There are no limits to what people can achieve when technology reflects the diversity of everyone who uses it. We believe in what people make possible - at Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Across SharePoint and OneDrive our most important work is making our technology accessible to people of all abilities. Over the past several months we’ve been working towards this vision with improvements across how and where people collaborate ensuring our experiences both create and support opportunities for everyone.
Site Improvements
- Navigate through the major portions of the page using reserved tab stops.
- Take advantage of the new accessible SharePoint Online page authoring experience for edit and view your home page.
- Proper field types and labels that provide details to screen reader users on what each field is and how to use it.
List and Library Improvements
- Keyboard shortcuts for all major list functions, including a shortcut (SHIFT+F10) for the details menu. Press the question mark “?” to browse the full list of shortcuts.
- Up and Down Arrow keys navigate between list items. Left and Right Arrow keys navigate between columns.
- Action confirmations when you updated list item fields.
- Focus returns to where you were when you finish working in the list and exit, so you never have to start from the top of the page.
Page Authoring Improvements
- Landmarks and headings for easy navigation across major areas of the page.
- Web part focus zones to make it easy to setup and edit a web part. In edit mode, just press Enter to navigate into the web part, then use the Tab and Arrow keys to navigate within the web part.
- Keyboard shortcuts in the rich text editor allow you to jump to the command bar and execute common text commands such as bold, italics, underline, and so on.
- Focus automatically goes to the caption field when you add images or video web parts, to encourage you to add alternative text descriptions of the images.
- Page authoring automatically confirms actions that you take when you update web part properties, use the rich text editor commands, and so on. You never have to question an action again.
To learn more about these and more accessibility features in SharePoint Online refer to the links below:
Accessibility features in SharePoint Online
Accessibility support for SharePoint Online
Microsoft has been very public about our product support for accessibility standards for some time. We broadly publish conformance reports for our products for key accessibility standards such as Section 508, WCAG 2.0 and EN 301 549. In the next few months, we will begin publishing conformance statements with the updated Section 508 regulations recently published by the US Access Board.
In addition to the resources above, hear and see the most recent developments in accessibility from Microsoft Ignite.
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