Ensure Quarto Meets WCAG 2.1 AA Standards

[IULibScholComm]

Description

May Quarto be brought into conformance with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards by April 2026, given last year's update to Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)? Otherwise, my institution (Indiana University) will no longer be able to publish with Quarto.

For instance, in HTML Books:

• Alt text is missing from certain links: the email icon and the orcid icon in author metadata, and the next page icon on the final page of the book (this link/icon can probably be removed altogether, since it's seemingly purposeless) (see image below)
• Endnotes create empty container elements (see image below)

These issues were found using SiteImprove.

[mcanouil]

@IULibScholComm Thanks. FYI, your screenshots do not have alternative text.

For reference:

• Increase options/guidance for compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in revealjs HTML output #8621

[IULibScholComm]

Thank you; they have alt-text now--and sorry; this was posted hastily.

[cscheid]

It's in our roadmap for 2025, and you should start to see improvements in 1.8.

One thing we want to communicate very clearly to everyone interested in this subject is that there are a large numbers of slightly different accessibility checkers available online, and we will not be able to promise support for every one of those.

With that said, we are almost certain that our accessibility standards will be to aim for full (or as close to as we can make) compliance with axe-core checks.

[cscheid]

In the pre-release versions, add this to your document:

format:
  html:
    axe:
      output: document

You will get a visual indicator at the bottom-right of your document with the resulting diagnostics.

We're working on GitHub Actions support for testing a whole project against it in CI. Stay tuned.

[cycomachead]

Amazing, I'll be making use of this!! Thank you!

[IULibScholComm]

In Quarto version 1.8.11, axe: document returns the following error when using quarto preview for a book project: Field "axe" has value document, which must instead be "true" or "false"
axe: true has no effect

[cscheid]

@IULibScholComm I had a typo and fixed it, sorry.

[IULibScholComm]

Thank you! This is great, btw--very helpful.