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Exposure's Accessibility Commitment

Written by Luke Beard

Exposure's Accessibility Commitment

How Exposure approaches accessibility for public sites and stories

Exposure is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We continuously improve the user experience for everyone by applying relevant accessibility standards and best practices.

Our recent accessibility work has focused especially on the viewer-facing experience of Exposure sites and stories: public story pages, member sites, navigation, dialogs, and other common reading and browsing flows.

Conformance Standards

Exposure sites and stories are designed with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA in mind, especially for public viewer-facing experiences.

Accessibility is an ongoing effort, and we continue to audit and improve our implementation over time. We also work to support Section 508 and ADA accessibility expectations.

Built-in Accessibility Features

Every Exposure site includes the following accessibility features by default:

Navigation & Structure

  • Skip navigation links — Allow keyboard users to bypass repetitive content and jump directly to main content

  • Semantic HTML structure — Proper heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3) and landmark regions (nav, main, footer)

  • ARIA attributes — Enhanced screen reader compatibility throughout all pages

  • Focus indicators — Visible focus states for keyboard navigation

  • Improved dialogs and menus — Public subscribe modals, warning dialogs, and shared menus include better keyboard and focus handling

  • Focus return support — Closing dialogs and menus returns focus to the control that opened them when possible

Keyboard Navigation

All interactive elements on Exposure sites are accessible via keyboard:

Key

Action

Tab

Move to next interactive element

Shift + Tab

Move to previous interactive element

Enter / Space

Activate buttons and links

Escape

Close dialogs, modals, and lightbox

← → (in Lightbox)

Navigate between photos

← → (on Story Map)

Navigate between stories

Space (on Story Map)

Fly to random story

Viewer-Facing WCAG 2.2 Improvements

Recent improvements to public Exposure sites and stories include:

  • Better skip links and landmarks — Shared layouts now provide clearer ways to jump to main content

  • Improved menu accessibility — Shared navigation, mobile menus, and account menus have better button semantics and expanded/collapsed state handling

  • More accessible dialogs — Subscribe flows, warning dialogs, and shared modals now provide better keyboard support and focus management

  • Clearer control labels — Shared search, share, and subscribe controls now have stronger accessible names and labels

  • Reduced hidden-focus issues — Closed menus and popouts are less likely to expose off-screen controls to keyboard users

Images & Media

  • AI-powered alt text — Automatic alternative text generation for photos using advanced AI, following WCAG 2.1 guidelines

  • AI-powered video cover captions — Automatic screen-reader-only captions for looping cover videos, generated by AI for Business subscribers. Pro Plus subscribers can add captions manually. These captions are hidden from sighted visitors and announced only to assistive technology.

  • Descriptive captions — Support for detailed image captions and metadata import

  • Video accessibility — Autoplay videos are muted by default with visible controls

Motion & Animations

  • Reduced motion support — Exposure respects the user's operating system preference for reduced animations (prefers-reduced-motion)

  • Animation controls — Authors can disable story animations in their site settings

Responsive Design

  • Zoom support — Content remains accessible at 200% zoom or higher

  • Mobile optimization — Touch-friendly targets and responsive layouts

  • Flexible text sizing — Text scales appropriately across all devices

Accessibility Statement Page

Every Exposure site now includes an /accessibility page with:

  • Detailed accessibility features list

  • Keyboard navigation reference

  • Known limitations disclosure

  • Contact information for reporting issues

  • Links to accessibility resources

Visit your site's accessibility page at: yoursite.exposure.co/accessibility

Advanced Accessibility Widget

For users who want to go even further, Exposure Pro Plus includes an Advanced Accessibility Widget powered by UserWay. This widget provides additional features:

  • Increase text size and spacing

  • Toggle legible fonts

  • Adjust cursor size

  • Stop all animations

  • Highlight links

  • Read the page aloud

  • Enhanced keyboard navigation

  • Multiple contrast modes for visual impairments

Learn more about the Advanced Accessibility Widget →

AI Alt Text and Video Cover Captioning

Exposure uses Google's Gemini AI to generate high-quality alternative text for images and screen-reader captions for looping cover videos. Our AI follows strict WCAG guidelines:

  • Descriptions are concise (80-150 characters)

  • Focus on the main subject and key visual details

  • Avoid redundant phrases like "Image of" or "Photo showing"

  • Include relevant context when available

Cover Video Captions

When a Business subscriber uploads a looping cover video, a short accessibility caption is generated automatically. This caption is:

  • Hidden from sighted visitors (screen-reader-only)

  • Announced by assistive technology via aria-describedby

  • Editable or replaceable at any time in the Cover Design Options panel

  • Cleared automatically when the cover video is replaced or removed

Pro Plus subscribers can type cover video captions manually in the same panel.

You can enable AI alt text and video captioning in your account settings. Learn more about AI-powered features →

Assistive Technology Compatibility

Exposure sites are tested and compatible with:

  • Screen readers: VoiceOver (macOS/iOS), NVDA (Windows), JAWS (Windows)

  • Screen magnification software

  • Speech recognition software

  • Keyboard-only navigation

Known Limitations

While we strive for full accessibility, some content may have limitations:

  • User-generated content — Some images may lack alt text if not provided by the author

  • Embedded content — Third-party embeds (YouTube, Vimeo, maps) may have varying accessibility

  • PDF documents — Downloadable PDFs may not be fully accessible

  • Custom styling — Author-customized color schemes may not always meet contrast requirements

  • Custom code — If a site owner injects custom code, that code may introduce accessibility issues outside Exposure's defaults

Reporting Accessibility Issues

If you encounter accessibility barriers on an Exposure site, you can:

  1. Contact the site author via their contact page (if enabled)

  2. Contact Exposure Support at [email protected]

When reporting issues, please include:

  • The web page URL where you encountered the issue

  • A description of the problem

  • The assistive technology you were using (if any)

  • Your contact information for follow-up

Resources

Need Help?

If you have questions, reach out to us at [email protected]. We're happy to help!

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