User experience and accessibility

The UI components of Pega Platform™ support W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) standards. Web Accessibility enables you to use assistive technologies, such as screen readers and keyboard navigation, for users with visual or other impairments. 

Pega Platform automatically inserts Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) attributes into its UI content. You do not need to configure additional settings, like manually including the PegaWAI ruleset and enabling accessibility for access groups. Accessibility features are available in Constellation and Theme Cosmos applications. 

Pega Platform also includes the Accessibility Inspector tool, which helps to identify and rectify some of the accessibility issues in your application. The Accessibility Inspector is available in both App Studio and Dev Studio. For example, Accessibility Inspector includes a color confusion simulator that helps you determine whether the colors that you use in your application are readable to users with color blindness. 

Accessibility is more of a design principle, and hence many features are included by default in the Pega Platform. A few out-of-the-box accessibility features related to table navigation and screen navigation are discussed below.  

Tables form a pivotal part of any application in the way users view and/or compare information. To provide users with easy navigation with assistive technology, the table behavior and navigation patterns have been considered. Tables are now implemented using Role="grid". This provides flexibility when implementing interactive elements. 

The F9 keyboard shortcut is provided for navigating through the landmark region. This helps keyboard and screen reader users to easily navigate around a complex screen. Keyboard navigation highlights the interactive elements, thus helping the users know where they are on the screen. When focused on the table, arrow keys help navigate between the cells. While navigating, if a cell has a link or a button as the content, then the focus is directed on the link or the button instead of being focused on the cell. To select a radio button or a checkbox, you need to press the Spacebar. 

Screen reader users will be aware of what is happening on-screen with immediate focus on dynamic elements such as progress indicators, error banners, and alerts. 

Follow the links below for more details about table navigation, keyboard shortcuts, and best practices to be followed:  

Best practices for accessibility in Constellation 

Run time keyboard shortcuts 

Table navigation   

Improvements made in the traditional UI based on the user experience include:  

• Only one main header on each page and all others are secondary headers. 

• Default navigation for repeating dynamic layout is done by tab key. 

• Screen readers will announce the results for the search results. 

• For optimized table navigation for keyboard-dependent users, a single tab stop is provided for column headers, with consistent reading of headers when navigating. Row headers can be configured, which is the primary key of the table.

For more information about assistive technology in Pega Platform, see Configuring an accessible UI. 

For relevant training materials, see Enabling accessibility features in applications.

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