Accessibility and publishing

An administrator sets this for the whole space under Accessibility › Settings.

Before publishing

• Off: Publishing doesn't look at accessibility. The A11y panel and the report still show every issue.
• Warn: The default. When you publish a page with issues that block people, CMS Orbit lists them and asks before going live. Fix first opens the A11y panel; Publish anyway goes ahead.
• Block: A page with issues that block people can't be published until they are fixed, or left as they are with a reason in the A11y panel.

Issues that only need review never stop a page. An image without alt text in the page's language always stops it, whatever the setting, as it did before.

The check uses the content as saved and the last check of the rendered page in the editor's preview.

Publish anyway

In Block, administrators can still publish a page with issues, for example when a sale has to go live at 09:00 and the photographer's alt text follows later. They write why, and the reason is kept with the page:

• Publishing › History shows it under the page, with how many issues it had.
• The organisation's audit log keeps it with the rules that failed.

Everyone else sees which issues stop the page, and can fix them or ask an administrator.

Guidelines to check

The rendered page is checked against the rules for the guidelines you tick: WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 at levels A and AA, best practice, and WCAG 2.0 AAA if you want the strictest contrast. The default is WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 A and AA with best practice. The European Accessibility Act points to WCAG 2.1 AA, through the standard EN 301 549.

The content checks are the same whatever you choose.