Accessibility Issues
Wrike is a great tool for teams if everyone is fully capable of using a mouse. My organisation consists of many blind or visually impaired employees that have difficulty navigating Wrike. It is surprising to see how many errors or alerts come up when Wrike is scanned for accessibility.
http://wave.webaim.org/report#/https://www.wrike.com/
Is the Wrike Dev team looking into addressing accessibility issues? Government agencies require 508 compliance to use.
I can't link to the scan of my workspace but there are fewer issues there. It would be great to get these addressed.
Hi Joseph, thank you for your post. Acquiring 508 compliance isn't on our current roadmap. That said, I understand how important accessibility is (both for you and your team and for others), and I'm sorry to hear about the difficulties you have encountered while navigating the Workspace. I wanted to thank you for taking the time to provide this information and share your insight about Workspace accessibility.
Not planning to do business with any federal agencies or contractors or subcontractors then eh? Starting in March 2018 this is a required component for any/all businesses that do any federal work and will apply to the tools these companies use as well. The 508 refresh was published January 2017 and becomes law 2018.
You really plan to NOT include any attempt to reach 30% of the population who uses assistive technology as your business model?
Hi @Samantha and @Joseph we've been discussing this more internally this week (and your comments helped fuel those discussions). The team understands how important accessibility is (both for individual users and for anyone who would need Wrike to meet accessibility standards because of 508 compliance) and the team is going to start filling out a VPAT assessment.
Hi everyone, I know this isn't 508 compliance, but we've taken the first step towards assessing where we are and completed a VPAT assessment. It is confidential so we can't post it publically but we are happy to email it to interested individuals. If you would like us to send it to you, just leave a comment letting us know.
Adding our voice to this -- we're excited by the possibilities of Wrike but we'll have to limit its use to just a couple of employees until it's made accessible. We're a California state university but we are also bound by Section 508.
We'll follow up with our account representative for the VPAT.
Thank you,
Kate Sharron
Program Manager, Universal Design Center
California State University, Northridge
Hi Stephanie,
I would be interested in seeing the VPAT assessment. I work with a digital agency who specialise in accessibility and we are looking for a project management tool to use internally for our team. As per the comments above a key requirement for us is a tool that meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 (this is the international standard, Section 508 is based on this standard).
I would note that WCAG is a mandatory requirement for digital services in Australia and many other countries. Although 508 is a Government requirement in the USA you might want to take note of the growing list of legal cases occurring against companies in the USA.
Thank you,
Stewart Hay
Managing Director, Intopia
Hi Stewart, I'd be happy to send it to you! You'll be getting an email from me shortly. Please let me know if you have any questions!
I'd like to see the VPAT as well.
VPATS declare how accessible a product is, not a company. https://www.section508.gov/content/sell/vpat
http://www.lflegal.com/2017/08/ny-web-cases/
Hi Samantha, I'll send an email shortly with the document attached!
Hi There, Although UK based we also have a large number of staff who would require it to be accessible. I would be interested in seeing the VPAT and hear more about how your organisation intends to meet this growing need for products to be available to all.
Many thanks,
Hi,
I work at the American Printing House for the Blind and we started working with a similar software but aren't as happy with it. It is accessible, but a bit clunky. We stopped by Wrike's booth at the CreativePro Week conference last week and were interested to learn more, BUT it has to be accessible in order for us to consider. I notice the comments above ended last year, so just wondering if any progress has been made to this software to be 508 compliant.
Thank you,
Stephanie
Hi,
Is Wrike 508 compliant now?
Thanks
Just added my money's worth - we have a visually impaired person working with us, and whilst the majority have adopted Wrike fairly well, he now shy's away from using it as often. Any update on this?
Love using Wrike internally for our department. I just chatted with a very helpful Wrike rep, and found out that Wrike is not yet 508 compliant. This limits our ability to use it (specifically forms) outside of our department.
Just finding out about the accessibility limitations of Wrike because of a new staff person who is having a very frustrating time navigating it using a well know computer screen reader for the visually-impaired. This is pretty disappointing, but I hope Wrike decision makers will soon realize the value of making their platform accessible. My group has been using Wrike for several years, and for the most part, it's been great. I love it and I actually pushed for adoption of it with my staff. Even so, I'll be looking out for alternatives that have more of the population in mind when they consider design, functionality and compatibility.
Hi Stephen,
Although it is commendable to place a survey out to your users, might I suggest you take some time to talk with a digital accessibility specialist first?
For example VPAT is only a requirement in the USA and only for government agencies as part of Section 508 procurement. In the USA companies are being sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act for not having accessible online services. Recent cases are suggesting that meeting the minimum requirement of WCAG 2.0 AA is not always good enough. FYI the amount of legal cases has been growing quite rapidly over the last 2 years, it is now in the thousands per year.
