancy, Career Coaching and Training she is passionate about empowering people with the right skills, attributes and knowledge to be successful in their career.

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