Oracle Accessibility Conformance Report

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Images that convey information have meaningful alternative text using ALT
• Images that are decorative are marked up using ALT=”” or CSS background images
• Controls have an associated name
• Non-text characters are not used or have meaningful alternative text

Exceptions:

Affecting Database Applications:

• Applications defined to use a logo of type 'Image', or 'Image and Text' render an image with no ALT tag. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32393990.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• No Pre-recorded video content is being used.

Exceptions:

Affecting Documentation:

• Videos on the Application Express YouTube channel are missing closed captions. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 29370906.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• User interface component labels are associated with the fields they are labeling
• Headings are encoded with HTML heading tags
• List markup is used for marking up lists
• Table markup is used for marking up data tables, including row and column headers and table summaries where appropriate
• Data tables specify ARIA-LABEL or SUMMARY
• Layout tables use appropriate markup
• Groups of components are marked up with their description
• Style sheets are used only to change the layout and presentation on the screen

Exceptions:

Affecting Database Applications:

• The 'Buttons Container' region template is used as an invisible container for buttons on a page. Regions using this template render a hidden (but accessible to screen readers) HTML heading, with the region title as the heading text. Buttons can then be positioned in certain template positions, however some of these positions (specifically where the button is positioned on the left of the region), result in these buttons appearing before the heading, which is confusing for screen reader users. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31972352.

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• In the Faceted Search region component, the form controls displayed for a facet should be grouped by the facet label to provide extra context. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30380808.
• In the Faceted Search region component, if a facet count is displayed, this can be difficult to understand for screen reader users. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31964057.
• The Markdown item type is not correctly labelled. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30902322.
• Classic and Interactive report regions of Application Express currently have no declarative way of defining row headers. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 14198644.
• In the Popup LOV item component, when displaying multiple columns in the search results, although the results are announced as a data table, the table is missing an accessible label. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30375933.
• APEX provides two main ways in which page items can be rendered as non-editable, firstly the 'Display Only' item type, and secondly any item type whose 'Read-only' condition evaluates to true. For both of these scenarios, APEX renders a SPAN visually displaying the value of the item. Because this is not an HTML form element, this information could be missed by users of Assistive Technology. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31200377.
• LABEL elements for page items in APEX are always rendered, irrespective of which item type is used. This is fine for page items that use form elements such as text fields, select lists or textareas, however this is incorrect use of HTML for other item types (for example radio groups, checkboxes). This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31205979.
• Links in list items that contain an icon do not announce their link text correctly when using JAWS keystroke 'i' to navigate between them. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32119718.
• In Interactive Grid regions, inconsistent row counts are announced to screen readers when pagination type is 'Scroll', 'Show Total Row Count' is on, and there are more rows than initially displayed. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32075361.
• When a date picker has its display type set to 'Inline', the rendered control does not have a label. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32799078.

Affecting Development Environment:

• The 'Quick Edit' and 'Live Template Options' features, available as a developer of an application via the developer toolbar, are inaccessible to screen readers user. You can use quick edit with keyboard-alone, where the cursor keys allow you to navigate through the runtime page and select the page component you wish to edit, however these components do not have any accessible label, meaning screen readers will not be able to identify them. Because Live Template Options is available via the Quick Edit feature, then this also means this is not accessible to screen reader users. Screen readers users will need to navigate to components to edit via the App Builder in the traditional way, so without the convenience of being able to go straight to a component to edit from the runtime. Also Template Options will need to be edited in the App Builder and saved, and then the page refreshed to see the effect of the change in the runtime, so without the convenience of the Live Template Option feature. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 25153940.
• In many places across the development environment, the BOLD tag is used to emphasize text. This should be replaced with the STRONG tag. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 29347790.
• Summary style pages, typically shown at the end of wizards in APEX contain summary information that is difficult to understand with a screen reader. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31566352.
• Search results pages for the APEX Advisor, and for Application Search, are difficult to navigate with a screen reader. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31972162.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Text fields which collect information about the user contain the appropriate autocomplete content attribute.
• The autocomplete attribute is defined in the 'Custom Attributes' page item property in APEX.

