Introduction

As part of our vision of a world where people are empowered by health research and technology to make effective, informed decisions, take control of their health and well-being, and live happier and healthier lives, JMIR Publications is committed to ensuring that our content is accessible to everyone, not just through our open-access publishing model, but also through technical innovations that connect people of all abilities to our content.

As we work toward achieving compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.1 level AA (wherever viable), our websites currently include several accessibility features designed to enable and improve the navigation experience for users of all abilities.

Third-party extensions can be used to provide text-to-speech and additional accessibility support; however, we have developed our own accessibility menu that offers a number of features and user controls directly within our websites.

Accessibility menu

The accessibility menu can be enabled by selecting the accessibility icon that appears on the top-right corner of any page.

All adjustments made using the accessibility menu will be applied across the current website and saved by your browser to improve user experience.

The accessibility menu allows users to make color adjustments, font adjustments, and content adjustments, as described below.

Color adjustments

Users can select from a number of different color profiles:

• Saturation (high/low): Increases or decreases the saturation of colors across the website.
• Contrast (high/low): Increases or decreases the contrast of colors across the website.
• Brightness (high/low): Increases or decreases the brightness of colors across the website.
• Monochrome: Changes the color profile to black and white (monochrome) across the website.
• Invert colors: Inverts all colors across the website.

Font adjustments

Users can resize and adjust the font according to their needs in the following ways:

• Increase font: Increases font sizes across the website up to 200% of the original setting.
• Decrease font: Decreases font sizes across the website to 54% of the original setting.
• Bold text: Converts all fonts across the website to boldface.

Content adjustments 

Following the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, all content across our websites is aligned left. However, this can be adjusted using the accessibility menu as follows:

• Align right: Aligns all content to the right margin.
• Align center: Aligns all content to the center.
• Align justify: Converts all formatting to full justification.

Keyboard navigation

Anyone who uses keyboard navigation can navigate our websites by using the “tab” key on their keyboard. For such users, we provide hidden links to allow for easy navigation.

We understand that it can require a lot of tabbing to get to the desired section on pages that offer a multitude of links and content, so we have added hidden links on pages where we believe they are most needed, enabling users to skip over some content sections and access the desired content with greater ease.

Conclusion

Our objective at JMIR Publications is to be fully compliant with the standards outlined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. However, we know that there is still work to do. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or lack an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. We are continuously improving our accessibility benchmarks; adding, updating, and improving our websites’ options and features; and developing and adopting new technologies.

If you wish to contact us with any suggestions or concerns, please contact us at support@jmir.org.