Accessibility the open source way
At Red Hat, we believe in the power of open source to innovate for everyone. Our commitment to accessibility helps us create products, platforms, and tools that people of all abilities can use.
How we incorporate accessibility
Web accessibility
Accessibility isn't just a feature. It's fundamental to our mission of open collaboration and empowering our users. We follow leading industry standards, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA, and strive to build solutions for people of all abilities.
Product accessibility
Consideration for users with varying abilities starts in the concept phase of our products and solutions, and carries through to design, build, and testing.
Voluntary product accessibility templates (VPATs) and accessibility conformance reports (ACRs) show how our offerings follow guidelines and standards that help make them accessible to a broader audience.
Accessibility in our learning management system (LMS)
Having a disability shouldn’t be a barrier to skills advancement. We strive for accessibility within our LMS and prioritize its compatibility with the latest assistive technology and web browsers.
Building design practices to accommodate varying abilities
Visual
Our design system components are built with color contrast, semantic markup, and keyboard navigability to support people who are blind or have low vision. We also test our web content with screen readers to help optimize experiences for assistive tech users.
Hearing
We provide accessible alternatives for motion and audiovisual content and include visual cues in our digital content for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Motor and mobility
People with physical or motor disabilities may use alternative input methods like switches, joysticks, or voice control, and may be wheelchair users. Our interfaces are designed for accessible keyboard interactions and compatibility with assistive technologies.
Cognitive and neurological
People with cognitive, intellectual, or neurological disabilities may benefit from clear, consistent layouts, predictable navigation, and shorter character counts. We focus on intuitive design, layout, and hierarchy.
Speech and communication
People with speech or communication disabilities may use augmentative and alternative communication devices or text-to-speech technologies. We design our applications to support speech input software.
Frequently asked questions
Is Red Hat software compatible with all end user devices?
We use a set of test profiles to assess compatibility with frequently used web browsers, platforms, and assistive technologies. At this time, our test profiles are primarily focused on Linux® technologies and tools as well as our own portfolio of products and supported third-party integrations. While we strive to keep our software accessible and compliant with common browsers and technologies, we recognize that achieving full accessibility is an ongoing process.
Do open source projects generally provide accessibility conformance reports (ACRs)?
While a few large or specialized non-enterprise open source projects have taken the step to create ACRs, it’s not a common practice. At Red Hat, we see this as an opportunity to add value by delivering accessibility assessments and ACRs where possible as part of our offerings.
Does Red Hat have corrective action processes in place that pertain to accessibility issues?
Yes. At Red Hat, accessibility compliance is assessed in multiple phases of product development, quality assurance, release, and post-release support activities. Corrective action processes are implemented when concerns are found through engineering, quality assurance, and audits, and depending on the resulting actions reports may be made public via our open source community engagement processes.
What should I do if I want to report an accessibility issue?
We offer multiple options for reporting accessibility issues. Existing customers with a Red Hat® account can open a new support case for each accessibility concern related to a Red Hat product, or reach out to our site reliability engineering (SRE) team for issues related to cloud services. If you don’t have a Red Hat account or have input or an issue that is not specific to a product, share feedback with us to inform our ongoing progress on accessibility.
We value your perspective
We welcome your thoughts on accessibility practices at Red Hat. We’re committed to our mission of building accessible experiences for our users, and your input can help us continue to create offerings that meet varying needs.