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• The autocomplete attribute is missing from the pages in APEX that collect information about the user. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31978520.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Information conveyed by color is available in alternative formats, such as shape, text, font weight
• Information conveyed by color has a contrast ratio of at least 3:1

Exceptions:

Affecting Database Applications:

• For Polygon layers, the map region allows to visualize information with the fill color for the polygons on the map - which gives end users a 'thematic map'. Polygons can be filled with different colors, but there's no feature to have patterned fill, if color is not sufficient. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32463607. As a workaround, the 'Extruded Polygons' can be used instead of simple polygons. The map will become a 3D map, and the attribute is being visualized by the height of the extruded polygon - so color is not the only method to convey the information.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1
• Other text and images of text have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

Exceptions:

Affecting Documentation:

• The 'JavaScript API Reference' chapter of the documentation has text that does not meet the minimum contrast requirements. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 29370357.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Text information reflows so that only one direction of scrolling is required while at 400% zoom.
• Content that requires two-dimensional layout only presents scroll bars in the component used
  to present the two-dimensional content.

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment:

• Horizontal scroll is required throughout the development environment, when zoomed at 400%. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31964090.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Dismissable -The content can be dismissed without moving the pointer or keyboard focus
• Hoverable - When pointer hover triggers additional content, the pointer can be moved over the additional content without the additional content disappearing
• Persistent - The additional content remains visible until the hover or focus trigger is removed, the user dismisses it, or its information is no longer valid.

Exception:

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• Tooltips used throughout APEX fail the 'hoverable' test, because the tooltip disappears if you move the mouse over it. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31888900.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Ability to perform functions from the keyboard only, and without requiring specific timings for individual keystrokes
• Proper operation of unique keystrokes and access keys, including those listed in the product documentation
• The ability to use the product with OS keyboard aids: StickyKeys and FilterKeys (feature names may be different on different platforms)

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• Although icon buttons used in our development environment and in Database Applications have an accessible name (using ARIA-LABEL), they also have a TITLE attribute which displays to mouse users on hover, however keyboard users have no way of perceiving this text. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 28293186
• In the Faceted Search region component, users have no easy way to navigate with keyboard from the facet region to the results region, other than tabbing through all the facet controls. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30380719.
• The Region Display Selector region renders tabs based on the regions on a page. The keyboard interaction is not properly initialized immediately after page load, resulting in every tab being a tab stop for keyboard users. As soon as the user selects a tab using cursor keys, the correct keyboard interaction is added and the tabs function as a single tab stop, as expected. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31971687.

Affecting Database Applications:

• When using the Universal Theme, a developer has two choices for the app's navigation menu system, 'Top', and 'Side'. When using 'Side' navigation, the app's navigation will appear in a tree structure on the side of the page. In addition, the end user has the option to expand or collapse the navigation menu, using a toggle button on the page. This expand / collapse functionality has two further developer options, 'Hidden' (the default) where the collapsed state actually hides the navigation menu completely, and 'Icon', where the navigation menu just collapses down to icons. When using the 'Icon' option, the icons cannot receive keyboard focus. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31112489. A keyboard user can workaround this by expanding the navigation menu, to be able to interact with it.
• When a Popup LOV item is used on a modal page, and where the Popup LOV is based on a Shared List of Values with multiple columns defined, keyboard navigation breaks  and the user is unable to move down the list of options. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31676267. Note: As the issue only occurs under these exact circumstances, developers can work around it by either not using a modal page, or by using a Shared List of Values that just uses a display and return column, instead of multiple columns.
• The 'Rectangle Zoom' feature of the map region allows to draw a rectangle onto the map. Once the rectangle is drawn, the map centers and zoom to the outline of this rectangle. However the rectangle can only be drawn using the mouse, there is no keyboard equivalent. However, the 'Zoom In' and 'Zoom Out' buttons are keyboard accessible, and the map can be panned using arrow keys. So zooming and moving to a specific area is possible using the keyboard. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32463547.
• In the Map region, spatial objects drawn on the map, are currently not accessible with the keyboard. It's possible to hover over these with the mouse and get more information about them, however this is not possible with the keyboard. The only workaround currently available to developers is to create alternative content on the page that conveys the same information, that is keyboard accessible (for example a report). This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32463573.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• A ‘Skip to Main Content’ link is provided to skip repetitive navigation links at the top of the page.
• Structure and hierarchy is marked up with Header elements outside of repetitive navigation links
• WAI-ARIA Landmark elements are used outside of repetitive navigation links

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment:

• There are no 'Skip to Main Content' links implemented for the Development Environment. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 27782291.

