Accessibility - How We Operate and Help Customers
Parmonic is deeply invested in efforts to make the web more accessible. In many cases, our solution helps companies that are not currently meeting minimum accessibility standards to meet and exceed those standards.
Since Parmonic creates content and ways to render the content on a customer’s webpages, emails, etc. it is important for customers to understand the role played by Parmonic and what their own responsibilities are. It is also important for customers to utilize the appropriate features in Parmonic because turning certain features off (or not using certain features) will impact the accessibility of video content. Certain features are only available in certain plans so please make sure that you have signed up for the plan that includes features that make your content accessible.
For your webpages, you can embed the Parmonic web widget to provide a consumable version of long videos to your audience. Parmonic gives you the option to enable closed captioning on the videos. Please enable that option.
We also highly recommend that you make the transcript available on your webpage to comply with contrast recommendations from the WCAG. The transcript is easily downloadable from Parmonic.
For emails, Parmonic automatically creates email content that is WCAG compliant. While embedding/pasting Parmonic-generated content please note that some content rendering settings automatically adapt to your email template and settings. Parmonic auto generates accessibility-compliant text to accompany video images. You can edit the text if you need to.
For social media – Parmonic allows you to download videos with closed captions (subtitles) automatically “burned” on the video file itself. We highly recommend that while downloading video files you enable this option.
The Promo Ad Maker in Parmonic automates the creation of attractive promotional videos to announce upcoming events. This module uses your Microsoft PowerPoint slides as building blocks. If you are utilizing this capability in Parmonic, please make sure that your PowerPoint slides meet WCAG standards.
Additional Note
There may be cases where the original video content has been recorded in a manner that certain visuals are not fully compliant with WCAG standards, and you don’t have the ability to re-record those videos. In those cases, please use the custom thumbnail feature in Parmonic to add additional, compliant images (with large, high-contrast text, for example) to the video moments.
Notes on WCAG compliance of the Parmonic web interface
The Parmonic web interface is used by Parmonic users to review the content that Parmonic has automatically created, and to edit or publish the content in various formats. The user interface meets or exceeds WCAG standards other than the exceptions listed below.
E1 – While all important functionality and features in the web interface are compliant, certain optional features may not meet certain guidelines. One example is the optional recommendations that the AI provides beyond the primary recommendations. These optional recommendations use lighter colors to distinguish them from the primary recommendations. We use an additional marker that underlines these optional recommendations to make it easier for those who may have difficulty distinguishing between colors.
E2 – The highlighter capability in Parmonic uses color. Users who may have challenges with color gradations can still use the tool in grayscale.
E3 – Audio content exception – customers can request special processing of audio-only files as video files. Please note that Parmonic does not provide Sign language interpretation for audio content. If you must comply with 1.2.6 of WCAG 2.1, please provide Sign language interpretation on your webpages.
Additional notes on our efforts to make Parmonic more accessible
We are constantly adding new features to Parmonic. As a video-automation tool, certain features may not be fully WCAG compatible due to the nature of our tool and user interface. To cater to our users who need additional help, we provide an easy, no-cost option to use the tool with human assistance from our team. Any user can request help via email or a phone call, and our team will process videos for you and give you the outputs you need as part of our EUI (Extended UI) initiative.
References: https://www.w3.org/WAI/
Parmonic Accessibility Conformance Report WCAG Edition (Based on VPAT® Version 2.4)
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0: Level A (Yes), Level AA (Yes), Level AAA (No)
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1: Level A (Yes), Level AA (Yes), Level AAA (No)