KB-2106 How to report accessibility violations

Purpose

Appian allows designers to build applications that are accessible to all users, and validates its product features against the requirements of leading accessibility standards:

• US Federal Government's Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (January 2017 Refresh)

• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)'s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA

Given Appian's established accessibility conformance (with some exceptions), all submitted violations must be validated by the assessor prior to submission. Appian does not accept unvalidated results or direct output from automated scanners without additional validation. After the violation behavior has been manually tested, appropriate verification must be provided in a support case as specified in the Instructions section below. This ensures Appian has a thorough understanding of the violation being encountered so that we can compare it to expected behavior and determine the platform changes (if any) that need to be made to meet accessibility standards.

Note that for reported violations involving HTML, it MUST cause issues with the end user in some way (e.g. screen readers cannot announce a component correctly) in order to be an accessibility violation. Note that many automated tests report accessibility violations based on the HTML code. However, an issue with the HTML does not always cause an issue with the screen reader.

When in doubt about whether a violation is valid, consider whether it impacts the understanding of the page for the following accessibility user groups:

• Visually compromised users who rely on screen readers or require resized text
• Manually compromised users who rely on keyboards to tab through each page

Instructions

For each violation, please provide:

1. Impacted browser and (if applicable) screen reader version.
2. The number of the specific WCAG success criterion being violated.
3. Appropriate verification of the experienced behavior.
   
   1. For screen reader issues, provide a video capture (with audio) of what the screen reader announces. One of the following browser and screen reader combinations documented here must be used.
   2. For HTML issues, provide the SAIL for the page and a screenshot of the affected HTML element(s).
   3. For issues related to Appian component configurations, provide the SAIL for the page containing the component, including the SAIL inside any custom rules (with sensitive information removed).
4. Justification for why the success criterion is being violated based on the success criterion details.
5. (Self-managed-only) The version and hotfix for the affected site, as some issues have been resolved in specific hotfixes.

Affected Versions

This article applies to all versions of Appian.

Last Reviewed: February 2022