Affecting Database Applications:

• In Universal Theme, we make some use of landmark regions (for example for the main content, and page footer), however we do not make use of landmark regions in the native region templates. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31972231.
• In Universal Theme, page structure needs to be better identified with landmarks. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32102597.

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• Classic report regions need to better identify their contents with landmarks. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32109673.
• Interactive report regions need to better identify their contents with landmarks. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32095473.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Logical movement through the focusable components using only the keyboard, in an order that follows a meaningful sequence

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment:

• When deleting components in Page Designer, keyboard focus goes back to the top of the page, which can result in a disruptive experience for keyboard and screen reader users. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31355918.

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• When a validation fails on a form page, although the error will be announced to screen readers, we do not explicitly set the focus to help the user more quickly deal with fixing the errors. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 26878709.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• The text of links and their surrounding paragraph, list, table cell (with marked up table headers), or preceding heading is sufficient to describe their purpose

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment:

• On the Shared Components page in the Application Builder, there are two links 'Data Sources > REST Enabled SQL' and 'Security > Web Credentials', that visually display a '>' right arrow to the right of the link, to indicate that these link to workspace-scoped (not just application-scoped) components. The '>' text is not accessible to screen reader users. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31964540.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Headers describe the topic or purpose of the content below them
• Labels describe the purpose of the associated field

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment:

• In Page Designer (where developers build and edit pages in APEX), the current heading structure needs improving to improve usability for users of Assistive Technology. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 27782249.
• One of the administration pages for the Attribute Dictionary in APEX contains a 'Check All' style checkbox in the report's column header, which is missing label text. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 20310474.

Affecting Database Applications and Development Environment:

• In the Interactive Grid region component, some form fields rendered have either no label, or labels that require improvement. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 25153552.
• Native checkbox and radio group item types contain duplicate labelling. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 27810346.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Visual indication of the location of the focus

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• In the Interactive Grid region component, some interactive controls do not show focus. This issue is tracked with Oracle bugs 25153460 and 25162731.
• In the Interactive Grid region component, additional hidden tab stops are present after a configuration dialog has been opened. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 25245934.

Affecting Database Applications:

• The Tab Container region template which is used to render regions on a page as tabs, contains a 'tablist' element that does not show keyboard focus. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30515581.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Changes in the value of user interface components does not result in a substantial change to the page, an additional change of keyboard focus, or the spawning of a pop-up window
• In circumstances where changing the value of the components causes a substantial change to the page, an additional change of keyboard focus, or the spawning of a pop-up window, warning is given prior to the user interacting with those user-interface components

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment:

• In Page Designer, some property changes can result in focus being unexpectedly moved to the top of the page. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32069876.
• Wizard pages sometimes contain a grid element allowing to choose for example a page type in the create page wizard. This grid has some custom behaviour where if you click or select the grid item, this submits the page and moves to the next page of the wizard. This can be confusing for screen reader users, who may have just wanted to select the grid item. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32360759.

