Accessibility

This document provides an overview of how Skillsoft supports accessibility across the Skillsoft Percipio platform learning experience and related products. It outlines our commitment to recognized accessibility standards and regulations, and explains where to find formal product conformance information.

The accessibility topics covered in this article include:

Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs)

Skillsoft is committed to creating and delivering eLearning and talent management solutions that are accessible to users regardless of age, ability, or situation. We measure the accessibility of our products against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards issued by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). We aim to provide solutions that meet our customers’ needs for compliance with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act, the European Union Accessibility Act, and other applicable national laws and regulations. In line with industry norms we publish WCAG accessibility conformance reports (ACRs) based on the Information Technology Industry Council’s Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) standard. These ACRs detail the applicable product’s conformance with the relevant version of WCAG.

Please note that an accurate statement in an ACR might not assure accessibility for a specific user preferring a specific platform, interface, or assistive technology. With over 120,000 digital assets and multiple technology interfaces, we are not able to guarantee that all of our products will completely meet current WCAG standards or support every new assistive technology. However, Skillsoft is fully committed to addressing and reducing accessibility exceptions as soon as commercially practicable. We welcome, and benefit from, all feedback and suggestions.

Percipio Learning Platform

Percipio Mobile App

Skillsoft Coaching

Compliance

Compliance courses accessed through Percipio are covered by the Percipio Learning Platform ACR, above.

The following VPATs cover Compliance courses accessed through the Percipio Compliance interface or Content Integration.

For Skillport or OLSA users of Compliance courses, the following VPAT applies:

Codecademy Enterprise

The following ACR covers both Codecademy content and platform, either accessed directly from codecademy.com or through Percipio.

Codecademy Enterprise WCAG 2.2 VPAT

Skillsoft's approach to accessibility testing and remediation

Skillsoft UX Designers, Developers, and QA Engineers are trained and mentored internally in accessibility and have explicit responsibilities for addressing accessibility as part of our continuous design and development process. A dedicated Accessibility Team continually audits all new and modified features and content against WCAG 2.2 and beyond-WCAG usability criteria, using both automated testing tools and in-depth manual testing using a range of browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and screen readers (JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver) on Windows and MacOS. Analysis involves detailed inspection of the generated code and the contents of the browser Accessibility Tree. In addition, full product audits are carried out annually for the preparation of the VPAT ACRs. All accessibility issues, whether or not they are WCAG violations, are logged in our internal bug tracking system for remediation. Specific remedial guidance in the form of UX changes and coding changes is provided by our internal Accessibility Specialists. Development teams, including UX Designers and Software Engineers, make the required changes which are assessed by the team’s QA Engineers and verified by the Accessibility Team prior to going into production.

The testing process for our mobile applications involves viewing all content and operating all functionality using the following range of mobile operating systems and screen readers (latest released versions):

  • iOS using both touch and external keyboard
  • iOS with VoiceOver
  • Android using both touch and external keyboard
  • Android with Talkback

We test against WCAG 2.2 but also go far beyond WCAG by judging the likely quality of the user experience for people with all disabilities and users of assistive technologies. We do this based on years of experience working closely with people with sensory, physical, and cognitive disabilities and running user tests with users of assistive technology. This enables our Accessibility Specialists to anticipate how the widest range of users will experience the product and the impact of any barriers that arise.

All accessibility issues, whether or not they are WCAG violations, are logged in our internal bug tracking system for remediation. Specific remedial guidance in the form of UX changes and coding changes are provided by our internal Accessibility Specialists. Development teams, including UX Designers and Software Engineers, make the required changes which are assessed by the team’s QA Engineers and verified by the Accessibility Specialists prior to going into production.

Accessibility Settings in the Platform

Within Percipio, you, as an administrator, have options that provide a more accessible experience to all users of the platform by using the following settings.

