ACCESSIBILITY & VPAT

Accessibility is an important consideration for software design and use. ArchivesSpace continually works to improve the usability and accessibility of the application for all users, including those who use assistive technologies such as screen readers. In addition to working to provide accessible design and features, ArchivesSpace does not interfere with assistive technologies that users may use to navigate web-based applications in general.

How we test for accessibility

Development on ArchivesSpace is active and ongoing and we use several methods to ensure accessibility for both existing and new development. We use design principles and coding standards informed by accessibility concerns. We run an automated scanning service based on the WAVE tool called Pope Tech over the main branch of our code repository on a weekly basis. We also have automated tests built into GitHub that are run on pull requests submitted to our code repository. We also contracted with Deque for an accessibility audit of the application in Spring 2021.

Keyboard shortcuts within the application

  • You can access the keyboard shortcuts available in the standard release of the application by selecting Shift + ? anywhere in the staff interface.
  • There is also free community-authored plugin with more shortcuts. More information available at https://github.com/marktriggs/in_a_rush.

VPAT

Some organizations require a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) for software applications in use or being considered. We link to VPATs for the ArchivesSpace application below.