Tips on making your scheduler more accessible.
To make your scheduler navigable for the broadest audience possible, it’s important to keep accessibility in mind during the styling process. This guide provides some accessibility tips to consider when customizing your scheduler.
Note: This guide is available as a resource to help you get started, but shouldn't be construed or relied upon as legal advice. Acuity can't advise about making your scheduler compliant with any specific accessibility laws, regulations, or standards.
Clear and concise scheduling instructions
You can add scheduling instructions to your page, which will appear above your calendar. This is a chance to explain to clients anything they need to know about booking with you.
Well-organized, brief, and clear text is helpful for all visitors, especially those with impairments. When writing text for your scheduler, consider the following tips:
- Use clear language and formatting.
- Write in concise sentences and paragraphs.
- Avoid using jargon and unnecessarily complex words and phrases.
- Expand acronyms on the first use. For example, Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG).
- Use bulleted lists when appropriate.
Logo and business name
You can include a logo and business name that display when clients visit your scheduler on its standalone, automatically-generated scheduling page.
Whether or not you enable the “Show business name next to the logo on client's scheduling page” option, we recommend filling out the business name field. If you don’t, a screen reader will not recognize your logo. If you add a business name, the screen reader should read the business name when the logo is highlighted on your standalone scheduling page.
These elements won't display when clients use your scheduler embedded in a website.
Colors
You can use the settings in the Customize appearance panel to change the colors of various elements of your scheduling page. Where your colors display on your scheduler, and which colors you can customize, depends on which scheduler template you’re using.
Color contrast is very important to legibility. Color differences can be missed by people with low vision or color deficiencies.
You can use Google Chrome's Developer Tools, or Firefox's Accessibility Inspector, to simulate how people with common color vision impairments may experience your scheduler.
Note: These are third-party tools that fall outside the scope of Acuity support.
| Do | Group colors with high contrast, like yellow and black. |
| Don’t | Pair colors that are difficult to differentiate, like blue and purple. |
To learn more about color contrast, review the Web Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) recommendations.
Forms
To collect more details about your clients, you can use a client intake form. Forms can be challenging for some visitors. It’s important to ensure you write each question on your form clearly, and that the form is easy to navigate. You can include brief instructions in the Description field that inform visitors exactly what they need to know to appropriately complete the form.
Limiting motion
You can add images and .gifs, to some areas of your scheduler. However, to ensure you’re making your scheduler as accessible as possible, consider leaving out animated .gifs. Content that moves can:
- Be difficult for anyone who has trouble tracking moving objects
- Cause problems for screen readers
- Be a severe distraction for some people. Certain groups, particularly those with attention deficit disorders, find blinking content distracting, making it difficult for them to concentrate on other parts of the page.
If you decide to use an animated .gif, keep in mind, content with flashing, or rapidly changing colors may cause seizures in susceptible visitors. When possible, avoid the use of using content that flashes, or rapidly changes colors and consider implementing the following guidelines:
- It doesn't flash more than three times in one second.
- It is below the general flash and red flash thresholds.
Flash thresholds are different for each color. People are more affected by red flashes than any other color.
You can use the Trace Center’s Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool to test for seizure risk and flash thresholds.