Optimal Workshop’s mission is to create better experiences for all. To deliver on our purpose, we believe our products must also be usable by all. We have self-identified a responsibility to provide a highly accessible web experience to both our users and your participants. The better our platform can enable an inclusive research experience for a diverse user base, the more we can empower the creation of better experiences. We know perfect inclusion and usability is an evolving target, and we are committed to continuous improvement and inclusion. To start, we are striving to comply with industry-acknowledged standards, where applicable, and addressing our most common requests, where possible.

We’re on a journey to meet a minimum of WCAG 2.1 level AA guidelines across our platform. To help manage this, we’ve developed a tiered approach to communicate our ambitions for the different parts of our product:
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Tier 1 - Meets all WCAG 2.1 level AA guidelines, and supports all Tier 2 common accessibility use cases

Tier 2 - Supports common accessibility use cases (keyboard navigation, visual accessibility, screen reader friendliness, mobile friendliness)

Not applicable - The tool does not lend itself to accessibility compliance

Our first priority is to adapt our participant experiences to support engagement from more diverse audiences. We are currently testing with people who use assistive technology to ensure that we are going beyond guidelines where needed in order to provide better experiences for all.

Currently, for the majority of our products, we have not intentionally addressed any accessibility requirements or use cases. Any compliance or usability is incidental unless specifically noted in the following progress update.
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The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of requirements for making web pages accessible to people with disabilities. We are currently working towards these standards, with some experiences already in line with guidance. Please see the above tables for the current status. If you have any questions, please let us know.
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First-click testing can't comply with WCAG 2.1 because of Criterion 1.1.1: 'All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose.'

First-click tests require interaction with static images, like screenshots and wireframes. It's therefore not possible to test with people who can't see and click on the image. A text description of the image would not help complete the exercise, as people who rely solely on text descriptions can't interact with the image in any meaningful way. The testing method would need to change completely to be capable of being traversed by assistive technologies like screen readers.
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In some cases, we require action from survey administrators to ensure that their content is accessible. For example, content creators should ensure that language metadata is present and that the colour contrast on buttons is adequate. Optimal will provide guidance but will not enforce accessibility standards for content created by our customers.