Affecting Database Applications and Development Environment:

• Sorting a column of a classic report region causes focus to be unexpectedly moved to the top of the region. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32075821.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• When input errors are detected, they are described to the user in text, including identifying the item where the error occurred

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• Errors displayed in Interactive Report dialogs (for example when attempting to save a Filter with an empty 'Expression' value) just display a red border around the field in error, with no text explaining what the error is. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 20697217.
• When defining validations in APEX, the developer has the choice to define the 'Display Location' for the associated error message. This can either be 'Inline with Field and in Notification' (default), 'Inline with Field', 'Inline in Notification' or 'On Error Page'. When using the 'Inline with Field' location (where the error message will just appear next to the item with the error), a screen reader user is not notified that the error has occurred. So after submitting the form, the user would just stay on the same page, and would have to go back through the form fields and listen for details of any items with errors (which does with a screen reader because the error message is programmatically associated with the relevant page item). This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31205839. To workaround this issue, developers should select any location including the 'Notification' position.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• Elements in HTML content have complete start and end tags, are properly nested, do not contain duplicate attributes, and have unique IDs

Exceptions:

Affecting Database Applications:

• If more than one Interactive Report Region are defined on one page, where more than one of those define a 'Link' column, then the 'Link' column heading rendered will contain duplicate ID values of 'LINK'. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 20687795.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• HTML controls have a programmatically associated name, derived from the appropriate HTML elements and attributes including LABEL, TITLE, SUMMARY, CAPTION, etc.
• Additional state information is programmatically exposed for HTML controls, such as whether a field is ‘required’ or 'invalid'
• Custom controls have appropriate roles specified using the role attribute
• Custom controls have appropriate state and property information conveyed using the relevant WAI-ARIA or HTML5 attributes
• Custom controls have a meaningful programatically exposed name
• Frames have a meaningful title specified in the title attribute

Exceptions:

Affecting Database Applications:

• The Tab Container region template which is used to render regions on a page as tabs just renders as a standard HTML list, and does not follow the Tabs design pattern. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30515581.
• In Universal Theme, the 'Collapsible' region template does not clearly indicate its expanded state. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32532058.
• In Universal Theme, when using 'Side' navigation, if the menu is in a collapsed state, the menu no longer works as expected. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32086482. To workaround this issue, the menu can be expanded.
• In Universal Theme, when using 'Side' navigation, the tree widget used contains malformed WAI-ARIA elements. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32774466.
• In Universal Theme, breadcrumb markup is missing some WAI-ARIA information that would make it easier to use with screen readers. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32139056.

Affecting Development Environment:

• Currently in the Property Editor, the display groups are marked up as DIV elements that are focusable with the keyboard. When focused, users can navigate between display groups with the Up and Down arrow keys, which aids keyboard support of the Property Editor. However, when the DIV is focused, screen readers can announce the display group title twice, and in addition can fail to announce the ARIA expanded state when the display group first gets focus (however, it is announced upon expand or collapse). This issue is tracked with Oracle bugs 20693220 and 32087719.
• In Page Designer, it is possible to edit multiple components at the same time, however when using a screen reader, there is no indication that multiple items are selected. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 29283988.
• In Page Designer, the splitter controls used to manage layout are poorly labelled and are missing ARIA-CONTROLS to point to relevant page area. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 20693603.
• When using Spotlight search with JAWS, the search output can be confusing and sometimes duplicated. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31972027.
• The Wizard Selection plugin, used in our development environment in creation wizards (for example to select the page type in the create page wizard), is difficult to use with a screen reader. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31973124.
• Wizards used throughout the development environment display a progress train to indicate progress through the wizard. These currently use visually hidden text to convey the current active step to assistive technology, however this should instead use ARIA-CURRENT. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32118618.
• In Page Designer, the tabs used to the different page elements (eg Rendering, Dynamic Actions, Processing etc) use aria-expanded, which is not valid for tabs. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32103943.
• Incorrect shortcut text conveyed to screen readers for accessing application search. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32087187.
• Some buttons in the create page wizard can become difficult to activate with a screen reader. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32360759.
• In the create page wizard, when selecting the 'Parent Navigation Menu Entry' for the Navigation Menu, some options appear visually but disabled (because they are sub-pages that cannot be selected as a parent). Screen reader users do not perceive this information. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32360759.

