Accessibility: New Options in ThingLink

Louise Jones March 28, 2022

Web View Now Available! 

ThingLink has an additional ‘Web View’ function available for enhanced usability. This offers your viewers more options for how they access any of the information or digital content contained in your ThingLink scenes. 

ThingLink creators and viewers tell us they love having the Immersive Reader function built into Text and Media Tags. This will still be there, but we’re going further by enhancing your tool set with a new ‘Web View’ of your ThingLink scenes. It is compatible with screen readers and keyboard options. 

We know that in presenting content on your websites you also wish to adhere to legislation such as WCAG 2.1. Our new feature available for embedded ThingLink scenes helps you to achieve this – as well as providing enhanced usability.

Accessibility – By Design and Default

As a tool that’s loved by users worldwide, a core benefit of ThingLink is the ability to present information in multiple ways and languages. ThingLink helps creators to design content with inclusion and accessibility in mind, making it accessible anywhere and on any device. Many educators, for example, use ThingLink in Universal Design of Learning (UDL) approaches where ThingLink can be the optimal choice for creating accessible curriculum content. 

Other good practices demonstrated we have seen is the ability to present the same information in multiple ways, for example a Text and Media Tag offers multi-modal ways to present the same information, with audio, video and accessible text all in one tag!

The new Web View gives your viewers the function to use keyboard navigation to click through tags and view digital content embedded within the scene in multiple ways. 

Sharing the accessibility link

There are three main ways to share the accessible version of your ThingLink content.

1. Get a direct link to the accessibility player

Open the scene you’d like to share then click the ‘Share’ button, select ‘Accessibility’ and copy the URL. See image below.

2. Show the accessibility player button as part of your content

You can display a special accessibility button in the bottom-right corner of your scene. To do so, edit your scene, then go to Settings and click the accessibility icon in the left-side panel to toggle the button on or off (see image below). The viewer can then click the button to open the scene in the accessibility player.

3. Adding the link when sharing content as an embed

When sharing your ThingLink scene to be embedded, check the box to add the additional code to your embed code to copy and paste. This will add a linked sentence displayed underneath your embedded ThingLink scene. Viewers can click on this to open up the Web View and function key widget. It will look like this (image below):

Click here to view on a pop-up website

Two Pro Tips! 

1. You can edit the text displayed in your code. Simply alter the text you wish to be added in the embed code
2. You can also extract the Web View link and share separately if required.

Helpful Resources

ThingLink Accessibility Support Pages (including the most recently updated ThingLink Accessibility Statement)

If you have any recommendations, feedback or ideas to share with us please do get in touch or join our communities. Our X/Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn groups are great places to chat about tips, tricks and share great examples in action.