Overview
Poet includes comprehensive accessibility features to ensure your courses are usable by learners with disabilities. These settings control keyboard navigation, screen reader support, color contrast, and other accessibility features.
The accessibility controls in Poet
1. Enhanced Accessibility ✅
This is the single most important setting, and it is not where most people look for it.
How do I get to this? Dashboard → click the course name → Configuration (editor toolbar) → LEARNER EXPERIENCE → Navigation → scroll to the Accessibility panel.
Setting: Enhanced Accessibility (toggle). Off by default on the course checked.
It does three specific things:
- turns off text animation on the Conversation Thread slide and the Text Thread activity
- moves browser focus to the first message in a Text Thread activity
- traps focus inside the Hotspot popup while a Hotspot is open
2. Alt text on images ✅
Poet provides alt-text fields on the images it treats as course furniture. Each is labelled "Alt text" with the hint "For accessibility".
Title Screen background
How do I get to this? Course editor → select Title Screen in the course structure → Content tab → Background card → Alt text. Placeholder text: "Describe this background for screen readers…"
Header logo, header background and course background
How do I get to this? Configuration → LEARNER EXPERIENCE → Header & Background. Three separate Alt text / For accessibility fields: one under Logo, one under Header Background, one under Course Background.
3. Text size and container contrast ✅
How do I get to this? Configuration → COURSE STUDIO → Typography → Settings.
| Control | Poet's description | Options seen |
|---|---|---|
| Global Font Size | "Set the default font size for all course content." | Normal (16px) · Large (18px) · Custom |
| Text Container Contrast | "Controls the contrast level of text containers within the course." | High · Normal · Off |
The same screen has a Font Manager tab and Theme Overrides for Unclicked, Hover and Clicked hyperlink colours.
Text Container Contrast → High is Poet's high-contrast option, and it applies to text containers in the published course only
4. Background overlay opacity ✅
How do I get to this? Configuration → LEARNER EXPERIENCE → Header & Background → Background panel.
The panel is introduced as "Configure the course background image and contrast overlay." The control is Course Background Overlay Opacity, with options Normal and Off. Use it to darken a busy background so text over it stays readable.
5. WCAG-badged themes ✅
How do I get to this? Configuration → COURSE STUDIO → Theming → Course Theme tab → Themes list.
Certain built-in themes carry a WCAG badge. On the build checked these were Black Tie, Boardroom Blue and Classic.
"WCAG themes comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set by the W3C."
with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines linked to the W3C.
This badge is the whole of Poet's accessibility checking. It flags pre-approved themes. It does not test your own colours, and it does not re-check anything after you edit a theme or apply your brand.
The Theming screen also has an unlabelled sun/moon toggle above the theme preview, which switches the preview between a light and a dark rendering. It carries no tooltip and no accessibility wording.
The other two Theming tabs — Cinematic Theme (an Apply Cinematic Theme picker) and Custom CSS (an editor plus a CSS file drop zone) — contain no accessibility features.
6. Motion and animation speed ✅
How do I get to this? Configuration → COURSE STUDIO → Motion.
Controls seen: Card Flip Speed, Card Feedback Time, Text Thread Animation, Text Thread Animation Speed, Layered Asset Animation Speed ("Adjust layered asset animation speeds at the global level" — Speed), and Page Transitions (Next Transition Animation and Previous Transition Animation, each with Slow / Normal / Fast).
These are motion-design controls rather than an accessibility feature, but they are what you use to slow or calm a course. To remove text animation specifically, use Enhanced Accessibility (above).
7. Sound effects ✅
How do I get to this? Configuration → COURSE STUDIO → Sound.
The screen is titled Sound & Feedback and contains one control: Default Sound Effects — "Enable or disable sound effects that play during course interactions."
8. Video subtitle placement ✅
How do I get to this? Configuration → LEARNER EXPERIENCE → Navigation → Miscellaneous panel.
Display Subtitles Below Video (toggle). Subtitles themselves are authored through the subtitle tool in the Translations workflow — see Section 6 — Translations.
Accessibility Compliance
Poet aims for WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance. This means:
- Text contrast: 4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text
- All interactive elements keyboard accessible
- Proper heading structure
- Alt text for images
- Captions for videos (when available)
- No content that flashes more than 3x per second