Choose to display only accessible content

The platform contains both accessible and non-accessible content. The following content is not accessible and is not covered under the Skillsoft Platform LP WCAG ACRs:

  • Global Knowledge on demand courses
  • Global Knowledge Instructor Led Training (ILT) classes
  • Microsoft Learn Courses
  • MIT SMR Webinars
  • AWS Digital courseware authored by AWS
  • Practice Labs Systems labs and test preps
  • Skillable (formerly Learn on Demand Systems (LODS)) labs
  • CyberVista practice tests
  • Open Content which includes externally linked content provided by a variety of sources

You have the option to configure the platform for your organization so that only accessible content is available to your users. To show only accessible content:

  1. From the admin view, go to Site Settings, then Site Configuration and Content Settings.
  2. Under the Included Content section, unselect Content that does not conform to accessibility standards.
  3. Select Save changes.

You can find out the accessibility status of any content item by checking the WCAG column in your All content listing by collection report. If the value shows True, the item conforms to accessibility standards.

To access the report:

  1. From the admin view, select Analytics.
  2. Open the All reports tab.
  3. Under the Content section, select All Content Listing.
  4. Specify your filter and run the report.
  5. Select Columns and ensure the WCAG column is selected.
  6. Select to download the report.

Disable books notes and highlighting

The notes and highlighting feature for books and book summaries does not yet conform to accessibility standards. You have the option to disable it if required.

To disable note taking and highlighting in books:

  1. From the admin view, go to Site Settings> Site Configuration > Site features.
  2. Under Feature Settings, unselect Allow learners to take notes and make highlights in books.
  3. Select Save changes.

Disable Mentoring

The Ask a Mentor feature includes an email feature which is not fully accessible. You have the option to disable it if required.

To disable mentoring:

  1. From the admin view, go to Site Settings> Site Configuration > Site features.
  2. Under Feature Settings, unselect Ask a Mentor – Channel level access and Ask a Mentor – Course level access.
  3. Select Save changes.

Enable automatic generation of translated captions for English language courses

Many English (US) language courses support the translation of closed captions into other languages. You can choose whether to make these translations available to users.

  1. In the admin view, go to Site Settings > Site Configuration > Content Settings.
  2. Under Language Settings, select Allow automated translated closed captions when playing courses that are in English (US) and select the checkboxes for the required languages.
  3. Select Save changes.

Learners can choose to see captions in any of those languages for courses that support this feature, by selecting them from the Captions menu in the player toolbar.

Closed captions are machine-translated and fluency may vary. Translations do not apply to in-video text, knowledge checks, or course tests. This feature is only available for Skillsoft courses, not custom courses or Skillsoft compliance courses.

Choose not to allow auto scroll of promotional banners

The platform allows you to have up to five promotional banners. By default, auto scrolling of the banners is turned on for all users. However, this can be very distracting for many users and some may not have enough time to read the banner content before it refreshes. If keyboard focus is within the banner, it also resets the focus position to the new banner heading every time it scrolls. This can make it difficult for keyboard and assistive technology users to get past the banner. We recommend turning off banner auto scroll if learners find it problematic.

We recommend that screen reader users switch auto play off to give them better control.

To turn off the featured items banner auto scroll for all users:

  1. From the admin menu, go to Site Settings, then Site Configuration and Site Features.
  2. Under Feature Settings, unselect Automatically scroll banner promotions. Users can still opt to override the setting by selecting play in the banner to enable auto scrolling for themselves. The user override setting persists until they change it.

Learner Accessibility Features and Settings

Percipio provides learners with disabilities, including users of assistive technologies, with a number of options that may provide a more accessible experience. This includes captions, audio description, and transcripts and turning off video auto play.

Turn on video captions and control their appearance

All videos have closed captions and you can select the size and the language.

To turn on captions:

  1. In the course or video player, activate the Caption Settings button, add to playlist button, blue outlined star (CC icon) in the player toolbar to open the Caption Settings menu.
  2. Check the Captions option. Captions will remain on for all future courses and videos.