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• When logging into a workspace, or a Database Application using an appropriate authentication scheme, if the instance is set to have a delay for failed login attempts (setting in Instance Admin > Security > General Settings > Delay after failed login attempts in Seconds), and the user enters incorrect login details, a notification displays that includes a count down of the number of seconds before they can attempt logging in again. This count down is not announced properly to screen reader users. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 29348302.
• The List View of the native Calendar region type uses DIVs with WAI-ARIA headings for the event list, however this should be implemented using more structured HTML. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 27941145.
• Some configurations of 'required' attributes produce inconsistent output by screen readers, and may confuse users of assistive technology. This can lead to inconsistencies in what is emitted, and possibly confuse a user of Assistive Technology. This issue is tracked with Oracle bugs 23761182 and 32085649.
• In the Interactive Grid region component, when the grid is editable, some inline errors are not discernible to screen reader users. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 25153917.
• Row state information such as deleted, inserted or changed is conveyed visually, however this state information is not conveyed to screen reader users. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31964989.
• The Faceted Search region component requires better notifications of partial page updates for screen reader users. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30380762.
• The Markdown item type renders a custom editor for defining the markdown. Screen readers can miss details of some text entered into the editor. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30902322.
• In the Popup LOV item component, search results visually highlight the searched text, however this causes screen readers to no longer read the searched word naturally, and instead the characters will be separated by the searched text and non-searched text. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30375933.
• In the Popup LOV item component, when displaying multiple columns in the search results, extra 'No results found' text will be incorrectly announced to screen readers. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 30375933.
• When Modal Dialogs are used, the non-modal dialog content is not hidden to screen reader users. This issue is tracked with Oracle bugs 30666675 and 32317483.
• Interactive report regions can expose different views (for example report view, icon view etc.), which is selected with buttons in the interactive report toolbar. However these buttons do not currently provide anything to assistive technologies to state they are currently selected. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32123748. 
• Where menus are used for page navigation, the menu item corresponding to the current page is missing the ARIA-CURRENT property. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32138852.
• Classic report region current column sort not pereivable with Assistive Technologies. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32079384.
• Interactive report regions contain a column header popup menu that allows fast column-centric operations such as filtering, sorting etc. by the user. This functionality is implemented in such a way that is confusing to screen reader users, becuase it is not clear that it is a popup, and also it is difficult to navigate between the column header, and the popup. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32080813.
• Interactive report regions can sometimes become unusable with screen readers, after the data has been dynamically refreshed. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 32284084.

The product and documentation were tested for:

• PDF files conform to PDF/UA-1
• Where a component supports it, the 'Include Accessibility Tags' option should be checked when exporting to PDF. 

Exceptions:

Affecting Development Environment and Database Applications:

• Classic Report regions allow PDF export that does not include the necessary accessibility tags. This issue is tracked with Oracle bug 31961351.
  Note: Interactive Report and Interactive Grid regions do support the 'Include Accessibility Tags' option, and therefore are supported. In addition, APEX provides an API, APEX_REGION.EXPORT_DATA, which allows for any component in APEX with a data source (which includes Classic Reports), to export supported PDF (where the parameter p_pdf_accessible is set to true).

We mandate certain accessibility related attributes when building APEX applications (for example page titles, region titles, and button labels). The developer is responsible for ensuring the text provided is appropriate and meaningful.

APEX includes a built-in tool called the Advisor, which can be run by developers as part of quality assurance of an APEX application. To help with other non-mandatory attributes defined by a developer, the Advisor includes a set of accessibility checks to highlight possible common accessibility problems (for example page items with no labels, or page regions with no row headers defined). The developer should review and fix such problems as part of their ongoing development process. We recommend to fix issues identified by the Advisor before doing other accessibility testing, for example testing with Assistive Technologies.

Developers should use the default 'Universal Theme' when building applications in APEX. This theme contains templates for different component types, which have been accessibility tested. In addition, developers can select different 'Theme Styles' for styling their applications in different ways. Theme Styles are labelled as being 'Accessibility Tested' if they have undergone accessibility testing. The default 'Vita' is accessibility tested.

The product documentation describes:

• Accessibility Guide, dedicated to helping you both use APEX, and build APEX apps that meet accessibility guidelines.
• Special keystrokes needed to operate controls

Please visit the APEX documentation homepage and then select 'Accessibility'.