Accessibility in Linchpin Intranet

Free yourself from limitations

The subject is important to us!

We take the topic of accessibility seriously and evaluate what we can do to dissolve barriers. Responsible individuals from development, UI design and product ownership thus participated in a two-day workshop on the topic of accessible development in February 2021.

We have now taken the first steps on a long road. With the release of Linchpin Suite 5.3 and Linchpin Essentials 2.3 at the end of June 2022, we reached an important milestone: For readers, Linchpin is now completely navigable via keyboard, and all areas and content can be accessed. The keyboard control also enables simple interactions such as comments, likes or posts in the microblog.

For more complex interaction, i.e. editing pages and news, we will have to wait until Confluence comes up with improvements. Our macros by themselves are configurable via keyboard, but the actual creation and editing of pages still has a few issues. This is where Atlassian must become active, and we are in discussion with the appropriate contact persons there.

Background

Whether it’s a bus stop, building access, or entertainment equipment, everything should be designed so that it can be used in a reasonable way by both people with and without disabilities. As long as this is not guaranteed, people will always be excluded. As a society, we must therefore learn to think in barrier-free terms in order to avoid discrimination. Because this naturally also applies to software, and thus to us as a software service provider, we are constantly working on reducing the barriers of the Linchpin Intranet Suite.

There is still a long way to go

Is Linchpin accessible?

As of today, we must (unfortunately) say quite clearly: No. There are smaller and larger issues in many areas. We have not yet conducted a BITV test with Linchpin.

However, we have already implemented important aspects. For read-only access and simple interaction, Linchpin can be used entirely via keyboard. And most features are already usable via screen reader.

How accessible is Linchpin?

There is a lot to do to further develop Linchpin towards accessibility. In our Infothek we give you an overview of the status. We are following the guidelines for accessible web content (WCAG 2.1).

The status on this page refers to the current versions of the Linchpin Intranet Suite or Linchpin Essentials.

Will Linchpin be accessible?

Whether Linchpin can be 100% accessible in the future is questionable.

The basis for Linchpin Data Center is Confluence, and almost every Linchpin system is extended by apps from other providers – these are areas in the software over which we as a Linchpin provider have only extremely limited influence.

Your wish for Linchpin

Share your ideas and wishes for future versions of the Linchpin Intranet Suite, Linchpin Essentials or a single app with us.

Differing levels of accessibility on one intranet

After many discussions with customers about their requirements and priorities, we drew up a rough plan that we can use to take on all the areas of Linchpin that still need work.

1

Consumable content

This is the most important level because it affects everyone. Whether you need a strong contrast, navigate with a keyboard or use a screen reader – all content should be accessible and consumable. This is the basic level that all other levels need to be based on. This is our focus.

2

General, easy participation

A social intranet thrives on the engagement of the people within an organization and not just passive consumption. One of the reasons Linchpin is so well-liked is because it offers so many possibilities. Some things should be relatively easy to implement in terms of accessibility – others will be more complex. This is something we’re evaluating on a closer level (Likes, comments and writing microblogs).

3

Editorial & other complex features

Another important aspect of a social intranet is content creation by as many users as possible. Writing news, creating events and designing pages deal with more complex editors and forms. This creates more of a challenge when dealing with accessibility issues. In many cases, Confluence’s own editor comes into play for things like page creation and news. That means we have limited influence in what we can do to improve these things. We rely on Confluence and what it offers out-of-the box, heavily.

4

Administration

We’re currently not planning to tackle the accessibility issue from the system administration side. Unfortunately, the effort vs. gain ratio doesn’t warrant this according to our customers, because they don’t have a need for an improvement on that end.

Learn more about accessibility in Linchpin

Linchpin at the University of Vienna

As a public institution, the university stands for diversity and accessibility, so the topic of accessibility has been a big one in the Linchpin project from the very beginning. Learn more about how the university has met these challenges and implemented the Linchpin Intranet Suite for more than 10,000 employees.

Learn More→

New screen reader features in Linchpin

We’re still at the beginning of our journey to make the Linchpin intranet as accessible as possible. That’s why we’ve been working hard over the past development period to finally make Linchpin fit for screen readers as well. In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to the corresponding functions that await you in version 5.4 – and reveal what we’re already working on (for the next update).

Learn More →

Try Linchpin for free

You want to personalize Linchpin for your company and control who gains access to it? With just two clicks you can create your own Linchpin test system – it will automatically be available for 30 days within a few minutes. At the end of the test period your instance will be deleted.