by: VMware Colleague Support Engineer Massimo Asuni, VMware Service Delivery Sr. Manager Rich Godber and VMware Colleague Support Manager for Central and Southern EMEA Teodora Sharkova
Ensuring universal access to digital content and web access satisfaction is a priority for VMware IT, whether individuals are at work, at home, or on the move.
VMware is dedicated to transforming this vision into a tangible experience, with a particular emphasis on improving accessibility through mobile phones, computers, and tablets.
The VMware commitment to accessibility centers on facilitating the way individuals with disabilities interact and derive value from websites, systems or applications.
Accessibility: the vehicle of inclusion
Accessibility is the vehicle for the inclusion of employees with disabilities, and in today’s connected world, access to technology is central to the way we operate and is fundamental to an equitable future.
At VMware, we prioritize user experience and accessibility, ensuring everyone can reach their potential, whether in the office or as remote workers.
VMware is committed to supporting users with disabilities, recognizing that accessibility is a shared responsibility that evolves over time.
VMware content creators—just as an example—always keep in mind that colleagues interact with content differently, and due to that, they design content that should be used and accessed by everyone (including people affected by disabilities).
Different accessibility needs
VMware has many diverse employees with one (or more) disabilities:
- Employees with low vision and color blindness have different settings available to provide enhanced contrast and make digital content easier to read.
- Employees with visual impairments or blindness use screen readers, which provide speech output of digital content so that users who cannot see the content can navigate, read, and interact with it. These readers are controlled with the keyboard or swipe-and-tap gestures.
- Employees with hearing impairments/hearing loss and low hearing require alternatives to audio content. This is commonly seen in multimedia content through subtitles and captions.
- Employees who have motor impairments/limited mobility/tremors/paralysis might have difficulty using a mouse and may rely on the keyboard, eye-tracking technology, mouth sticks, and voice recognition. These are just a few methods that help them interact with content.
- Employees with cognitive impairments/vestibular disorders/dyslexia/memory/linguistic/reading/verbal comprehension may need accommodations to interact and understand the content.
Some common mistakes
Colleagues with disabilities face major challenges with inaccessible documents. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: There are several issues colleagues with disabilities must navigate concerning documents.
Accessibility features and examples
Alternative (alt) text conveys the “why” of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage. It is read aloud to users by screen reader software and is also indexed by search engines. It displays on the page if the image fails to load.
Keyboard accessibility: one of the most important aspects of web accessibility is critical to ensuring that all users have access to information without requiring a mouse. To be keyboard accessible, a webpage must not only be keyboard operable it must also incorporate the following: a visible keyboard focus, appropriate tab order, and no keyboard traps, such as a calendar date picker that does not allow the user to exit because it traps them into tabbing through the dates forever. It’s important to provide a keyboard focusable button to allow users to exit the component and move on to the next thing.
A common example of a keyboard trap is a calendar date picker that does not allow the user to exit because it traps them into tabbing through the dates forever. It’s important to provide a keyboard focusable button to allow the user to exit the component and move on to the next thing.
For blind and visually impaired users to access a website with ease, a keyboard navigation option is necessary.
Users who use Braille keyboards and those with motor disabilities rely on their traditional or modified keyboards to navigate websites instead of a mouse.
Sequential heading structure: headings are the backbone of the content of a page. A visitor should be able to scan the webpage using headings to get a good impression of its content.
Heading levels have meaning, especially for screen reader users and search engines. That means one unique first-level heading per page, with the other subheadings representing the page content like the index of a book: easily scannable and phonetic.
Accessible hyperlinks: those using screen reader use the tab key to jump from link to link. Or they may prefer to pull up a list of the links on the page before reading the whole thing. That is why it is essential that each link be specific and different from each other. It is important that link text makes sense in its context.
Always embed a link within a concise string of text instead of using its URL as the link text. A screen reader user will more easily understand where an accessible link leads and will not have to listen while the reader pronounces every single character of a URL. An accessible example of this is: English Lesson 1: Hyperlinks.
Consistent navigation: when consistent navigation is repeated across pages throughout a site or application, it is easier for users to locate and access content.
A best practice of consistent navigation is that ensuring repeated components occur in the same order on each page of a site helps users become comfortable they will be able to predict where they can find things on each page. This helps users with cognitive limitations, users with low vision, users with intellectual disabilities, and those who are blind.
