Web Accessibility Standards

What Website Accessibility Means at Consumers Energy

Consumers Energy is committed to ensuring accessibility of its website and customer-facing mobile applications to people with disabilities. New and updated web content produced by our organization will conform to all Level AA success criteria of W3C WAI WCAG 2.1. This applies to customer-facing digital entities.

Web accessibility is important as our website is such an integral part of our customers' lives. Ensuring our site is accessible allows people with disabilities to be able to have equal access to the important services/features the we provide, such as bill payment, outage reporting, and checking one's energy use. These guidelines focus on improving accessibility of our web properties for three major groups: users with cognitive or learning disabilities, users with low vision, and users with disabilities on mobile devices.

WCAG Requirements When Developing CE Digital Content

ALT-TAGS

An alt tag is used on images to allow a description of the image to be output if the image can’t be displayed/seen. Making sure this alt-tag is as descriptive as possible will help screen readers to relay the information you are trying to portray.

For help writing alt tags, please refer to the W3C WAI Images Tutorial.

KEYBOARD NAVIGATION

Some users are unable to or don’t have access to a mouse, meaning their only way to navigate through your website is via a keyboard. Making sure your website or app is easy to navigate through using a keyboard will go a long way to helping with accessibility for users from all walks of life.

TITLE TAG

Making sure you have a short yet descriptive title tag on all pages will allow visitors to know what the page is about which is especially helpful for people using a screen reader.

CONTRAST RATIO

For new site development, we require a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Additionally, Consumers requires a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 for graphics and user interface components (such as form input borders).

Please Note: Contrast ratios can range from 1 to 21 (AKA from 1:1 to 21:1)

USE OF COLOR

Color should not be used as the only visual means of conveying information on a Consumers page. There must be a programmatic way to indicate an action, prompt a response, or distinguish a visual element.

TEXT

Size: Except for captions and images of text, text needs to be able to be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality. Text should be set to relative sizing, 14pt is acceptable as a baseline for large or small, as long as headers and paragraph text are relatively sized to provide contrast.

Line spacing: Needs to have is at least space-and-a-half within paragraphs, and paragraph spacing is at least 1.5 times larger than the line spacing.

Keyboard Operability: Content is operable through a keyboard interface without requiring specific timings for individual keystrokes, except where the underlying function requires input that depends on the path of the user's movement and not just the endpoints.

Reading Level: Text should not require reading ability more advanced than the lower secondary education level after removal of proper names and titles or supplemental content.

AUDIO

For prerecorded audio-only content that (1) contains primarily speech in the foreground or (2) is not an audio CAPTCHA, at least one of the following is true:

• The audio does not contain background sounds.
• The background sounds can be turned off.
• The background sounds are at least 20 decibels lower than the foreground speech content, with the exception of occasional sounds that last for only one or two seconds.

HOVER

Where receiving and then removing pointer hover or keyboard focus triggers additional content to become visible and then hidden, the following are true:

• Dismissable: A mechanism is available to dismiss the additional content without moving pointer hover or keyboard focus, unless the additional content communicates an input error or does not obscure or replace other content.
• Hoverable: If pointer hover can trigger the additional content, then the pointer can be moved over the additional content without the additional content disappearing.
• Persistent: The additional content remains visible until the hover or focus trigger is removed, the user dismisses it, or its information is no longer valid.

LINKS

Link Purpose: The purpose of each link can be determined from the link text alone or from the link text together with its programmatically determined link context, except where the purpose of the link would be ambiguous to users in general.

Page Location: More than one way is available to locate a Web page within a set of Web pages except where the Web Page is the result of, or a step in, a process. If breadcrumbs are an option, they should be leveraged to convey information about the user's location within a set of Web pages.

ERRORS

If an input error is detected, the item that is in error is identified and the error is described to the user in text. If suggestions for error correction are known, then the suggestions are provided to the user, unless it would jeopardize the security or purpose of the content.

VIDEO + AUDIO

Audio Description: Narration added to the soundtrack to describe important visual details that cannot be understood from the main soundtrack alone. Audio description of video provides information about actions, characters, scene changes, on-screen text, and other visual content.

Captions: Synchronized visual and/or text alternative for both speech and non-speech audio information needed to understand the media content. Captions are similar to dialogue-only subtitles except captions convey not only the content of spoken dialogue, but also equivalents for non-dialogue audio information needed to understand the program content, including sound effects, music, laughter, speaker identification and location.