This article explains how to make your Presspage Newsroom more accessible, covering both what you can do for your own Newsroom and press releases, and what Presspage does to keep the platform itself accessible.
Table of contents
Your Newsroom template and press releases
Your Newsroom inherits most of its visual presentation, including color contrast and font size, from the website it's based on. Review your website as a whole to address these aspects. Beyond that, there are several steps you can take to make your Newsroom more accessible:
- Provide captions for all videos that contain sound. Both YouTube and Vimeo support captions and can be embedded in your Newsroom. You can also upload VTT captioning files after adding a video to the Asset Manager.
- Don't use autoplay on audio. Many users don't expect audio to play automatically, and some have trouble with focus and become distracted by it.
- Provide text-only alternatives for non-text content. This is especially important for infographics — add alt text, and if an infographic contains a lot of information, write out its content below it as well.
- Use meaningful anchor text when linking to other pages. This helps people using screen readers understand where a link leads.
- Keep your Newsroom's load times in mind. Fast performance keeps your Newsroom accessible to users in regions with slower connections, among other benefits.
- Write press releases clearly. Explain acronyms on first use, provide a glossary for jargon or unfamiliar terms, and use lists where appropriate: numbered lists for sequential information, bullet points for unordered information.
Contact us if your Newsroom's template causes accessibility issues. We'll review it and make adjustments where possible.
For further guidance, see the Web Accessibility Initiative.
The Presspage platform
Presspage is also committed to keeping the platform itself accessible. Screen readers require that a site can be navigated by keyboard and that all non-text items include a text alternative. The Presspage platform meets both requirements and adheres to WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
There are some exceptions outside our control. For example, images in the Facebook widget can't be read by screen readers, since it's a third-party tool.