Accessibility initiatives at VMware
VMware addresses several areas of accessibility, each encompassing its own tasks, as shown in the table below.
| Scalable Awareness Initiatives | Intraorganizational Alignment | Interorganizational Alignment | Emphasis on Policies | Industry Collaboration and Standards |
| Scalable accessibility awareness initiatives | Accessibility of VMware products and applications | Accessibility external products and vendors | Standard policies across VMware | Share, learn and make a difference together |
| Accessible communication champs | Dedicated accessibility team | Test external products for accessibility quotient and work with vendors to resolve issues | Dedicated cost centre for any accessible products requirements | Accessibility booth in industry showcase events |
| Free, self-paced accessible content training | Minimum accessibility threshold to comply before production pushes | Accessibility initiatives progress checks before contract renewals | Strict scrutiny on accessibility before onboarding a new product | Consortium of like-minded organization to share and learn what has worked on accessibility vs. reinvent |
| Talk about accessibility and how-to in most forums | Defined standard accessibility scorecard for consistency across products | Worked with Workday and Atlassian, like vendors in the past | Focus on accessible processes and initiatives before onboarding a new vendor | WIP industry-standard handbook on everything accessible |
| Encourage leaders to dedicate one staff-call in a year to complete training |
Six strategic accessibility areas
To ensure our company is accessibility compliant, our VMware team works on six strategic areas:
- Compliance: we seek to comply with applicable laws, mandates, and contract obligations around accessibility, which means conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 A and AA guidelines.
- Internal tool: VMware doubled down on its commitment to making VMware accessible by ensuring current and future employees with disabilities can use our products and tools. As part of that commitment, we strive to make our digital properties adhere to the Web WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA.
- Document program: this team reviews documents for accessibility, including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, and videos.
- Research, innovation, and tools: our accessibility innovation efforts investigate cutting-edge methodologies for improving product accessibility outcomes using techniques like Crest, a VMware open-source machine learning-based extension to WAVE. Regarding outreach, we work with different accessibility standard organizations, such as International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC), and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) so VMware understands not just where accessibility stands now but also contributes to where accessibility is going in the next three to five years. Innovation accessibility makes sure that the cutting-edge technology VMware creates is also setting the standard for how accessible they are.
- Embedded accessibility strategist program: we provide detailed solution-oriented advice across all stages of content: ideation, design/UX, engineering and development and QA. We support product teams in adopting a shift-left mindset so that strategists bring accessibility subject matter expertise as they partner to meet the unique needs of new products. Shift left is the practice of moving testing, quality, and performance evaluation early in the development process, often before any code is written, helping teams anticipate changes that arise during development that can affect performance or other delivery processes.
- Training and education program: accessibility is everyone’s responsibility. That’s why VMware amplifies the accessibility program to all VMware colleagues through continuous training, education and awareness. All learners, including people with disabilities and educational difficulties, have equal opportunity to study and succeed. In addition to providing fair and equal opportunities, accessibility training can be more engaging and effective for everyone.
Hardware accessibility
Hardware should be usable by everyone, and industry standardization in controls makes identification by touch readily available for most types of equipment.
Hardware assistive devices have evolved over time and include specialized keyboards (such as Braille) and mice, as well as mouth sticks, head wands, button switches and sip and puff switches for those who cannot use their hands to operate a computer. Most of these are used by people with mobility and low-vision impairments. See Figures 2 and 3.
Figure 2: Specialized keyboards that incorporate Braille are now available.
Figure 3: Hardware assistive peripherals include mice, mouth sticks, head wands, button switches and sip-and-puff switches.
Other resources
Slack
Microsoft Teams
VMware accessibility intranet
VMware also maintains an internal accessibility homepage. See Figure 4.
Figure 4: An internal homepage for accessibility provides more information for those with disabilities.
Request for accessibility support
Users can get information about the VMware built-in accessibility tools and technologies that help people with disabilities get the most from their VMware technologies.
Requesting support for accessibility at VMware is as simple as completing an online form that includes the following key info:
1. Product Name/project title
2. Product/project owner (VMware email ID only)
For example: [email protected]. Please enter correct email address, for the request to be processed by automation tasks. ***multiple emails should be comma separated***
3. Type of request
- Audit Request: accessibility testing for the product
- Design Review: review mock-up for any potential accessibility issues
- Document Review: review Word, Excel, PPT, PDF, video files for accessibility issues
- Training: knowledge session on accessibility topics
- Other
4. Is your product external facing?
External-facing products are customer-facing products and are used/sold outside of VMware. Internal-facing products are employee facing and are used within VMware.
- Yes
- No
5. Testing Configuration
- Chrome + NVDA
- Firefox + NVDA
- Safari + Voiceover
- Talkback (for Android devices)
- Voiceover (for iOS devices)
- Not Applicable
6. Business Unit
7. Detailed Description of the ask
8. Upload Files/Document (if any)
9. Clarity used
Please refer to https://clarity.design/ for more information about Clarity
- Yes
- No
This topic continues to evolve, so contact your account team to schedule a briefing with a VMware IT expert to hear the latest. Check out our IT Thought Leadership blogs. For other questions, contact [email protected].
We look forward to hearing from you.
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