Accessibility and conformance

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Accessibility and Conformance

    The Zurich release includes significant updates aimed at enhancing accessibility and conformance with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. These updates focus on improving usability for all users, particularly those utilizing keyboard navigation and assistive technologies.

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    Key Features

    • Onboarding Carousel: New users receive guidance on customizing their accessibility preferences from the onset, streamlining their experience.
    • Custom Fonts in Theme Builder: Users can upload custom fonts to enhance globalization support and flexibility in font styles.
    • Accessibility Preferences: New settings include page alerts that stay visible until acknowledged and lazy loading options for Workspace, improving screen reader compatibility.
    • UI Builder Enhancements: Improved features in UI Builder help identify and rectify accessibility issues, enhancing page quality and developer productivity.
    • Dark Mode for Coral Theme: A new dark mode option enhances readability and reduces eye strain in low-light settings.
    • Guided Tours Enhancements: Include descriptive titles and keyboard assistance to facilitate better navigation.
    • Document Services: New guardrails improve accessibility during PDF generation by managing memory usage effectively.
    • Playbooks in Workflow Studio: Enhanced keyboard navigation improves workflow efficiency for users relying on keyboard interactions.

    Key Outcomes

    These enhancements empower ServiceNow customers to provide a more inclusive experience for all users, ensuring compliance with accessibility standards. Customers can expect improved usability, greater customization options, and streamlined navigation, which collectively enhance overall user satisfaction and productivity.

    Learn about accessibility updates and improvements completed for the Zurich family release.

    Release Highlights

    Next Experience, Configurable Workspace, and Builder improvements

    Leverage Platform and Product upgrades to help you strengthen your WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility conformance. This release enhances usability for all users, particularly those who rely on keyboard navigation, assistive technologies, or have visual impairments. Key improvements include the ability to add custom fonts for Theme Builder, new Next Experience Accessibility preferences, and a new card in the Onboarding Carousel for new instances highlighting the location of the Accessibility preferences.

    New features and other improvements
    • Onboarding Carousel: Empower new users to customize their experience from day one. A new card in the Onboarding Carousel guides them to Accessibility preferences, making it easier for them to find and apply the settings they need.
    • New Custom Fonts feature for Theme Builder: Upload a custom font to your theme to improve globalization support and provide greater flexibility to users who may benefit from specific font styles or sizes.
    • New Next Experience Accessibility preferences:
      • Accessibility settings: Page alerts: Keep page alerts visible until you acknowledge them. This can benefit users who need more time to review the alert.
      • Workspace settings: Lazy Load Workspace: Control the way Workspace pages are loaded. This option can enhance compatibility with screen readers by providing a more consistent and reliable reading experience.
    • UI Builder:
      • Find and fix accessibility issues more easily with the enhanced Find and Fix Issues feature in UI Builder. New accessibility checks in the A11y rules create warnings when a label property or aria-label property is empty for specific components. These checks can improve the usability of UI Builder, the quality of workspace pages, and developer productivity.
      • Enable alerts to auto-dismiss across an experience by configuring them in the experience settings for UIB Admin roles.
    • Next Experience Components accessibility conformance: Refer to the ServiceNow Horizon site Components section. Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) 2.1 AA conformance level indicators can be found in the overview section for each component.
    • Dark mode option for the Coral theme: Enhance readability and reduce eye strain with the new dark mode option for the Coral theme, now available for both web and mobile experiences. This feature can be particularly beneficial in low-light environments.
    • Guided Tours enhancements: Benefit from Guided Tours enhancements that include descriptive page titles, as well as keyboard assistance for required fields and user interface controls.
    • Document Services: Leverage new static and dynamic guardrails for accessibility support for PDF document generation. These enhancements monitor and manage memory usage to help maintain stability during PDF generation.
    • Playbooks in Workflow Studio: Enhance workflow efficiency with improved keyboard navigation for Playbooks in Workflow studio. This update allows users to move more easily between stages and activities, creating a smoother experience for those who rely on a keyboard.

    Product Accessibility

    Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs), created using the international version of the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), are available for supported ServiceNow releases. These reports detail how our products support global accessibility standards. For a complete list of available reports, see Accessibility conformance reports.