To change caption size:

  1. In the course or video player, activate the Caption Settings button, add to playlist button, blue outlined star (CC icon) in the player toolbar to open the Caption Settings menu.
  2. Select the Caption size option to open the Caption size submenu.
  3. Select a size from the submenu. The setting will remain for all future courses and videos.

Turn on audio description for videos

All videos have audio description. To turn on audio description:

  1. In the course or video player, activate the Turn audio description on button (AD icon) in the player toolbar. Audio description will remain on for all future courses and videos.

Note that the amount of audio description you can expect to hear in a video varies widely. For some videos, all of the information contained in the visual content is already spoken by the presenter, so the only audio description is the video title. Other videos, particularly those dealing with computer applications and technologies, may contain a lot of audio description.

Access a video transcript

All videos have interactive transcripts and full transcripts.

The interactive transcript displays the text of the spoken audio for the currently playing video, highlighting each sentence as it is spoken. To view the interactive transcript while watching a video:

  1. Select the Transcript tab beneath the video player.
  2. Optionally, check the Auto Scroll checkbox to make the transcript scroll so that the current line is always at the top.

The full transcript is a page of structured text including all the spoken audio and the audio description of the entire course or video. To view the full transcript:

  1. Select the Transcript tab beneath the video player.
  2. Select View Full Transcript. The transcript will open in a new browser tab.

Disable auto play for videos and audiobooks

The Skillsoft video and audiobook players have an autoplay feature that determines whether content starts playing automatically when it is launched and when one video in a course follows another.

The first time you open a course, individual video or audiobook, it will not start playing automatically. But when you reopen it, it will auto play if the AutoPlay setting is ON. Within a course, when you reach the end of a video, the next one will start playing automatically if AutoPlay is ON. Whenever auto play occurs, keyboard focus will be on the Pause button, so you can immediately stop it playing by pressing the Enter key. But if you would rather never have videos or audiobooks start playing automatically, you can turn off auto play in the Settings menu. The setting will remain for all future courses and videos.

To turn off Auto Play for videos and audiobooks:

  1. In the course, video or audiobook player, activate the Settings button, add to playlist button, blue outlined star(cog icon) in the player toolbar to open the Settings menu.
  2. Unselect Autoplay.

Note that this does not affect what happens if you select a video in the course contents listing or if you click the Next button in the course player. In these cases, it is assumed you want the video to start playing immediately so it will play but focus will be moved to the Pause button.

Stop auto scrolling of featured items banners

The home page, and some other pages, may show a promotional banner at the top highlighting featured item. Depending on your site administrator’s settings, this content may automatically scroll, changing the displayed item every seven seconds. You may find this distracting and if you are using the keyboard or a screenreader, you may find that it keeps moving the focus position to the item heading while focus is anywhere within the banner.

To turn off the featured items banner auto scroll, activate the Pause auto replace of featured items button in the banner. It will remain turned off for all future Percipio sessions.

Video and Audiobook player keyboard shortcuts

The following keyboard shortcuts can be used to control playback of videos and audiobooks. You don’t have to have focus within the player to use these shortcuts, They work anywhere on the course, video, or audiobook pages.

To view this list of keyboard shortcuts while using Percipio:

  1. In the course, video or audiobook player, activate the Settings button (cog icon) in the player toolbar to open the Settings menu.

  2. Select Keyboard shortcuts.

Windows keyboard shortcuts

Play / Pause

Alt p

Jump backwards

Alt j or Alt <

Jump forwards

Alt l or Alt >

Volume Up

Alt a or Alt +

Volume Down

Alt z or Alt -

MacOS keyboard shortcuts

Play / Pause

Option p

Jump backwards

Option j or Option <

Jump forwards

Option l or Option >

Volume Up

Option a or Option +

Volume Down

Option z or Option -

-