Internationally it is generally a requirement that you meet WCAG 2.0 AA (note that version 2.1 was released in June 2018). In Europe they have just updated their ICT Accessibility procurement standard, EN301 549, to now require this to be WCAG 2.1 AA. The Australian standard, AU EN 301 549, is based on the European one but is still only referencing WCAG 2.0 AA.
I think you also need to be aware that these standards cover all disabilities including vision, hearing, physical and cognitive.
If you get some help you are going to save a lot of time and effort. This will help you get to a more accessible and inclusive Wrike quicker.
My advice is to:
My team at Intopia are digital accessibility specialists, members of the W3C and can definitely help if you want it. I am not saying this just as a sales pitch, I am also happy to direct you to others in the industry who can equally help you. I am more interested in seeing you make Wrike accessible and do this in the most cost effective way possible. Despite the legal risk it actually is good business to have an accessible and inclusive system and I am happy to provide you some of the business research to support this.
Good luck!
Stewart
Your social media responders have no idea what accessibility is. They said, in writing, that accessibility can mean a number of things.
So for anyone reading, accessibility is not part of the Wrike landscape.
We offered advice in 2017 and 2018. Your "Tier 2 Support Team" said this today:
Wrike is not yet compliant with section 508. We are moving in that direction but the process is not quick. Our engineers estimated Wrike accessibility issues and work on fixing them.
I'm sorry that I cannot share any precise details with you at this point. Once we have an official update about this matter it will be posted on our Community.
Do not hesitate to let me know if you come up with any further questions about Wrike and have a great day!
Best regards,
Tatyana K
Tier 2 support team
For anyone keeping score - two years is more than enough time to remediate code, implement new code and development practices, and incorporate WCAG standards.
ETA: If someone has sold you that WCAG offers certification for website compliance, they likely also have a bridge to sell you.
Your survey:
And Stephen -- your survey, is totally inaccessible. That's like the cherry on top.
Hi Samatha, thank you for your input here, I have passed this feedback to the relevant team.
I understand you've been in contact with our team about this via other channles, so I just want to keep you and everyone else here updated on what's happening right now.
First of all, thank you all for your feedback and input on this topic. In 2018, the team spent time understanding the issues and collecting initial data on accessibility. This year, there are plans to improve Wrike accessibility and this work is already in motion.
This is a big and important effort for our team, which is of high priority. We really appreciate the feedback you have provided us and the comments published here are reviewed by the product team. This information is hugely valuable during this investigation and development process.
As soon as I have any updates or new information on I'll be sure to keep you updates here.
Again, thank you for your input.
Can we get a VPAT please?
At our university we are conducting an accessibility assessment and I would like to review it.
Thank you,
G
Any update on this? ADA is important to my company and we want to use a Wrike form externally, but we need to make sure it is compliant. More specifically, I can't see how screen readers can detect if there's an error on the form. Yes there's a tooltip that appears when a user hovers over an input field with an error, but my screen reader does not pick that up. I know that error messages need to have the role attribute set to "alert" for screen readers to pick it up. Am I missing something?
Hi everyone! Sorry for the late reply here! I've checked with the Product team - they are working on accessibility this year and they'll continue this work in 2021 too. This is a fairly big project, that is why it's taking the team some considerable time. I will let you know once I have an update from the team.
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It is the end of 2021 now, and I am seriously, seriously disappointed in the lack of advancement made in this area. The website was more useable in the middle of the year than it is now... and it is nearly impossible for my screenreader and I to even locate where to make a comment about this issue still occurring.... I am curious which company needs to be sued for this to be taken seriously.... the one I am working for, that is using such terribly not accessible applications.... or this one for the creation of such... and then dragging their feet on the implementation... even just on the website side for a fix.... never-the-less the completely useless application built into the operating systems... By the way, as I am typing this, the form does not give my screenreader any way to know what I am typing... so I am typing completely in the dark. Ho9pefully this does not get removed or even barred from being displayed... given the trouble I had in making the comment.
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Hi there,
So it looks like this thread has not had an update in the last 6 months.
Is there any update? Rolling out the new Wrike interface without addressing accessibility seems like a massive mistake. Hopefully I am wrong :)
I'd also like a copy of the VPAT please. Thank you!
Hi Andy Lechlak, welcome to the Community! I apologize for the late reply here.
The team is currently working on some major updates to Wrike and they are also working on the accessibility for those new features. It's too early to share more, but we'll be announcing all updates here on the Community.
I've asked your Account Manager to contact you about the VPAT 👍
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
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