Kenya Dairy Board: Publishes Accessibility Statement, WCAG 2.2 AA Compliant

• The Kenya Dairy Board is committed to providing a universally accessible website, adhering to WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines.
• The website employs an accessibility interface and an AI-driven background application to optimize user experience for various disabilities.
• Advanced features include ARIA attributes, screen-reader optimization with ALT text generation, and OCR for image content.
• Keyboard navigation is fully supported, allowing users to interact with all site elements using standard key commands.
• Users are encouraged to submit feedback via email, with assurances that their details will not be used negatively.

The Kenya Dairy Board is dedicated to ensuring its online presence is universally accessible, reflecting a core belief that the internet should be available to everyone, irrespective of their circumstances or abilities.

The Kenya Dairy Board is dedicated to ensuring its online presence is universally accessible, reflecting a core belief that the internet should be available to everyone, irrespective of their circumstances or abilities. This commitment drives the organization's efforts to provide a website that caters to the widest possible audience. To achieve this, the Board strives for strict adherence to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 (WCAG 2.2) at the AA level.

These internationally recognized guidelines serve as a comprehensive framework, detailing methods to make web content usable for individuals with a diverse range of disabilities. By meticulously following these standards, the Kenya Dairy Board aims to guarantee that its website is fully accessible to all users, including those who are blind, individuals with motor impairments, people experiencing visual impairment, and those with cognitive disabilities, among others. This foundational approach underscores the Board's dedication to fostering an inclusive digital environment.

To realize its accessibility goals, the Kenya Dairy Board's website incorporates a suite of advanced technological solutions. A dedicated accessibility interface is available, empowering users with specific disabilities to customize the website's user interface and design elements according to their individual requirements. Complementing this, an artificial intelligence-driven application operates continuously in the background, diligently optimizing the site's accessibility levels.

This AI-powered system performs crucial functions, including the remediation of the website's underlying HTML structure. It also dynamically adjusts the site's functionality and behavior to seamlessly integrate with screen-readers, which are essential tools for blind users, and to support keyboard-based navigation for individuals with motor impairments. Furthermore, the website leverages Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) attributes, alongside various behavioral modifications, to ensure that blind users employing screen-readers can effectively read, comprehend, and fully utilize the website's features. Upon entering the site, screen-reader users are immediately prompted to activate a specialized Screen-Reader Profile, facilitating an optimized browsing experience.

The system includes a background process specifically designed for screen-reader optimization. This process continuously analyzes the website's components, from top to bottom, to maintain ongoing compliance even as the site undergoes updates. It enriches screen-readers with essential data through ARIA attributes, providing accurate form labels, descriptive text for interactive icons (such as social media, search, and shopping cart symbols), and clear validation guidance for form inputs. It also defines element roles for interactive components like buttons, menus, and modal dialogues. Additionally, this background process scans all images on the website, generating precise and meaningful descriptions as alternative (ALT) text for images lacking them, utilizing image-object-recognition technology. It can also extract embedded text from images using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Users can activate screen-reader adjustments at any time by pressing the Alt+1 keyboard combination, and automatic announcements notify screen-reader users to enable this mode upon site entry. These adjustments are compatible with leading screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.

Beyond screen-reader support, the background process also significantly enhances keyboard navigation. It modifies the website's HTML and integrates JavaScript code to ensure full operability using only a keyboard. This enables users to navigate through the site with the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, manage dropdown menus using arrow keys and close them with the Escape key, and activate buttons and links with the Enter key. Similarly, users can navigate between radio buttons and checkboxes using arrow keys and select them with the Spacebar or Enter key.

For added convenience, keyboard users have access to quick-navigation and content-skip menus. These can be accessed at any point by pressing Alt+1, or they appear as the initial elements when navigating the site via keyboard. The Kenya Dairy Board encourages users to provide feedback regarding any malfunctions or suggestions for improvement. Such input is highly valued, and the Board assures users that their details will not lead to any form of victimization for raising concerns. Feedback can be submitted directly to the website's operators via email.

Source: Original reporting via an accessibility statement